ANTIQUITY OF MAN by Cor. of the Appeal

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 30, 1876

ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

By Cor. of the Appeal

On the subject of the antiquity of man, it is a comfort to know that the minds of the learned are undergoing a rapid change. For the past thirty or forty years, archæological evidence of the date of man’s appearance upon earth has been accumulating. For a while that evidence seemed all to point one way, namely, in favor of a high antiquity. This was partly due, perhaps, to the natural desire of the discoverer to make his “find” the most important. Deceived by imperfect or colored reports, the learned pretty generally committed themselves to the view of a great antiquity. Sir Charles Lyell implied that man’s age is 800,000 years. Lubbock avoided figures, but expressed his views in such adjectives as “vast,” “immense,” etc. Mr. Vivian, with a fondness for round numbers, says man was living 1,000,000 years ago. Other antiquarians contented themselves with estimates of from two to three hundred thousand years. Lyell’s conjecture was founded upon the supposition that man came shortly after the glacial age.

But later discoveries have been made and more careful scrutiny of previous “finds” instituted, and though archæologists, like other people, are unwilling to alter an opinion to which they, on what they supposed was sufficient evidence, had given their adhesion, yet the last four years have witnessed a great change in view on this subject. Lyell’s present view is unknown, but in his later editions he has suddenly dropped from 800,000 to 200,000 years.

A collapse from 1,000,000 years, which were insisted upon with confidence in the British Association in 1871, to 20,000 in 1873, ought to put our second-hand scientists upon their guard.

Perhaps in this vain-glorious year we ought to refrain from stating that the exposure of many of the mistakes upon this subject is due to the common sense and industry of Americans. Lyell’s estimate of the Mississippi delta at New Orleans was 100,000 years, and both Lyell and Lubbock approved of the estimate of 57,000 years for Dr. Fowler’s Red Indian, who was found buried sixteen feet deep in the mud; but Mr. Fontaine found a skeleton in the same neighborhood under fifty feet of earth, which had been buried but four years, and the United States engineers after careful calculation find that the whole New Orleans delta to the depth of forty feet is the product of four thousand four hundred and forty years.

To Professor Andrews of Chicago is due great credit for increased knowledge in this matter. His masterly examination of the probable date of the glacial age at Lake Michigan, which date he gives at from five thousand to seven thousand years, has opened the eyes of scholars to the wild character of European guesses upon the age of ice, and his exposure of the oft-repeated blunders about the cone of Tiniere secures him the gratitude of all seekers after truth. This cone is at the mouth of the River Tiniere, which flows into Lake Omera, Switzerland, and is formed by the debris annually brought down by the torrent. By a mathematical error, which, when explained, is obvious to everybody, Mr. Moslet made the cone ten thousand or more years old, and gave the date of some stone implements found about half way up the cone, as more than six thousand years. Prof. Andrews demonstrates that the implements are not three thousand years old, and that the cone began to form some forty-five hundred years ago.

The ultimate conclusions of science will of course be true, but it seems to be a law of its progress always to advance through error.—Cor. of the Appeal.