Geological and Mythical Ages of the World—Myths as Products of Environment—The Deluge and Great Winter Legends—New World Cataclysms—Doctrines of Decadence and Evolution in World’s Ages Myths—Sages of the “Wandering Jew” Type—The Monsters of Geology and Mythology—Story of the Pleistocene Age—First Glacial Period—Mauer (Heidelberg) Man—Second Glacial Period—The Age of Chellean Culture—The Piltdown Skull—Acheulian Culture Stage—Third Glacial Period and Mousterian Man—Cro—Magnon Race and Grimaldi “Bushmen"—Aurignacian Cave Pictures and Beliefs—Solutrean Culture—Fourth Glacial Period and Magdalenian Man—The Problem of Eoliths—Approximate Duration of Palæolithic Age.

THE system which obtains among modern scientists, of dividing the history of the earth into geological epochs and the pre-history of man into cultural periods, was anticipated by the priestly theorists of ancient civilizations, who established the doctrine of the mythical Ages of the World. These early teachers were:, no doubt, as greatly concerned about justifying their own pretensions and the tenets of their cults as in gratifying the growing thirst for knowledge among the educated classes. When they undertook to reveal the process of creation and throw light on the origin and purpose of mankind, they exalted local deities in opposition to those regarded supreme at rival centres of culture and political influence. Many rival systems of a national religion were thus perpetuated. But the various city priesthoods of a particular country found it necessary to deal also with problems of common concern. Among other things, they had to account for the various races of whom they had knowledge and to give divine sanction to existing social conditions; nor could they overlook the accidental discoveries which were occasionally made of the relics of elder and unknown peoples and the bones of extinct animals.

These mythology-makers, of course, possessed but meagre knowledge of their country’s past, and were accordingly compelled to draw freely upon their imaginations; but they should not be regarded on that account as merely dreamers of dreams and inventors of miraculous stories. Indications are forthcoming which show that they were not wholly devoid of the scientific spirit. They were close observers of natural phenomena, and sometimes made deductions which, considering the narrowness of areas available to them for investigation, were not unworthy of thinking men. It seemed perfectly reasonable to the Babylonian and Egyptian scientists, who saw land growing from accumulations of river-borne silt, and desert wastes rendered cultivable by irrigation, to conclude, for instance, that water was the primary element and the source of all that existed.

This doctrine, which holds that the Universe is derived from one particular form of matter, has been called “Materialistic Monism”. Ultimately, when mind was exalted above matter, the belief obtained that the inanimate forces of nature were subject to the control of the supreme Mind, which was the First Cause. This later doctrine is known as “Idealistic Monism”. It was embraced by various cults in Babylonia, India, and Egypt. In the latter country, for instance, the great god of Memphis was addressed:

Ptah, the great, is the mind and tongue of the gods. . . .It (the mind) is the one which bringeth forth every successful issue. . . .It was the fashioner of all gods.At a time when every divine wordCame into existence by the thought of the mindAnd the command of the tongue. 1

In Egypt and Babylonia, where inundations of river valleys were of periodic occurrence, and where, at rare intervals, floods of excessive volume caused great destruction and loss of life, and even brought about political changes, it was concluded that the old Ages were ended and new Ages inaugurated by world-devastating deluges.

The deductions of the early scientists in northern Europe were similarly drawn from the evidence afforded by environment, and similarly influenced by persistent modes of thought. They saw shoals formed and beaches overlaid by sand washed up by the sea from, as it appeared, some sand-creating source, and conceived that on the floor of ocean there stood a great “World Mill” propelled by giantesses, which ground the bodies of primeval world-giants into earth meal. “‘Tis said”, a saga author set forth, “that far out, off yonder ness, the Nine Maids of the Island mill stir amain the host-cruel skerry-quern—they who in ages past ground Hamlet’s meal. The good chieftain furrows the hull’s lair with his ship’s beaked prow.” 2

In the Elder Edda the god of the mill, who appears to be identical with Frey and the original Hamlet, is called Mundlefore, “the handle-mover”:

The Mover of the Handle is father of MoonAnd the father eke of Sun.

This “World Mill” caused the heavens to revolve round a fixed point marked by the polar star, which was called veraldar nagli, the “world-spike”.

Believing that sun and moon rose from the ocean, and that therefore light came from darkness, they concluded that winter preceded summer at the beginning.

Untold winters ere Earth was fashioned    Roaring Bergelm was born;His father was Thrudgelm of Mighty Voice,    Loud-sounding Ymer his grandsire. 1

In the north it was observed also that growth was promoted when the ice melted, and the teachers reasoned that the first being, Ymer, came into existence when sparks from the southland, or “poison drops from the sea”, fell upon the primeval icebergs, and caused drops of trickling water to fertilize the clay.

From Stormy-billow sprang poison dropsWhich waxed into Jotun form.

The Babylonians, on the other hand, who were familiar with the part played by reeds in accumulating mud and binding river-banks, taught that-

Marduk (Merodach) laid a reed upon the face of the waters.He formed dust and poured it out beside the reed. . . .He formed mankind. 2

It may be, too, that the ancient teachers, who framed creation myths and expounded local forms of the doctrine of the World’s Ages, mingled at times with their pseudoscientific deductions and brilliant imaginings dim and confused racial traditions of early migrations and varied experiences in different areas of settlement. Some of these traditions may have had origin before the dawn of the Neolithic or Late Stone Age. As will be shown, certain customs, which are familiar to students of ancient civilizations, were prevalent among primitive peoples in the vast Palæolithic or Early Stone Age. With these customs may have survived in localities legends associated with or based upon them. The possibility remains, therefore, that in Persian mythology there are memories not only of an area of settlement among the mountains where severe winters were as greatly dreaded as exceptional floods in river valleys, but even of one of the last recurring phases of the Ice Age. A poetic narrative relates that the patriarch Yima, who afterwards became Lord of the Dead, constructed a shelter to afford safe protection for mankind and their domesticated animals during the “evil winter”, with its “hard, killing frost”. He had been forwarned of this approaching world-disaster by the supreme god Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd). Perhaps the “shelter” was a southern valley to which the proto-Persians were compelled to migrate on account of the growing severity of successive winters and the lowering of the perpetual snow-line around mountain-fringed plateaus they were accustomed to inhabit. It is related in the Avesta, one of the Persian sacred books, that “before the winter the land had meadows. . . . The water was wont to flow over it and the snow to melt.” A similar prolonged winter is foretold in Icelandic mythology. According to the Prose Edda, which is a patchwork of fragmentary legends of uncertain origin and antiquity, it will precede the destruction of the universe by the giants of frost and fire (lightning). “In the first place will come the winter, called Fimbul winter, during which snow will fall from the four corners of the world; the frosts will be very severe, the wind piercing, the weather tempestuous, and the sun impart no gladness.” 1

From the Voluspa poem of the Elder Edda we gather details of—

A Sword Age, Axe Age—shields are cloven,A Wind Age, Wolf Age, ere the world sinks.

Then, after describing a period of universal destruction, the soothsayer proceeds:

I see uprising a second timeEarth from the ocean, green anew:The waters fall, on high the eagleFlies o’er the fell and catches fish. 2

Various accounts of universal cataclysms come from the New World. Representative of these are the legends of the Arawaks of North Brazil regarding periods of flood, storm, and darkness, and those of the Mexicans, which deal with the destruction of early races by deluges caused by several succeeding suns perishing from lack of sustenance.

The most highly developed doctrinal systems of World Ages which have survived from antiquity are found, however, in the Mythologies of...