Evolution (Biology); Glacial epoch; Human beings -- Origin; Human evolution
In the same work I have shown that near Stockholm, in Sweden, there
occur, at slight elevations above the sea-level, horizontal beds
of sand, loam, and marl, containing the same peculiar assemblage of
testacea which now live in the brackish waters of the Baltic. Mingled
with these, at different depths, have been detected various works of art
implying a rude state of civilization, and some vessels built before the
introduction of iron, and even the remains of an ancient hut, the
marine strata containing it, which had been formed during a previous
depression, having been upraised, so that the upper beds are now 60 feet
higher than the surface of the Baltic. In the neighbourhood of these
recent strata, both to the north-west and south of Stockholm, other
deposits similar in mineral composition occur, which ascend to greater
heights, in which precisely the same assemblage of fossil shells is met
with, but without any intermixture, so far as is yet known, of human
bones or fabricated articles.
On the opposite or western coast of Sweden, at Uddevalla, Post-Tertiary
strata, containing recent shells, not of that brackish water character
peculiar to the Baltic, but such as now live in the Northern Ocean,
ascend to the height of 200 feet; and beds of clay and sand of the same
age attain elevations of 300 and even 600 feet in Norway, where they
have been usually described as "raised beaches." They are, however,
thick deposits of submarine origin, spreading far and wide, and filling
valleys in the granite and gneiss, just as the Tertiary formations, in
different parts of Europe, cover or fill depressions in the older rocks.
Although the fossil fauna characterising these upraised sands and clays
consists exclusively of existing northern species of testacea, it is
more than probable that they may not all belong to that division of the
Pleistocene strata which we are now considering. If the contemporary
mammalia were known, they would, in all likelihood, be found to be
referable, at least in part, to extinct species; for, according to Loven
(an able living naturalist of Norway), the species do not constitute
such an assemblage as now inhabits corresponding latitudes in the North
Sea. On the contrary, they decidedly represent a more arctic fauna. In
order to find the same species flourishing in equal abundance, or
in many cases to find them at all, we must go northwards to higher
latitudes than Uddevalla in Sweden, or even nearer the pole than Central
Norway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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