The Origin of the World According to Revelation and ScienceDawson, John William, Sir
Religion
The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science
Dawson, John William, Sir
Bible and science; Religion and science
Mr. Pengelly thinks it possible, but not proved, that the lower
breccia of Kent's Cavern may be interglacial or preglacial in age. One
case only is known where a human bone has been found in a cavern under
deposits supposed to be of the nature of the glacial drift. It is that
of the Victoria Cave, at Settle, in Yorkshire. At this place a human
fibula was found under a layer of boulder clay. But there are too many
chances of this bone having come into this position by some purely
local accident to allow us to attach much importance to it until
future discoveries shall have supplied other instances of the
kind.[138]
I may close this survey of the cave deposits with a summary of the
results of M. Dupont, as obtained from two of the caves explored by
him, that of Margite and that of Frontal. In the first of these
caverns, resting on rolled pebbles which covered the floor, were four
distinct layers of river mud deposited by inundations, and amounting
to two yards and a half in thickness. In all of these layers were
bones. The lowest contained rude flint implements, and bones of the
mammoth, rhinoceros, bear, horse, chamois, reindeer, stag, and hyena.
In the overlying deposits are some flint implements of more artistic
form and a greater prevalence of the bones of the reindeer. In the
second cave, that of Frontal, over a similar deposit of alluvial mud
of the mammoth age, was found a sepulchre containing the remains of
sixteen individuals, of the second or diminutive Lappish race before
referred to. The door of the cave had been closed by these people with
a slab of stone, and in front was a hearth for funeral feasts, built
on the deposits of the mammoth age, and containing bones of animals
all recent or now living in Belgium, and without any traces of the
bones of the extinct quadrupeds. This burial-place belonged to the
Neocosmic yet prehistoric race which replaced the Palaeocosmic men of
the mammoth age.
What is the absolute antiquity of the Palaeocosmic age in Europe? We
have no monumental or historical chronology to answer this question,
but only the measures of time furnished by the accumulation of
deposits, by the deposition of stalagmite, by the gradual extinction
of animals, and by the erosion of valleys and other physical changes.
These somewhat loose measures have been applied in various ways, but
the tendency of geologists, from the prevalence of uniformitarian
views, and the prejudice created by familiarity with the long times of
previous geologic periods, has been to assign to them too great rather
than too little value, both as measures of time and as indicating a
remote antiquity.
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