Geology Again at Fault

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 14, 1870

Geology Again at Fault.

It seems impossible for geology, or rather geologists, or rather those skeptics who attempt to use geology as a breastwork from behind which to attack the Scriptures—it seems impossible for such to come to any sensible conclusion. They never seem to feel contented and at home till they have reared upon nothing a huge superstructure of as wild and preposterous guesses, as language can be made to express. And when a fact comes to light which scatters to the four winds their baseless theories, nothing abashed, they proceed to erect others equally silly, on foundations equally unsubstantial. The bubbles which they blow, they persist in declaring to be solid spheres, till one after another they collapse and show themselves to be nothing but air. The following is a late instance of this kind:

“A learned paper in the London Quarterly insists that there is abundant evidence to prove that a large part of the megalithic structures of England and of Europe, which have been supposed to date back far into prehistoric times, are really more modern than the Christian era. These rude structures may be classified into, 1st, Tumuli or Barrows; 2d, Dolmens, often called cromlechs; 3d, Circles; 4th, Avenues or Alignments; 5th, Menhirs or Peulvens. The Barrows are round or oblong mounds of earth, called topes in India, and erected generally for sepulchral purposes, though occasionally they are simply the memorial of some important event. The Dolmens are covered stone chambers, often inside of the mounds, and often entirely disconnected from them, and occasionally built on their summit. They are almost exclusively sepulchral. The Circle is an enclosure of upright stones surrounding the Dolmen, and is a burying place. The Alignments are a later form of megalithic structure. They are sometimes attached to circles, in which case they are avenues corresponding to the passages which lead to the sepulchral chambers in the Tumuli. When not so attached, their object is more obscure. The Menhirs are simple stone columns, like the pillars set up by Jacob and Laban, and are memorial stones. In Brittany they passed into Christian crosses. In Brittany and in Narbonne there are thousands of these monuments, and in Algeria they are almost innumerable. The mythical Druids had nothing to do with their construction; but they are referred by our author to the ancient Aquitanians, Tyrrhenians, Cimbri, and kindred races, which he regards as Aboriginal and Turanian—that is, as being Tartar in their character, or what is called Dravidian in India, where in Sylhet an aboriginal tribe still builds all the varieties of megalithic structure. There seems to be abundant proof that a large number of these European structures are quite modern, being the tombs of historical men or the monuments of historical battles; and that the stone implements found in them are no more proof that they belong to a distant Stone Age than is the fact that Zipporah used a stone circumcising knife a proof that Moses did not know iron, or than the fact which the Septuagint asserts, that with Joshua were buried the stone knives used when he circumcised the people, proves that the Canaanites with whom he fought did not have iron scythes on their chariots.”