Show GEOLOGY AND MYTH by dr earl douglass As I 1 first gazed from the summit of that great line of 1 high escarpments called the book cliffs over a a part of that 1 long dreamed of promised land I 1 saw not from that height a land flowing with milk and honey but a weird and wild uncultivated waste which seemed a a fit burying I 1 ground for the inhabitants of a former world I 1 was more fortunate than moses in one way for I 1 was permitted to enfer ent er the land of promise it was not the living but the dead that I 1 sought I 1 came alone not leading armies to conquest and the destruction of life but to seek and to save that which had been lost in the unremembered ages I 1 wash was not given tablets of stone with divine commandments written in language that I 1 knew but before me lay a great series of immense rocky tablets and through and over all these were recorded the laws and perhaps the thoughts of that power which operates through all things a history of many ages Z only a portion of which I 1 could read it was the picturesque desolation and the thoughts that it breathed of a solemn antiquity which first im impressed presed me and these grew on me from year to year but I 1 saw more and more that here were all the elements required not only for study but for great enterprises for thriving communities and happy homes where intelligence and independence thrive hand in hand with the up building of the country I 1 saw that for sane economic development as well as for the discovery of buried wonders and the deciphering of th the C history of the past the geologist must be the explorer and pioneer as here the natural resources the immense water power the agricultural resources even the climate de pend on geological conditions and that these conditions condition even thou though gh unconsciously will and must influence the character of the future inhabitants I 1 began a series of articles for the purpose of showing some of the unique features of this truly wonderful intermountain basin it is natural to wish to tell others of the things which impress us and I 1 thought that these articles might inight help in arousing interest and in encouraging development ilent I 1 was vas not however a real estate dealer or a promoter As we came to a casual consideration of the occurrence of petroleum there was so much of interest to be said and there were seen to be such unusual opportunities for the study of all phases of the leading problems of its origin and accumulation that I 1 began a series of articles on oil problems I 1 saw that there were many facts the knowledge b of which if used in a common sense way would lead to the finding of the treasure or the discovery that it did not exist in commercial quantities it is no more to say that the study geology of is the one which is needed for the purpose in hand than to say that mechanics is the main study I 1 necessary for the operator or inventor of machinery I 1 have found that these conditions are not fully appreciated by those whom the articles were intended to help the time will come but it is not yet it seems useless at present to pile up data and indicate which way they seem to point until the facts and then their significance are more fully appreciated I 1 do not intend Y 1 however 16 wever to drop the subject even temporarily until I 1 have briefly summarized the leading facts and indicated why I 1 have been forced to my present convictions which can be changed only by the proper evidence I 1 am not claiming a martyrs crown I 1 wish to show also that there are hundreds who are at work on the frontiers frontier s of science unappreciated appreciated u n perhaps and little noticed who are discovering what would be of immense value to the self styled practical men who are often the most impractical in their failure to apply science to practice this summary I 1 gift defer to a future article probably if I 1 can do anything which will arouse interest and be helpful at present it will be to show some of the b general misconceptions of geology to illustrate the difference between what it is and what it is usually conceived to be I 1 have said in my haste that I 1 believed that the so called geological field has been the dumping ground for more crazy crackbrained crack brained spiderweb spider web theories than any other department of learning As I 1 now sit calmly at my desk and think the matter over deliberately I 1 will say it at my leisure excepting perhaps the department of medicine As geology is a study of the earth it is naturally a cosmopolitan science and occupies such an axtens extensive ave and comparatively little known field that it is the meeting ground for many unfounded fabrications I 1 will pass over the older myths of petrified men of frogs which have quietly reposed in cavities in the solid rocks for millions of years of the scientific restoration of unknown animals from one or a few bones the evolution of t the universe from an extremely attenuated primitive fire re mist which filled all space etc formerly geology the science of the earth was supposed t not ot necessarily 1 religious by many sanctimonious people ligi ous to be the tool in the hands of infidels and atheists ats to discredit the divine commands which the almighty had communicated to those chosen few who were entrusted th essential for man to know all the truths which it was m n this life they insisted that god made the world but in n sol some lie way a very dangerous ebern enemy y had become mixed up with th the manner of its creation for example the poet cowper wrote some drill and bore the solid earth and from the strata there extract a register by which we learn that he who made it and revealed its date to moses was mistaken in its age there were others who could see no objection to the study of the works of the creator as well as the alleged verbal erbal interpretation of the account they thought that t they hey had as much right to interpret in the light of the facts as others had to interpret without the facts I 1 werner terner a german miner 1775 and later taught that geology was a very practical study as applied to in mining ining he thought that he had discovered the key to the secret in his theory of the formation of the earth he had unbounded enthusiasm and a winning and convincing personality his theory was that the different strata of the earth even what are now known to be eruptive basales were precipitated precipitate I successively from the primeval ocean in a few years a small school of mines before unheard of in europe was ts raised to the rank of a great university and men alread already distinguished in in science studied the german language and came from the most distant countries to hear the great oracle of geology the interesting thing to us about the theory is that it worked in that part of bavaria where the famous teacher lived and studied but after the various p pl u pils had returned to their various countries they had much trouble as it did not fit in with the conditions there there were bitter controversies but the theory with its applications fell to the ground because it was founded on wrong principles this furnishes a striking 6 type of many theories which have since failed because they were enunciated before a sufficient number of facts had been taken into consideration 4 since those da days y s there has been a succession of wonderful vony even astounding discoveries which are more startling than the theories which they are replacing geologists have told stories which seem more strange and sensational to us than the myths of all the world and yet myths are as prevalent and misleading perhaps as ever many men are faithfully working on tile the frontiers of knowledge carrying a light a little farther into the unknown but often with little reward except the satisfaction of discovery and often the appreciation is expressed in such e epithets p of scorn as impractical crank who makes a world of little things but often the one who calls the other such pet names is really the impractical person who has not the intelli intelligence cr ence to appreciate what the crank is doing much less to apply the facts which the latter kitter is discovering apparently there was never before so much interest in geological discoveries as at the present time much aluch of this is due to the continuous succession of discoveries of the buried records of the past especial especially lly in the western part of our continent in the southern part of south america in africa and in southeastern asia every little while we hear stories of tile the unearthing une arthin g of some undreamed of monster to say nothing of scores of smaller animals but how have these interests been satisfied many papers and magazines furnish what purport to be the facts concerning b these and other discoveries some of these are after the real data on the subject but far too many seem to consider the real truth too tame and hardly up to date who writes these articles not usually the discoverer but more usually the man whose business it is to furnish sensational information or misinformation for the p people he gets a few facts or something near tile the facts and apparently believing that the people are arc not interested in the real truth he dresses and dolls it up according 21 to some prevailing formula for making it attractive and it is published for the enlightenment of the dear people w who ho wont know the difference if a more pretentious article is is n needed e eded th the C in the geological literature 0 ot f writer looks up the subject from fifteen to forty years ago and incorporates into his story the theories of that time it is not significant to them that these theories though proposed or supported by names which science reverences reveren ces have been superseded by later ones which are credited by more of the newly discovered facts it is not considered that geology y like the mechanical sciences is progressive and that it is almost revolutionized every few years who would hire a man to run an automobile or an airship if he had studied only the literature of fifteen or twenty years ago this is considered by many as a superficial jazzy age as a time without real music art literature or religion we pride ourselves on our material progress on our sciences and inventions and these in the minds of many take the place of all others but if these can help or save us they them must be in the form of true science and true progress 6 the counterfeit will not do it is true that there never was a time when there were so many men who are trying more seriously to extend knowledge into every department of research they are the only hope of our civilization but what can they do for us if we prefer sensationalism to truth no credit is due us unless we appreciate what they are doing 6 our literature sooner or later will be what we wish it to be the papers and magazines are not all of the above type if we are after the real thing we can get it A long time ago when science was little developed and narrower ideas filled our world a man wrote a book with a title something like this A history of the universe from the beginning of creation to the final consummation of all things we naturally smile at the poor fellow who thought he be knew so much but really knew so little but history repeats itself to satisfy the natural interest of the people we see in the present age sensational advertisements of articles and books which purport to give a complete or nearly complete history of the evolution of the earth and its inhabitants in particular and the universe in general we always did want to know how we got here and how there came to be a here to get to and now this smart age has solved the problem it would undoubtedly be disappointing to some to know that every real scientist working in his chosen department realizes all too keenly that he is only in the beginning of his investigations As it has been said of the great newton that he said that lie he had picked up only a few pebbles from the great shore of eternity we have heard for a generation or more about the search for the missing link I 1 wonder if there is not still lurking in the minds of some the idea that by the evolution of life or living things it is meant that there has been one succession of change from the lowest single celled being through protozoa ns sponges worms insects fishes amphibians birds and mammals to man this to one who knows little of biology is as absurd as the medieval ideas of creation if we symbolize the succession of the forms of life by a chain we would have many thousands of chains and instead of finding all but one link of any we have found here and there fragments of disconnected broken links of different chains there were thousands of missing links for every one which has been recovered life is perhaps better represented by an imaginary tree which branches and re branches until there are thousands of them and all different but the use of this illustration to build up hypothetical genealogical trees has been carried to excess as we do not know the genealogy of any plant or animal living or extinct we who have been searching for the ancestry of the present animals find that when we discover something new a horse or a camel or a dinosaur binosa r it is seldom if ever the direct ancestor or descendant of anything else which we know it does ho however weer tell us something of the variety of past life give g ive us something of the conditions of the world at that time and throw sidelights side lights on development and relationship it is true that we have had men of which haeckel is a type who looked with scorn and contempt on the myths and superstitions of men and classed all religious ideas with these darwin and others had shown that life is related and that there had undoubtedly been development haeckel was a laboratory biologist and wrote two fine looking volumes on the evolution of man from the supposedly one celled ancestry through various hypothetical stages and at last through the chimpanzee and pithecanthropus erectus electus the ape man the missing link up to man he also wrote a book claiming to explain the riddle of the universe real progressive science is now consigning these works to thi the realm of myths certain kinds of which he so much scorned myths are far more out of place in science than in religion in a recent popular outline of history the geological portion is principally an aggregation of theories and not history these are but a few thoughts on these subjects but I 1 will stop here but why need we be so particular this is is one reason if one thinks his fund of knowledge is complete P lete and shuts it up in an ironbound iron bound and securely locked chest he will find sometime when he needs the genuine thing that he has only the bogus and counterfeit one real test of knowledge is its practical application this may be discussed later v |