Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 62, December, 1862

We should bear in mind that the Quaternary or Diluvian Period, however ancient in point of time, has no clearly distinguishing line of separation from the present period. The great difference lies in the extinction of certain species of animals, which lived then, whose destruction may be due both to gradual changes of climate and to man.—PICTET.

Sir C. Lyell, in his remarks before the British Association in 1859, said upon the discovery alluded to here: "I am reminded of a large Indian mound which I saw in St. Simon's Island in Georgia,—a mound ten acres in area, and having an average height of five feet, chiefly composed of cast-away oyster-shells, throughout which arrow-heads, stone axes, and Indian pottery were dispersed. If the neighboring river, the Altamalia, or the sea which is at hand, should invade, sweep away, and stratify the contents of this mound, it might produce a very analogous accumulation of human implements, unmixed, perhaps, with human bones."— Athenaeum , September 21, 1859.

An article in Blackwood, (October, 1860,) which is understood to be from the pen of Professor H.D. Rogers, admits entirely that the flints are of human workmanship, and that it is impossible for them to have dropped through fissures, as, according to the writer's observation of the deposits, it would be impossible even for a mole to penetrate them, so close are they. Professor Rogers takes the ground that human antiquity is not proven from these relics, for two reasons:—First, because the indications in the deposits inclosing the flints point clearly to a "turbulent diluvial action," and therefore it is possible for a violent incursion of the ocean to have taken place in the historic period, and to have mixed up the more recent works of man with the previously buried bones or relics of a pre-historic period; and secondly, because the different geological deposits do not necessarily prove time, but only succession,—two schools of geology interpreting all similar phenomena differently, as relating to the time required.

The last position would be admitted by few scientific geologists at the present day, as the evidence for time, though inferential from the deposits known to us, is held generally to be conclusive. On the first point, Professor Rogers has the weight of authority against him: all the great masters of the science, who have examined the formation and the deposits of the surrounding country, denying that there is any evidence of an incursion of the ocean of such a nature, during the historic period.