Evolution and creation / by Herbert Junius Hardwicke.

  • Hardwicke, Herbert Junius.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution and creation / by Herbert Junius Hardwicke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    93/326 (page 11)
    Pleistocene. But while the fact of the human remains having been discovered above the boulder-clay appears to point to a post-glacial date, still there is con- fronting us the perplexing anomaly of the contemporary existence of extinct mammals belonging to a tropical fauna, which, if we accept this theory, involves the ne- cessity of admitting that a tropical climate followed the last glacial epoch—a condition of things that we know never existed at all. The fact is there have been more periods of glaciation than one, each being followed by the deposition of boulder-clays; and between the periods of intense Arctic cold there were intervals of tropical or sub-tropical heat, when mammals belonging to and requiring a tropical climate ventured as far north as the north of England, to become extinct when the period (;f glaciation supervened. The last glacial period, we know, extended its area of influence as far as the high peaks of Switzerland and Northern Italy, completely overwhelming the whole of Northern Europe as far south as the latitude of 45°, and the whole of North America as far south as the latitude of 40°; since when there has been a gradual diminution of cold until the present tem- perate climate supervened. Now, if it can be positively ascertained that all the boulder-clays found in England and Northern Europe were deposited during and imme- diately after this last glacial period, the date of man's first appearance in those districts, as far as we have as yet any evidence, must be post-glacial; but in such a case it would have been impossible that a tropical fauna and flora could have existed in the same localities, whereas their remains have been abundantly found lying side by side with the remains of Palseolithic man. The conclusion we must draw is that the boulder-clays found below the remains of Palasolithic man could not have been deposited after the last period of glaciation, but must have followed some prior glacial condition, and that man existed in England and Northern Europe con- temporaneously with extinct mammalia during inter- glacial or pre-glacial times, when the climate of England was tropical or sub-tropical—that is to say, in middle Pleistocene or late Pleiocene times. If man really existed in England in Pleiocene times, in favour of