Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/288

280 conception out of the language both of the Bible and of other confirmatory traditions without being pressed to accept it with mathematical exactness. The single point which I have made is, that, in view of the great instability of geological conditions which accompanied the close of the glacial period, and during which man was in existence, it is unscientific to apply to that period the standards with reference to the rate of elevation and depression of the earth's surface which apply to the present. I have also called attention anew to the unknown, but certainly extensive, destruction of life during the closing stages of the glacial period, and immediately after, in which man may fairly be assumed to have shared to a great extent.

The alleged object of the flood, namely, the destruction of the human race, may then well have been accomplished by submergence limited to central and western Asia, from which I have brought much new evidence going to show that at a very recent geological period, indeed since man's existence, there have been such changes of land level as render it easier than before to credit the existence of a great fact underneath the widespread traditions concerning a deluge in which the last remnants of the human race, except those saved by special arrangement, were destroyed.

2em

It must be left to readers of the to decide whether or not Professor Wright answers the questions addressed to him by our correspondent. They were as follows:

1. You say. Professor Wright, that "The Paleolithic man of science may well be the Antediluvian man of Genesis." Was Tubal Cain, 'an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron,' an antediluvian man, and, if so, had he not learned to use smoothed stone instruments? Was Noah, himself, a paleolithic or a neolithic man, and did he build the ark with flaked or polished flint implements?

2. You say: "But towards the close of this period there were 120 years (specially mentioned in the Bible as a time of warning) in which the movement was accelerated to such a degree that the rising waters gave point to the preaching of Noah." The period of 120 years here mentioned was deduced from the statement that Noah was 600 years old at the time of the flood. Do you believe that Noah was 600 years old, and that his grandchildren that peopled the earth were subsequently born?

3. You say: "During the last 371 days of this period the catastrophe culminated in the facts specifically related in the Book of Genesis." Do you believe that the 'facts specifically related in the Book of Genesis' are true? For example, that "every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark."