Evolution (Biology); Glacial epoch; Human beings -- Origin; Human evolution
When we approach the north-west end of Moens Klint, or the range of
coast above described, the strata begin to be less bent and broken,
and after travelling for a short distance beyond we find the Chalk and
overlying drift in the same horizontal position as at the southern end
of the Moens Klint. What makes these convulsions the more striking is
the fact that in the other adjoining Danish islands, as well as in a
large part of Moen itself, both the Secondary and Tertiary formations
are quite undisturbed.
It is impossible to behold such effects of reiterated local movements,
all of post-Tertiary date, without reflecting that, but for the
accidental presence of the stratified drift, all of which might easily
have been missing, where there has been so much denudation, even if it
had once existed, we might have referred the verticality and flexures
and faults of the rocks to an ancient period, such as the era between
the Chalk with flints and the Maestricht Chalk, or to the time of the
latter formation, or to the Eocene, or Miocene, or Pliocene eras, even
the last of them long prior to the commencement of the glacial epoch.
Hence we may be permitted to suspect that in some other regions, where
we have no such means at our command for testing the exact date of
certain movements, the time of their occurrence may be far more modern
than we usually suppose. In this way some apparent anomalies in the
position of erratic blocks, seen occasionally at great heights above the
parent rocks from which they have been detached, might be explained, as
well as the irregular direction of certain glacial furrows like those
described by Professor Keilhau and Mr. Horbye on the mountains of
the Dovrefjeld in latitude 62 degrees north, where the striation and
friction is said to be independent of the present shape and slope of the
mountains.*
(* "Observations sur les Phenomenes d'Erosion en Norwege"
1857.)
Although even in such cases it remains to be proved whether a general
crust of continental ice, like that of Greenland described by Rink (see
above, Chapter 13), would not account for the deviation of the furrows
and striae from the normal directions which they ought to have followed
had they been due to separate glaciers filling the existing valleys.
It appears that in general the upward movements in Scandinavia, which
have raised sea-beaches containing marine shells of Recent species to
the height of several hundred feet, have been tolerably uniform over
very wide spaces; yet a remarkable exception to this rule was observed
by M. Bravais at Altenfjord in Finmark, between latitude 70 and 71
degrees north. An ancient water-level, indicated by a sandy deposit
forming a terrace and by marks of the erosion of the waves, can be
followed for 30 miles from south to north along the borders of a fjord
rising gradually from a height of 85 feet to an elevation of 220 feet
above the sea, or at the rate of about 4 feet in a mile.*
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