Читать книгу Essay on the Theory of the Earth онлайн

100 страница из 122

ssss1

It is certain that no human bones have yet been found among fossil remains; and this furnishes an additional proof that the fossil races were not mere varieties of known species, since they could not have been subjected to human influence.

When I assert that human bones have never been found among fossil organic remains, (I must be understood to speak of fossils or petrifactions, properly so called), or, in other words, in the regular strata of the surface of the globe; for in peat-bogs (tourbières), and alluvial deposits, as in burying-grounds, human bones might as well be found as bones of horses, or other common species. They might equally be found in fissures of rocks, and in caverns, where they may have been covered over by stalactite; but in the beds which contain the ancient races, among the palæotheria, and even among the elephants and rhinoceroses, the smallest portion of a human bone has never been discovered. Many of the labourers in the gypsum quarries about Paris, believe that the bones which occur so abundantly in them, are in a great part human; but I have seen several thousands of these bones, and I may safely affirm that not one of them has ever belonged to our species. I have examined at Pavia the groups of bones brought by Spallanzani from the Island of Cerigo; and, notwithstanding the assertion of that celebrated observer, I equally affirm, that there is not one among them that could be shewn to be human. The homo diluvii testis of Scheuchzer has been restored, in my first edition, to its true genus, which is that of the salamanders; and, in a more recent examination of it at Haarlem, allowed me by the politeness of Mr Van Marum, who permitted me to uncover the parts enveloped in the stone, I obtained complete proof of what I had before announced. Among the bones found at Canstadt, the fragment of a jaw, and some articles of human manufacture, were found; but it is known that the ground was dug up without any precaution, and that no notes were taken of the different depths at which each article was discovered. Every where else, the fragments of bone alleged to be human, are found, on examination, to belong to some animal, whether these fragments have been examined themselves, or merely through the medium of figures. Very recently, some were pretended to have been discovered at Marseilles, in a quarry that had been long neglected;[84] but they have turned out to be impressions of tuyaux marines.[85] Such real human bones as have been exhibited as fossil, belonged to bodies that had fallen into fissures, or had been left in the old galleries of mines, or that had been incrusted; and I extend this assertion even to the human skeletons discovered at Guadaloupe, in a rock formed of fragments of madrepore, thrown up by the sea, and united by water impregnated with calcareous matter.[86] The human bones found near Kœstriz, and pointed out by M. de Schlotheim, had been announced as taken out of very old beds; but this estimable naturalist is anxious to make known how much this assertion is still subject to doubt.[87] The same has been the case with the articles of human fabrication. The pieces of iron found at Montmartre are fragments of the tools which the workmen use for putting in blasts of gunpowder, and which sometimes break in the stone[88].