A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE PRO­FES­SOR IN HIS CHAIR AGAIN

To un­der­stand this apos­tro­phe of my un­cle’s, made to ab­sent French sa­vants, it will be nec­es­sary to al­lude to an event of high im­por­tance in a palæon­to­log­ical point of view, which had oc­curred a lit­tle while be­fore our de­par­ture.

On the 28th of March, 1863, some ex­ca­va­tors work­ing un­der the di­rec­tion of M. Bouch­er de Perthes, in the stone quar­ries of Moulin Quignon, near Abbeville, in the de­part­ment of Somme, found a hu­man jaw­bone four­teen feet be­neath the sur­face. It was the first fos­sil of this na­ture that had ev­er been brought to light. Not far dis­tant were found stone hatch­ets and flint ar­row-​heads stained and en­cased by lapse of time with a uni­form coat of rust.

The noise of this dis­cov­ery was very great, not in France alone, but in Eng­land and in Ger­many. Sev­er­al sa­vants of the French In­sti­tute, and amongst them MM. Milne-​Ed­wards and de Qua­tre­fages, saw at once the im­por­tance of this dis­cov­ery, proved to demon­stra­tion the gen­uine­ness of the bone in ques­tion, and be­came the most ar­dent de­fen­dants in what the En­glish called this ‘tri­al of a jaw­bone.’ To the ge­ol­ogists of the Unit­ed King­dom, who be­lieved in the cer­tain­ty of the fact - Messrs. Fal­con­er, Busk, Car­pen­ter, and oth­ers - sci­en­tif­ic Ger­mans were soon joined, and amongst them the for­wardest, the most fiery, and the most en­thu­si­as­tic, was my un­cle Lieden­brock.

There­fore the gen­uine­ness of a fos­sil hu­man rel­ic of the qua­ter­nary pe­ri­od seemed to be in­con­testably proved and ad­mit­ted.

It is true that this the­ory met with a most ob­sti­nate op­po­nent in M. Elie de Beau­mont. This high au­thor­ity main­tained that the soil of Moulin Quignon was not dilu­vial at all, but was of much more re­cent for­ma­tion; and, agree­ing in that with Cu­vi­er, he re­fused to ad­mit that the hu­man species could be con­tem­po­rary with the an­imals of the qua­ter­nary pe­ri­od. My un­cle Lieden­brock, along with the great body of the ge­ol­ogists, had main­tained his ground, dis­put­ed, and ar­gued, un­til M. Elie de Beau­mont stood al­most alone in his opin­ion.

We knew all these de­tails, but we were not aware that since our de­par­ture the ques­tion had ad­vanced to far­ther stages. Oth­er sim­ilar max­il­lar­ies, though be­long­ing to in­di­vid­uals of var­ious types and dif­fer­ent na­tions, were found in the loose grey soil of cer­tain grot­toes in France, Switzer­land, and Bel­gium, as well as weapons, tools, earth­en uten­sils, bones of chil­dren and adults. The ex­is­tence there­fore of man in the qua­ter­nary pe­ri­od seemed to be­come dai­ly more cer­tain.

Nor was this all. Fresh dis­cov­er­ies of re­mains in the pleiocene for­ma­tion had em­bold­ened oth­er ge­ol­ogists to re­fer back the hu­man species to a high­er an­tiq­ui­ty still. It is true that these re­mains were not hu­man bones, but ob­jects bear­ing the traces of his hand­iwork, such as fos­sil leg-​bones of an­imals, sculp­tured and carved ev­ident­ly by the hand of man.

Thus, at one bound, the record of the ex­is­tence of man re­ced­ed far back in­to the his­to­ry of the ages past; he was a pre­de­ces­sor of the mastodon; he was a con­tem­po­rary of the south­ern ele­phant; he lived a hun­dred thou­sand years ago, when, ac­cord­ing to ge­ol­ogists, the pleiocene for­ma­tion was in progress.

Such then was the state of palæon­to­log­ical sci­ence, and what we knew of it was suf­fi­cient to ex­plain our be­haviour in the pres­ence of this stu­pen­dous Gol­go­tha. Any one may now un­der­stand the fren­zied ex­cite­ment of my un­cle, when, twen­ty yards far­ther on, he found him­self face to face with a prim­itive man!

It was a per­fect­ly recog­nis­able hu­man body. Had some par­tic­ular soil, like that of the ceme­tery St. Michel, at Bor­deaux, pre­served it thus for so many ages? It might be so. But this dried corpse, with its parch­ment-​like skin drawn tight­ly over the bony frame, the limbs still pre­serv­ing their shape, sound teeth, abun­dant hair, and fin­ger and toe nails of fright­ful length, this des­ic­cat­ed mum­my star­tled us by ap­pear­ing just as it had lived count­less ages ago. I stood mute be­fore this ap­pari­tion of re­mote an­tiq­ui­ty. My un­cle, usu­al­ly so gar­ru­lous, was struck dumb like­wise. We raised the body. We stood it up against a rock. It seemed to stare at us out of its emp­ty or­bits. We sound­ed with our knuck­les his hol­low frame.

Af­ter some mo­ments’ si­lence the Pro­fes­sor was him­self again. Ot­to Lieden­brock, yield­ing to his na­ture, for­got all the cir­cum­stances of our event­ful jour­ney, for­got where we were stand­ing, for­got the vault­ed cav­ern which con­tained us. No doubt he was in mind back again in his Jo­han­næum, hold­ing forth to his pupils, for he as­sumed his learned air; and ad­dress­ing him­self to an imag­inary au­di­ence, he pro­ceed­ed thus:

“Gen­tle­men, I have the hon­our to in­tro­duce to you a man of the qua­ter­nary or post-​ter­tiary sys­tem. Em­inent ge­ol­ogists have de­nied his ex­is­tence, oth­ers no less em­inent have af­firmed it. The St. Thomases of palæon­tol­ogy, if they were here, might now touch him with their fin­gers, and would be obliged to ac­knowl­edge their er­ror. I am quite aware that sci­ence has to be on its guard with dis­cov­er­ies of this kind. I know what cap­ital en­ter­pris­ing in­di­vid­uals like Bar­num have made out of fos­sil men. I have heard the tale of the kneep­an of Ajax, the pre­tend­ed body of Orestes claimed to have been found by the Spar­tans, and of the body of As­ter­ius, ten cu­bits long, of which Pau­sa­nias speaks. I have read the re­ports of the skele­ton of Tra­pani, found in the four­teenth cen­tu­ry, and which was at the time iden­ti­fied as that of Polyphe­mus; and the his­to­ry of the gi­ant un­earthed in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry near Paler­mo. You know as well as I do, gen­tle­men, the anal­ysis made at Lucerne in 1577 of those huge bones which the cel­ebrat­ed Dr. Fe­lix Plater af­firmed to be those of a gi­ant nine­teen feet high. I have gone through the trea­tis­es of Cas­san­ion, and all those mem­oirs, pam­phlets, an­swers, and re­join­ders pub­lished re­spect­ing the skele­ton of Teu­to­bochus, the in­vad­er of Gaul, dug out of a sand­pit in the Dauphiné, in 1613. In the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry I would have stood up for Scheuchz­er’s pre-​adamite man against Pe­ter Campet. I have pe­rused a writ­ing, en­ti­tled Gi­gan -“

Here my un­cle’s un­for­tu­nate in­fir­mi­ty met him - that of be­ing un­able in pub­lic to pro­nounce hard words.

“The pam­phlet en­ti­tled Gi­gan -“

He could get no fur­ther.

“Gi­gan­teo -“

It was not to be done. The un­lucky word would not come out. At the Jo­han­næum there would have been a laugh.

“Gi­gan­toste­olo­gie,” at last the Pro­fes­sor burst out, be­tween two words which I shall not record here.

Then rush­ing on with re­newed vigour, and with great an­ima­tion:

“Yes, gen­tle­men, I know all these things, and more. I know that Cu­vi­er and Blu­men­bach have recog­nised in these bones noth­ing more re­mark­able than the bones of the mam­moth and oth­er mam­mals of the post-​ter­tiary pe­ri­od. But in the pres­ence of this spec­imen to doubt would be to in­sult sci­ence. There stands the body! You may see it, touch it. It is not a mere skele­ton; it is an en­tire body, pre­served for a pure­ly an­thro­po­log­ical end and pur­pose.”

I was good enough not to con­tra­dict this startling as­ser­tion.

“If I could on­ly wash it in a so­lu­tion of sul­phuric acid,” pur­sued my un­cle, “I should be able to clear it from all the earthy par­ti­cles and the shells which are in­crust­ed about it. But I do not pos­sess that valu­able sol­vent. Yet, such as it is, the body shall tell us its own won­der­ful sto­ry.”

Here the Pro­fes­sor laid hold of the fos­sil skele­ton, and han­dled it with the skill of a dex­ter­ous show­man.

“You see,” he said, “that it is not six feet long, and that we are still sep­arat­ed by a long in­ter­val from the pre­tend­ed race of gi­ants. As for the fam­ily to which it be­longs, it is ev­ident­ly Cau­casian. It is the white race, our own. The skull of this fos­sil is a reg­ular oval, or rather ovoid. It ex­hibits no promi­nent cheek­bones, no pro­ject­ing jaws. It presents no ap­pear­ance of that prog­nathism which di­min­ish­es the fa­cial an­gle. [1] Mea­sure that an­gle. It is near­ly nine­ty de­grees. But I will go fur­ther in my de­duc­tions, and I will af­firm that this spec­imen of the hu­man fam­ily is of the Japhet­ic race, which has since spread from the In­dies to the At­lantic. Don’t smile, gen­tle­men.”

No­body was smil­ing; but the learned Pro­fes­sor was fre­quent­ly dis­turbed by the broad smiles pro­voked by his learned ec­cen­tric­ities.

“Yes,” he pur­sued with an­ima­tion, “this is a fos­sil man, the con­tem­po­rary of the mastodons whose re­mains fill this am­phithe­atre. But if you ask me how he came there, how those stra­ta on which he lay slipped down in­to this enor­mous hol­low in the globe, I con­fess I can­not an­swer that ques­tion. No doubt in the post-​ter­tiary pe­ri­od con­sid­er­able com­mo­tions were still dis­turb­ing the crust of the earth. The long-​con­tin­ued cool­ing of the globe pro­duced chasms, fis­sures, clefts, and faults, in­to which, very prob­ably, por­tions of the up­per earth may have fall­en. I make no rash as­ser­tions; but there is the man sur­round­ed by his own works, by hatch­ets, by flint ar­row-​heads, which are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the stone age. And un­less he came here, like my­self, as a tourist on a vis­it and as a pi­oneer of sci­ence, I can en­ter­tain no doubt of the au­then­tic­ity of his re­mote ori­gin.”

[1] The fa­cial an­gle is formed by two lines, one touch­ing the brow and the front teeth, the oth­er from the ori­fice of the ear to the low­er line of the nos­trils. The greater this an­gle, the high­er in­tel­li­gence de­not­ed by the for­ma­tion of the skull. Prog­nathism is that pro­jec­tion of the jaw-​bones which sharp­ens or lessons this an­gle, and which is il­lus­trat­ed in the ne­gro coun­te­nance and in the low­est sav­ages.

The Pro­fes­sor ceased to speak, and the au­di­ence broke out in­to loud and unan­imous ap­plause. For of course my un­cle was right, and wis­er men than his nephew would have had some trou­ble to re­fute his state­ments.

An­oth­er re­mark­able thing. This fos­sil body was not the on­ly one in this im­mense cat­acomb. We came up­on oth­er bod­ies at ev­ery step amongst this mor­tal dust, and my un­cle might se­lect the most cu­ri­ous of these spec­imens to de­mol­ish the in­creduli­ty of scep­tics.

In fact it was a won­der­ful spec­ta­cle, that of these gen­er­ations of men and an­imals com­min­gled in a com­mon ceme­tery. Then one very se­ri­ous ques­tion arose present­ly which we scarce­ly dared to sug­gest. Had all those crea­tures slid­ed through a great fis­sure in the crust of the earth, down to the shores of the Lieden­brock sea, when they were dead and turn­ing to dust, or had they lived and grown and died here in this sub­ter­ranean world un­der a false sky, just like in­hab­itants of the up­per earth? Un­til the present time we had seen alive on­ly ma­rine mon­sters and fish­es. Might not some liv­ing man, some na­tive of the abyss, be yet a wan­der­er be­low on this desert strand?