I can’t describe the shock that came over my uncle when he made this extraordinary discovery. Astonishment, disbelief, and excitement all seemed to seize him at once.
I had never seen him look so completely defeated—and then, only moments later, so wildly excited.
After everything we had endured on our voyage, after all the dangers we had survived, I could hardly believe that this discovery had affected him more than any of those terrible experiences.
To understand why, however, I must explain something that had happened in the scientific world shortly before we left the surface of the earth.
On March 28, 1863, workers under the direction of M. Boucher de Perthes were excavating the great quarries of Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, France.
While they were digging, they unexpectedly discovered a human jawbone buried about fourteen feet beneath the ground.
It was the first fossil human jaw ever brought to light.
Near it they found stone axes and pieces of flint that had clearly been shaped by human hands. Time had covered all of them with the same strange greenish coating.
News of the discovery spread rapidly through France, England, and Germany.
Many respected scientists became deeply involved in the controversy. Among them were Milne-Edwards and De Quatrefages, who carefully examined the evidence and declared that the jawbone was genuine.
They became some of the strongest supporters of what was then known in England as the “jawbone question.”
Several distinguished British geologists, including Falconer, Buck, and Carpenter, also accepted the discovery.
In Germany, many scholars followed their lead.
And among the most enthusiastic believers was my own uncle, Professor Hardwigg.
At that time, the existence of human beings during the Quaternary period seemed almost beyond doubt.
There was, however, one important opponent.
His name was M. Elie de Beaumont.
He argued that the soil at Moulin-Quignon did not belong to the extremely ancient deposits of the Quaternary period, but to a much younger geological layer.
Like Cuvier, he refused to accept that human beings had lived at the same time as the great animals of the Quaternary age.
My uncle and most other geologists strongly disagreed with him.
They argued, published papers, debated the evidence, and continued the controversy until Elie de Beaumont was left almost alone in his opinion.
We knew all about this scientific dispute.
What we did not know was that, since our departure from the surface, the entire question had moved much further forward.
Other human jawbones had been discovered in the loose gray sands of caves in France, Switzerland, and Belgium.
They belonged to different kinds of people.
Along with them were found weapons, tools, utensils, children’s bones, and the remains of adults both young and old.
Every new discovery made the existence of human beings in the Quaternary period more difficult to deny.
But even that was not the end of it.
New discoveries had been made in even older Pliocene, or Tertiary, deposits.
These discoveries suggested that human beings might have existed far earlier than anyone had imagined.
The remains were not actually human bones.
They were fossil animal bones that had clearly been worked by human hands.
Some shinbones and thighbones had been hollowed out, shaped, and even carved.
There could be little doubt that someone had deliberately made them into tools.
These astonishing discoveries pushed the history of humanity farther and farther back into the distant past.
They suggested that human beings had lived before the mastodon and might even have existed at the same time as the Elephas meridionalis, the southern elephant.
According to the leading geologists of the time, the Pliocene period dated back more than one hundred thousand years.
That was the state of paleontology when we came upon the enormous cemetery beneath the Hardwigg Ocean.
And now the reason for my uncle’s extraordinary reaction will be clear.
We had walked only about twenty yards when he suddenly found himself standing face-to-face with something that seemed impossible.
It was a human being from the Quaternary period.
It was a human skull.
There was no mistaking it.
I wondered whether the unusual nature of the surrounding soil, perhaps like the soil that had preserved bodies in the cemetery of St. Michel at Bordeaux, had somehow protected it for countless ages.
I had no answer.
The head was there before us.
Its skin had dried into something like parchment.
Its teeth were still intact.
Its hair was still thick.
It looked almost as though the man had died only yesterday.
I stood there in silence, frozen between fear and wonder.
My uncle, normally the most talkative man I knew, was speechless.
For several minutes, emotion completely overcame him.
At last we lifted the body to which the skull belonged and stood it upright.
To our excited eyes, the dead man seemed almost alive.
His empty eye sockets appeared to stare directly at us.
My uncle remained silent for a while longer.
Then science conquered every human feeling he might have had.
His excitement became stronger than his fear.
He seemed to forget where we were, how far beneath the earth we had traveled, and the enormous cavern stretching above us.
For a moment, I think he imagined himself back at the Institution, standing before his students.
He straightened himself, raised one hand like a lecturer, and began speaking in his most serious academic voice.
“Gentlemen, I have the honor of presenting to you a human being from the Quaternary period of our planet.”
“Many learned men have denied that such a man ever existed.”
“Others, whose authority is perhaps even greater, have insisted that he did.”
“If the doubters of paleontology were standing here now, they could touch this man with their own hands and finally be forced to believe.”
“I know very well that science must be cautious when dealing with discoveries of this kind.”
“We have all heard of people like Barnum and other showmen who have made money from supposed scientific discoveries.”
“I know the stories of the alleged bones of Ajax, the supposed discovery of Orestes by the Spartans, and the enormous body of Asterius mentioned by Pausanias.”
“I have studied the supposed giant skeleton discovered at Trapani in the fourteenth century, which some people claimed belonged to Polyphemus.”
“I have also read about the giant said to have been discovered near Palmyra in the sixteenth century.”
“You all know about the famous examination carried out near Lucerne in 1577.”
“Doctor Felix Plater claimed that the enormous bones found there belonged to a giant nearly nineteen feet tall.”
“I have read the works of Cassanion and everything that was written about the skeleton of Teutobochus, king of the Cimbri, who invaded Gaul.”
“That skeleton was supposedly discovered in a gravel pit in Dauphine in 1613.”
“In the eighteenth century, I would have agreed with Peter Campet in denying the existence of the pre-Adamites described by Scheuchzer.”
“I have even studied the work entitled Gigans—“
My uncle suddenly stopped.
He had always had trouble pronouncing certain difficult words when speaking in public.
It was not exactly a stammer.
Rather, he would sometimes become completely stuck on a complicated word.
He tried again.
“The work entitled Gigans—“
Nothing.
He took a breath.
“Giganteo—“
Still nothing.
I could not help thinking how much laughter this would have caused at the Institution.
Finally, with a furious growl, my uncle forced the word out.
“Gigantosteology!“
Having conquered the troublesome word, he became even more excited.
“Yes, gentlemen! I know all these matters very well.”
“I also know that Cuvier and Blumenbach recognized these bones as the undeniable remains of mammoths from the Quaternary period.”
“But after what we are seeing here, to continue doubting would be an insult to scientific investigation.”
“There is the body!”
“You can see it.”
“You can touch it.”
“This is not merely a skeleton.”
“It is a complete human body, remarkably preserved.”
I had no intention of arguing with him.
“If I had only a solution of sulfuric acid,” my uncle continued, “I could remove all these earthy particles and the beautiful shells that have become attached to the body.”
“Unfortunately, we do not have such a substance.”
“Still, this body can speak for itself.”
My uncle lifted the fossilized body and displayed it with such energy that he might have been a professional showman.
“As you can see, gentlemen, the man is only about six feet tall.”
“That is a long way from the giants described in ancient stories.”
“As for his race, there can be no doubt that he belonged to the Caucasian type.”
“He was a member of the white race.”
“In other words, he belonged to the same broad racial group as ourselves.”
“The skull has a remarkably regular oval shape.”
“The cheekbones do not project strongly.”
“The jaw does not jut forward.”
“There is no sign of the pronounced jaw projection known as prognathism.”
“Measure the facial angle yourselves.”
“You will find that it is exactly ninety degrees.”
“But I will go even further.”
“I believe this specimen belonged to the Japhetic family, a group that ancient scholars believed had spread from India across the world as far as western Europe.”
“There is no reason, gentlemen, to smile at what I am saying.”
Of course, nobody smiled.
But my uncle was so accustomed to seeing smiling faces during his lectures that he somehow imagined his audience was laughing at him.
He continued with even greater enthusiasm.
“Yes, gentlemen, this is a fossil human being.”
“He lived at the same time as the mastodons whose bones cover this entire amphitheater.”
“But if you ask me how he came here, or how all these layers of earth fell into this enormous cavity, I cannot give you a definite answer.”
“Perhaps, if we could return to the Quaternary period, we would discover that enormous geological upheavals were taking place.”
“The earth was gradually cooling.”
“That process would have produced cracks, landslides, and enormous chasms through which vast quantities of earth could have fallen.”
“I will not claim that this is absolutely certain.”
“But here we have the man.”
“He is surrounded by the objects he used—his axes and his carved flints, all belonging to the Stone Age.”
“The most reasonable explanation is that he came here just as we did.”
“Perhaps he was a traveler.”
“Perhaps he was a pioneer of science.”
“Perhaps he was exploring the center of the earth long before us.”
“Whatever the explanation, there can be no doubt that he is extremely ancient.”
“He belongs to one of the oldest human races known to science.”
My uncle finally stopped.
I immediately broke into loud applause.
After all, he had a point.
A scientist far more learned than I would have found it difficult to refute the evidence before us.
But we soon discovered something even more astonishing.
This fossilized man was not alone.
As we continued walking across the dusty plain, we found other human bodies among the enormous piles of animal bones.
My uncle was able to select several extraordinary specimens that would have convinced even the most stubborn skeptic.
The sight was almost impossible to comprehend.
Generation after generation of humans and animals appeared to have been thrown together into one gigantic cemetery.
But another question now confronted us.
And this question frightened us more than we wanted to admit.
Had these creatures once lived on the surface of the earth and later been buried here by some enormous natural catastrophe?
Had they died, turned to dust, and eventually been carried deep underground by some terrible upheaval?
Or had they actually lived here?
Had they inhabited this underground world beneath its artificial sky?
Had they been born here, married here, raised children here, grown old here, and finally died here—just as people did on the surface?
Until now, we had seen living marine monsters, strange fish, and other creatures.
But we had never seen a living human being in this hidden world.
Now a disturbing possibility occurred to us.
Perhaps the descendants of these ancient people were still alive.
Perhaps men of the abyss were wandering somewhere along the deserted shores of this extraordinary underground sea.
I could not stop thinking about it.
If such people really existed, what would they think of us?
And how would they receive human beings who had come down from the world above?