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Is Science against those who maintain that down to the Quaternary period the distribution of the human races was widely different from what it is now ? Is Science against those who, further, maintain that the fossil men found in Europe — although having almost reached a plane of sameness and unity from the fundamental physiological and anthropological aspects which continues till this day — still differ, sometimes greatly, from the type of the now existing populations. The late Littré confesses it in an article published by him on the Memoir called Antiquités Celtiques et Antediluviennes by Boucher de Perthes (1849)
— in the Revue des Deux Mondes (March 1, 1859). He says in it (a) that in these periods when the Mammoths, exhumed with the hatchets in Picardy, lived in the latter region, there must have been an eternal spring reigning over all the terrestrial globe * ; nature was the contrary of what it is now — thus leaving an enormous margin for the antiquity of
* Scientists now admit that Europe enjoyed in the Miocene times a warm, in the Pliocene or later Tertiary, a temperate climate. Littré’s contention as to the balmy spring of the Quaternary — to which deposits M. de Perthes’ discoveries of flint implements are traceable (since when the Somme has worn down its valley many scores of feet) — mnst be accepted with much reservation. The Somme-valley relics are post-glacial, and possibly point to the immigration of savages during one of the more temperate periods intervening between minor ages of Ice.
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those “ periods ” and then adds : (b) “ Spring, professor of the Faculty of Medicine at Liège, found in a grotto near Namur, in the mountain of Chauvaux, numerous human bones ‘ of a race quite distinct from ours.’ ”
Skulls exhumed in Austria offered a great analogy with those of African negro races, according to Littré, while others, discovered on the shores of the Danube and the Rhine, resembled the skulls of the Caribs and those of the ancient inhabitants of Peru and Chili. Still, the Deluge, whether Biblical or Atlantean, was denied. But further geological discoveries having made Gaudry write conclusively : “ Our forefathers were positively contemporaneous with the rhinoceros tichorrhinus, the hippopotamus major ” ; and add that the soil called diluvial in geology “ was formed partially at least after man’s apparition on earth ” — Littré pronounced himself finally. He then showed the necessity, before “ the resurrection of so many old witnesses,” of rehandling all the origins, all the durations, and added that there was an age hitherto unknown to study “ either at the dawn of the actual epoch or, as I believe, at the beginning of the epoch which preceded it.”
The types of the skulls found in Europe are of two kinds, as is well known : the orthognathous and the prognathous, or the Caucasian and the negro types ; such as are now found only in the African and the lower savage tribes. Professor Heer — who argues that the facts of Botany necessitate the hypothesis of an Atlantis — has shown that the plants of the Neolithic lake-villagers are mainly of African origin. How did the latter come to be in Europe if there was no former point of union between Africa and Europe ? How many thousand years ago did the seventeen men live whose skeletons were exhumed in the Department of the Haute Garonne, in a squatting posture near the remains of a coal fire, with some amulets and broken crockery around them, and in company with the bear spelæus, the Elephas primigenius, the aurochs (regarded by Cuvier as a distinct species), the Megaceros hibernicus — all antediluvian mammals ? Certainly at a most distant epoch, but not one which carries us further back than the Quaternary. A much greater antiquity for Man has yet to be proved. Dr. James Hunt, the late President of the Anthropological Society, makes it 9,000,000 years. This man of science, at any rate, makes some approach to our esoteric computation, if we leave the first two semi-human, ethereal races, and the early Third Race out of the computation.
The question, however, arises — who were these Palæolithic men of the European quaternary epoch ? Were they aboriginal, or the outcome of some immigration dating back into the unknown past ? The latter is the only tenable hypothesis, as all scientists agree in eliminating Europe from the category of possible “ cradles of mankind.” Whence, then, radiated the various successive streams of “ primitive ” men ?
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The earliest Palæolithic men in Europe — about whose origin Ethnology is silent, and whose very characteristics are but imperfectly known, though expatiated on as “ ape-like ” by imaginative writers such as Mr. Grant Allen — were of pure Atlantean and “ Africo ”-Atlantean stocks. * (It must be borne in mind that by this time the Atlantis continent itself was a dream of the past.) Europe in the quaternary epoch was very different from the Europe of to-day, being then only in process of formation. It was united to N. Africa — or rather what is now N. Africa — by a neck of land running across the present Straits of Gibraltar — N. Africa thus constituting a species of extension of Spain, while a broad sea washed the great basin of the Sahara. Of the great Atlantis, the main bulk of which sank in the Miocene, there remained only Ruta and Daitya and a stray island or so. The Atlantean connections of the forefathers † of the Palæolithic cave-men are evidenced by the upturning of fossil skulls (in Europe) reverting closely to the West Indian Carib and ancient Peruvian type — a mystery indeed to all those who refuse to sanction the “ hypothesis ” of a former Atlantic continent to bridge the ocean (Cf. “ Scientific and geological proofs of the reality of several submerged continents ”). What are we also to make of the fact that while de Quatrefages points to that “ magnificent race,” the tall Cro-Magnon cave-men and the Guanches of the Canary Islands as representatives of one type — Virchow also allies the Basques with the latter in a similar way ? Professor Retzius independently proves the relationship of the aboriginal American dolichocephalous tribes and these same Guanches. The several links in the chain of evidence are securely joined together. Legions of similar facts could be adduced. As to the African tribes — themselves diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified by climate and conditions — they crossed into Europe over the peninsula which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many of these European cave-men ; the Cro-Magnon, for instance. But, as was to be expected, progress is almost non-existent through the whole of the vast period allotted
* “ Whence they (the old cave-men) came, we cannot tell ” (Grant Allen).
“ The palæolithic hunters of the Somme Valley did not originate in that inhospitable climate, but moved into Europe from some more genial region — (Dr. Southall “ Epoch of the Mammoth ” p. 315).
† The pure Atlantean stocks — of which the tall quaternary cave-men were, in part, the direct descendants — immigrated into Europe long prior to the Glacial Period ; in fact as far back as the Pliocene and Miocene times in the Tertiary. The worked Miocene flints of Thenay, and the traces of Pliocene man discovered by Professor Capellini in Italy, are witnesses to the fact. These colonists were portions of the once glorious race, whose cycle from the Eocene downwards had been running down the scale.
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by Science to the Chipped Stone-Age. * The cyclic impulse downwards weighs heavily on the stocks thus transplanted — the incubus of the Atlantean Karma is upon them. Finally, Palæolithic man makes room for his successor — and disappears almost entirely from the scene. Professor Lefèvre asks in this connection : —
“ Has the Polished succeeded the Chipped Stone-Age by an imperceptible transition, or was it due to an invasion of brachycephalous Celts ? But whether, again, the deterioration produced in the populations of La Vezère was the result of violent crossings, or of a general retreat northwards in the wake of the reindeer, is of little moment to us.” He continues : —
“ Meantime the bed of the ocean has been upheaved, Europe is now fully formed, her flora and fauna fixed. With the taming of the dog begins the pastoral life. We enter on those polished stone and bronze periods, which succeed each other at irregular intervals, which even overlap one another in the midst of ethnical fusions and migrations. . . . The primitive European populations are interrupted in their special evolution and, without perishing, become absorbed in other races, engulfed . . . by successive waves of migration overflowing from Africa, possibly from a lost Atlantis [? ? far too late by æons of years] and from prolific Asia . . . all forerunners of the great Aryan Invasion ” (Fifth Race).
* The artistic skill displayed by the old cave-men renders the hypothesis which regards them as approximations to the “ pithecanthropus alalus ” — that very mythica Hæckelian monster — an absurdity requiring no Huxley or Schmidt to expose it. We see in their skill in engraving a gleam of Atlantean culture atavistically re-appearing.” It will be remembered that Donnelly regards modern European as a renaissance of Atlantean civilization. (“ Atlantis,” pp. 237-264.)