Dr. Scheuchzer then wrote an uncompromising pamphlet titledA Most Rare Memorial of That Accursed Generation of Men of the First World, the Skeleton of a Man Drowned in the Flood, which informs us that together with the infallible testimony of the Divine Word we have other proofs of a Deluge: various plants, fishes, insects, snails, quadrupeds, et cetera. Of human beings drowned on that occasion, however, few traces survive because their corpses floated on the surface of thewaters and soon decayed. How fortunate that Oeningen Man should be preserved.
Dr. Scheuchzer provided an illustration of his remarkable find: “a carefully executed woodcut now offered for the consideration of the learned and inquiring world. . . . It does not merely present certain features in which a vivid imagination could detect something approximating to the human shape. On the contrary, it corresponds completely with all the parts and proportions of a human skeleton. Even the bones embedded in the stone, and some of the softer components too, are identifiable as genuine. . . .”
And there was the testimony of a German pastor, Johann Friederich Esper, who had uncovered the shoulder blade and jaw of another Flood victim in a cave near Bamberg.
During the nineteenth century additional proof turned up. William Buckland, Dean of Westminster and author ofReliquiae Diluvianae, reported a unique burial in South Wales—a female skeleton which became known as the Red Lady because her bones were stained with red ocher. Such mortal deposits, Buckland wrote, “by affording the strongest evidence of a universal deluge, leads us to hope that it will no longer be asserted as it has been by high authorities, that geology supplies no proofs of an event in the reality of which the truth of the Mosaic records is so materially involved.”
Just the same, renegade Christians continued boring holes in the Ark:
Scheuchzer’s rare memorial, upon close examination, proved to be all that was left of a giant salamander.
Esper’s fossils could not be reexamined because they had somehow disappeared, but on the basis of contemporary drawings it would seem that what he picked up were the bones of a cave bear.
Buckland’s so-called Red Lady was indeed human—though male instead of female—but nothing about the discolored scraps indicated that this person had drowned. Apart from sex, in fact, all that could be scientifically determined was that his bones, which had been discovered in association with Paleolithic tools, were older than the date of Scheuchzer’s flood, perhaps older than the date established by Archbishop Ussher for the creation of the universe. Just how old Dean Buckland’s masculine lady might be—ah, that would be hard to say. One can scarcely estimate how long men and women have been going about their affairs. To resolve such questions quite a lot more information would be necessary.
Then, in 1857, while the Neander valley near Düsseldorf was being quarried for limestone, workmen blasted open a cave and the shattering reverberations have not yet died away. Within this cave lay a wondrously complete skeleton. Laborers shoveled it aside because they were after something more valuable; but the owner of the quarry, Herr Beckershoff, either noticed these bones or was told about them and decided to save them. By this time, however, all that could be collected were some bits of arm and leg, part of the pelvis, a few ribs, and the skullcap. Herr Beckershoff thought these might be fragments of a bear, and after keeping them awhile he gave them to the president of the Elberfield Natural Science Society, J. C. Fuhlrott.
Fuhlrott realized that the bones were human. The slanted brow of the skullcap and the thick, bent limbs convinced him that this individual must have lived a long time ago. Possibly he had been washed into the cave while Noah was riding out the storm. In any event somebody important ought to be notified, so Fuhlrott called on Professor Schaaffhausen who taught anatomy at the University of Bonn.
Schaaffhausen carefully appraised and measured Fuhlrott’s treasure: “The cranium is of unusual size, and of a long, elliptical form. A most remarkable peculiarity is at once obvious in the extraordinary development of the frontal sinuses. . . . The cavity holds 16,876 grains of water, whence its cubical contents may be estimated at 57.64 inches, or 1033.24 cubic centimeters.” Or, in dried millet seed, “the contents equalled 31 ounces, Prussian Apothecaries’ weight.” This skull and the attendant bones, Professor Schaaffhausen deduced, probably belonged to one of the “barbarous, aboriginal people” who inhabited northern Europe before the Germans arrived.
Not so, replied other experts. The bones of a forest-dwelling hydrocephalic, said one. A cannibal somehow transported to Europe, said another.
Probably a Dutch sailor, said Professor Andreas Wagner of Göttingen.
An old Celt who perished during a tribal migration, said Dr. Pruner-Bey of Paris.
A Mongolian Cossack killed in 1814 while the Russians were chasing Napoleon across the Rhine, said a colleague of Schaaffhausen’s, Professor Robert Mayer. Unmistakably a Cossack because, if you will be good enough to observe, the femur is bent inward, which is characteristic of a man accustomed to riding horses. No doubt this soldier had been wounded and crawled into the cave to die.
T. H. Huxley, soon to be Darwin’s champion, also thought the skeleton was recent. An odd specimen, granted, but still a member ofHomo sapiens.
Darwin himself would not comment; he seldom did unless he could be absolutely sure.
The great panjandrum of the era was Rudolf Virchow, director of the Berlin Pathological Institute. In his opinion the bones Fuhlrott displayed were not prehistoric but merely diseased.
