A Unreal Examination of the Jb Lints from Brixham Cavern
By N. Whitley, C.E., Honorary Secretary of the Royal Institution of Cornwall. Reprinted from the Journal of the Victoria Institute, or Philosophical Society of Great Britain. London: Hardwicke & Bogue, Piccadilly. Edinburgh: Maclaren & Macniven. Dublin: W. Ridings. Paris: Galignani & Co., 1877.
Mr. Whitley has done good service to the cause of science, as well as religion, by his indefatigable researches respecting the supposed flint implements discovered in the Brixham Cavern. He is well known as a zealous, accomplished, and thoroughly practical geologist; his observations are therefore entitled to all the weight due to a keen, devoted, and conscien- tious observer.
The question as to the natural or artificial formation of a few flint flakes may seem, on a prima facie view of the subject, but an insignificant matter. It is, however, one of the gravest importance, involving no less a problem than whether man is, or is not, of bestial origin.
As far back as 1864 Mr. Whitley published a pamphlet on flint implements. Since that time he has carefully studied the geology of the Brixham Cavern, and of the Somme Valley, and in 1874 he read a paper before the Victoria Institute, on ” The Brixham Cavern, and its testimony to the Antiquity of Man.1’ In his last essay, just published, and which is now especially under our notice, he gives a resume of all his arguments.
The investigation of the contents of the Brixham Cavern, which has gained so much notoriety, originated with the Royal and Geological Societies as long ago as 1858. They appointed a committee, of which Dr Falconer, F.R.S., was president, and Mr. Prestwich, F.R.S., was treasurer, to superintend the neces- sary researches. Mr. Pengelly took the most active part in the exploration, and before the termination of twelve months he forwarded to the Geological Society all the so-called flint implements, as well as the remains of animals which have been found, together with specimens of stalagmite. But it Avas not until May 16, 1872, that the report of the committee was published by the Royal Society. Moreover it was only in the latter part of 1874 that the exhumed flints were deposited for public inspection at the Christy Museum, London, in accordance with the stipulation on which ?200 of the royal donation were given by the society towards the expense of the exploration. Commenting on the tardiness of these proceedings, Mr. Whitley justly observes :?
Thus for fifteen years the relics from the cavern were not acces- sible to outsiders, and during that long period these rubble pieces of shattered flint were persistently described as flint knives, relics of man, and manufactured tools. The haste with which this opinion had been adopted, and the zeal by which it was propagated, presents a remark- able contrast to the long delay in the issue of the final report. On the 9th of September 1858, a preliminary report was sent to the London Committee, signed by ” H. Falconer, M.D., Andrew Ramsay, and Wm, Pengelly,” in which they state that ” one result of great interest has already been brought out, namely the superposition of undoubted remains of the reindeer above the so-called ^ flint knives’ 5 from which the inference arises that the reindeer continued to be an inhabitant of Britain after the appearance of man in this island.”
In the same September, at the Leeds meeting of the Biitish Association, Mr. Pengelly, F.R.S., read a paper on the results which had been obtained, and stated, ” that in the new cavern flint implements had been found under an unbroken floor of stalagmite, deep in the cave earth, and mingled with the remains of the ordinary extinct cave mammals.”
Again, in the following year, Sir Charles Lyell brought ^ the evidence obtained from this cavern before the Meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen, in reference to its bearing on the high antiquity of man; and from that early date, down to the issue of the final report of the Royal Society in 1874, the flints from Brixham Cavern have been constantly referred to, as furnishing incontestable evidence of the contemporaneous existence of man with the extinct mammalia of the Drift period; but let it be observed that during these fifteen years the flints themselves were never produced, never even described in detail, or the nature of the evidence of their human manu- facture made known; and if the exploration of Brixham Cavern (as it has been said) produced an entire revolution of opinion on the antiquity of man, such opinion was founded on faith and not on sight.
Thus far tlie believers in a Palseolithic age appear to have it all their own way. We will now give Mr. Whitley s account of his exploration of the Brixham Cavern :
On the 2nd of October 1874, I visited the cavern and found a glass case within the entrance, in which some relics from the cave were placed, and shown to visitors by the proprietor; among other things were some plaster casts of a very perfect and large flint flake 3| inches long, and well adapted to be used as a knife I was told by the pro- prietor that these casts were models of one of the ” flint knives found in the cavern, and deposited with the Geological Society of London The case also contained the cast of a stone axe of a neolithic form I purchased three of the casts of the knife, and one of the axe. My suspicions of the genuineness of these things were aroused, and after- wards confirmed, by comparing the cast of the flake with the description of the flints given in the report of the Royal Society. On the 21st of November 1874, I forwarded one of the casts and the model of the axe to the Secretaries of the Royal Society, and ventured in a letter to entreat the Council to put an end to this deception of the public, by depositing the real flints in the British Museum, as stipulated by the engagement entered into so far back as 1858. The casts were laid before the Council, and Professor Huxley was directed to inform me that the relics had been deposited in the Christy Museum. I lost no time in going to inspect them, in order to gain a more perfect knowledge of these famous flints; and having obtained permission to have a photograph of them taken, I requested Messrs. Mansell & Co. (who had before produced such perfect photographs of the antiquities in the British Museum) to do this for me. Three negatives were taken, one as near as could be to the natural size of the flints, the others of a size suited to the page ot the journal of this Society, a photograph from which forms the frontispiece of this paper. A scale of inches Avas photographed with the flints, in order that they might be accurately measured ; and with the aid of a lens their most minute features and fractures can be examined. The flints now speak for them- selves An impression of the photograph* shows that fully one-half of the flints are indefinable pieces of broken flint, no larger than the tip of a nWs finger; they are neither flakes, nor cores, nor scrapers ; they are without any regularity of form, and show no evi- dence of design, and are unlike any implements known to have been made by man. To call these bits of rubble flint implements, ^dis- tinguishable as they are from the gravel which we tread on in a foot- path, seems to be an abandonment of common sense; and without anv confirmatory evidence to rely on, the judgment revolts from the in- ference that they are manufactured tools.
Some of the flint flakes found in the cavern were extremely small, so small that no one unless strongly prejudiced could have imagined them to be artificial implements ; yet Professor JSillson giavely suggests that they might, liave been made for children, to give them an early taste for the use of arms. Mr. hitley pioceeds to mention the following interesting’ facts to show that mere change of temperature will split flints, and other silicious minerals, into flakes similar to those so-called flint implements found in the Brixham Cavern The black slag from the tin and iron smelting-works of Cornwall is a coarse kind of obsidian; rejected from the works at a high tem- perature, it breaks, with a decided conchoidal fracture, in the act of cooling, into fragments, from which flakes and spear-points may be selected in every respect resembling the so-called flint implements of
Affixed to this treatise, of which a full size copy may be inspected at the
rooms of the Victoria Institute, or obtained from Messrs. Mansell & Co , Oxford Street.
We have ourselves recently inspected the flint ddbris at the Christy Museum, and were as much astonished as Mr. Whitley thar, anyone could believe’ that they were fashioned bv human hands.
the caverns; and the perfection of the fracture and form of the flake is proportionate to the silicious purity of the slag.
It is mdst convincing to observe the whole process of the forma- tion of such flakes at Seend, near Devizes. Here the iron is smelted cut of the native rock in blast-furnaces by intense heat, and the molten slag is poured into iron caldrons, and tipped from the ^ tram- waggon to the refuse-heaps; the external surface of the mass is first cooled by contact with the caldron, and converted^ into a kind of artificial obsidian ; and, during the further act of cooling, most delicate semi-transparent films are formed on the surface of the slag, and fall from its sides or come down in a shower by the slightest touch of a Avalking-stick; and from these most beautifully tinted and delicate flakes of knife-like forms and sharp cutting edges may be picked out.
Flint flakes are abundant in the desert of the Tih, and are also embedded in the breccias on the shores of the Dead oea. They also abound on the surface of the desert between Joidan and the Euphrates, which has been named the “Desert ot Flints.” In reference to these facts Mr. AV liitley observes .
Tradition, history, and the necessities of the case all agree in their testimony that the rich alluvial valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile were the cradle in which the human family was nursed in its infancy ; but on their fertile soils no relics of pala?olithic man hav e been found. According to modern theories of his origin, he came to the very verge of fertility, and beheld a Paradise before him rep eto Avith all the necessaries and luxuries of savage life, and then turne back into the desert to manufacture flint implements, where t ei e was no soil to cultivate, and no animal food to sustain life. at t lese sterile deserts could have supported a population sufficient y a5&e ? have made the innumerable so-called implements is as a se in ac as it is wild in theory.
When Mr. Whitley explored the cavern in 1874, he pub- lished a geological account of it and its surroun mgs, accom panied with a map:
The cavern itself has been naturally formed, along the lines of the jointed structure of the limestone rock; tus is no on y o vio is from an inspection of its interior, but it is found by the compass that the direction of the chambers within the cave correspon.
course of the joints in the adjoining limestone quarry. These joints run nearly N. Li S. and E. and W., by the compass the variation being 21? west. These natural divisional planes have been eroded and en- larged by water to a width of from 4 to 8 feet and in this manner the chambers o? the eave have been formed, and there is no evidence and no pretence that man has in any manner excavated or modified any portion of it so as to render it fit for his habitation.
The deposits in the cave were as follows.
The Brixham Cavern, ancl its Testimony to the Antiquity of Man. Examined
by N. Whitley, C.E., Honorary Secretary of the Eoyal Institution of Corn-wall. London : Robert Hardwieke, 192 Piccadilly.
1st. At the top, a layer of stalagmite, varying in thickness from one to fifteen inches, which sometimes contained bones, as a rein- deer’s horn, and an entire humerus of the cave bear. 2nd. Next below, loam or bone-earth, of an ochreous-red colour, from one foot to fifteen feet in thickness.
3rd. At the bottom of all, gravel with many rounded pebbles in it, probed in many places to the depth of twenty feet, without its being pierced through, and as it was barren of fossils, left for the most part unremoved.
The more important bones o? mammalia obtained from the bone- earth consisted of the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave bear, the cave hyaena, the cave lion, the reindeer, a species of horse, ox, and several rodents.
Sparingly scattered over the table-land in the neighbourhood of the cavern is a trail of Drift gravel, composed of quartz, trap, and haematite iron ore. This renders it highly probable that the flakes and gravel of the cavern have been derived from the trail of Drift, especially when we consider that the flakes are mixed with the same kind of gravel both outside and inside the cavern.
With regard to two of the so-called implements mentioned by Mr. Evans, the “rouncl-pointed lanceolate implement,” and ” the remarkably symmetrical scraper,” Mr. Whitley states, as to the first, that it is formed of two pieces of flint dis- covered apart, and fitting so completely as to show that they are parts of the same stone. With regard to the other, he
observes: ” It has one blot on its evidence as a witness in this case?it was never found in the cavern ! ” A plaster cast of a flint knife, which Mr. Whitley purchased in the cavern in 18/4, was said to have been moulded from one found in the cavern. It is now acknowledged that the flint from which the cast was taken was not found in the Brixham Cavern.
The various bones of all kinds found in the cavern were distributed in different beds. Remains of extinct and recent animals were mingled in great confusion. The whole group appeared to have belonged to one period. The remains of the mammoth, the bear, and the liorse were found both in the lower gravel bed and on the modern stalagmite. Mr. Whitley gives the following summary of his argu- ments :?
I have now shown that the so-called ” thirty-six rude flint imple- ments, of indisputable human workmanship,” are, for the greatest part, small undefinable pieces of rubble flint, mixed with a few imperfect subsoil flakes.
That the marks of use, on secondary chipping, so strongly asserted to be found on the edges of the flints, and so clearly shown on the woodcut, fig. 410, in Ancient Stone Implements, are not to be found on the flint itself. . ‘
That the flint described in Ancient Stone Implements as a remark- ably symmetrical scraper, and said to be found ^ in the cavern, was not found there, but in the soil without and above it. That the cast of a very perfect flint knife exhibited among other relics in the cavern, and sold to visitors as a cast of a cavern specimen, is a deception.
That the portion of a cylindrical pin or rod of ivory, said to be found in the cave, was not found by the committee of exploration, is not now with the flints in the museum, and that there i3 no evidence to show that it is a cavern specimen.
That the ” charcoal bed” contains no charcoal. That slate has been mistaken for flint, and flint for bone; and that the description given of the “whole hind-leg of a cave bear,” the most famous specimen of the cavern, has been found to be so loaded wUh erroneous facts and false conclusions, that its evidence has been withdrawn an abandoned.
The carefully prepared report of the Royal Society does, in eec, correct many of the mistakes which had been made; and we aie in- debted to Mr. Pengelly for further corrections and admissions, by t ie publication of his original report, drawn up in 1862 for the Cavern Committee, with some recent additions. But these statements, buried in the Transactions of learned societies, are not accessible to the great mass of people, who receive their information from popular lectui es and cheap publications; and thus Brixham Cavern is still referred to as furnishing the best evidence of the high antiquity of man.
In spite of the strong evidence which has been adduced against the extreme antiquity of- man, we find it still lias its advocates, though they speak in a less confident tone t an formerly. We would ask Sir John Lubbock to tell us how l happens that the work on The Antiquity of Man, w ie 1 ie proposed to publish last year in the ” Internationa cien i c Series,” has been withdrawn ? We presume tha e consi eis discretion the better part of valour.
It must be understood that Mr. “W hitley doe^ no 1SP1 ? the authenticity of the neolithic or latei rvision o m implements, but that of the earlier or palaeolithic age. Sir Charles Lyell, in his Antiquity of Man, advanced a speculative opinion, which he held in common wi ie c assica writers of Greece and Rome, that men < crept forth from the newly formed earth a dumb and filthy herd; they fought for acorns and lurking places with their nails an ss, tTc. i i reference to this preposterous notion, Mr. Whitley has, m a former treatise,* the following eloquent passage ?
The elephant was created a noble brute with magnificent curved tusks for ornament and defence, long s?ft s ao?y air o proec mil from the cold, and with an instinct so perfect, that it ministered to all his wants and enjoyments, and almost bordered on reason, but to him far better than reason?” What can choose can err.” He walked the earth the monarch of all he surveyed; and with his cool aristocratic eye, must have looked down with ineffable contempt on the ” dumb and filthy herd” of men by whom he was surrounded.
But can it be believed that when every beast .was created peifeet in its kind, man alone was left to grope his way through successive ages of darkness? Until much stronger evidence can be brought forwaid than has yet appeared, we shall continue to hold the cherished belief that man was created only a little lower than the angels, and that palaeolithic man is nothing more than an ingenious myth.
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