The Origins and Character of The Ancient Chinese City Volume 2 The Chinese City in Comparative Perspective Paul Wheatley

The Origins and Character of the
Ancient Chinese City Volume 2 The

Chinese City in Comparative
Perspective Paul Wheatley
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-origins-and-character-of-the-ancient-chinese-city-
volume-2-the-chinese-city-in-comparative-perspective-paul-wheatley/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Reinventing the Chinese City 1st Edition Richard Hu
https://ebookmeta.com/product/reinventing-the-chinese-city-1st-
edition-richard-hu/
Sounds and the City Volume 2 Brett Lashua
https://ebookmeta.com/product/sounds-and-the-city-volume-2-brett-
lashua/
The Urbanization of People The Politics of Development

Labor Markets and Schooling in the Chinese City 1st
Edition Eli Friedman
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-urbanization-of-people-the-
politics-of-development-labor-markets-and-schooling-in-the-
chinese-city-1st-edition-eli-friedman/
Spectacle and the City Chinese Urbanities in Art and

Popular Culture 1st Edition Jeroen De Kloet
https://ebookmeta.com/product/spectacle-and-the-city-chinese-
urbanities-in-art-and-popular-culture-1st-edition-jeroen-de-
kloet/
Terror Capitalism Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity
in a Chinese City Darren Byler
https://ebookmeta.com/product/terror-capitalism-uyghur-
dispossession-and-masculinity-in-a-chinese-city-darren-byler/
Learning Chinese Language and Culture Intermediate

Chinese Textbook Volume 2 Weijia Huang
https://ebookmeta.com/product/learning-chinese-language-and-
culture-intermediate-chinese-textbook-volume-2-weijia-huang/
Careers in Shanghai The Social Guidance of Personal

Energies in a Developing Chinese City 1949 1966 Lynn T.
White
https://ebookmeta.com/product/careers-in-shanghai-the-social-
guidance-of-personal-energies-in-a-developing-chinese-
city-1949-1966-lynn-t-white/
Sun Yat Sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution

Harold Z. Schiffrin
https://ebookmeta.com/product/sun-yat-sen-and-the-origins-of-the-
chinese-revolution-harold-z-schiffrin/
The Book of Chinese Medicine Volume 2 1st Edition Henry

H. Sun
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-book-of-chinese-medicine-
volume-2-1st-edition-henry-h-sun/
ORIGINS AND
THE
CHARACTER
OF THE
ANCIENT
CHINESE CITY
Introduction 3
THE ORIGINS AND

CHARACTER
OF THE
ANCIENT
CHINESE CITY
VOLUME Il
THE CHINESE CITY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
PAUL WHEATLEY
~~ ~~~!~~n~~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1971 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 1971 by Paul Wheatley.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2008018010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wheatley, Paul.
[Pivot of the four quarters]
The origins and character of the Chinese city / Paul Wheatley.
p. cm.
Originally published under title: The pivot of the four quarters: a pre-
liminary enquiry into the origins and character of the ancient Chinese
city. Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co., 1971.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-202-36202-1 (volume 1 : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-202-
36203-8 (volume 2 : alk. paper)
1. Cities and towns--China--History. 2. Cities and towns, Ancient--
China. 3. China--History--221 B.C.-960 A.D. I. Title.
HT147.C48W5 2008
307.760951--dc22
2008018010
ISBN-13: 978-0-202-36203-8 (pbk)

Dedicated to the Memory of
NUMA DENIS
FUSTEL DE COULANGES
VOLUME TWO
THE EARLY CHINESE CITY
IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Contents
Chapter 3. The Nature of the Ceremonial Center
The Earliest Urban Forms 225
Ceremonial Centers in Regions of Primary 226
Urban Generation
Mesopotamia 226
Egypt 229
The Indus valley 230
Mesoamerica 234
The Central Andes 235
Southwestern Nigeria 238
Some Ceremonial Centers in Regions of
Secondary Urban Generation 244
Crete 244
Etruria 244
Japan 245
Southeast Aisa 248
The Centripetalizing Function of the 257
Ceremonial Center
The Genesis of the Ceremonial Center
The Ecological Component 268
The Demographic Component 275
The Technological Component 278
Factors Inducing Social Differentiation 281
Trade and marketing 281
Irrigation 289
Warfare 298
Religion 302
The Morphology of the Ceremonial Center 305
The Secularization of the Ceremonial Center 311
The Ceremonial Center as an Ideal-type 316
Notes and References 331
Chapter 4. The Urban Character of the Ceremonial Complex 371

The Role of Corporate Kin Groups 374
The Significance of Writing 377
The Emergence of Exact and Predictive Sciences 383
Chapter 5. The Ancient Chinese City as a Cosmo-Magical

Symbol
The Cosmo-Magical Basis of the Traditional City 411
The Cosmo-Magical Element in Chinese 419
City Planning
Geomantic Precautions 419
Cardinal Orientation and Axiality 423
The Symbolism of the Center 428
The Parallelism of Macrocosmos and 436
Microcosmos
Conclusion 477
Notes
Glossary of Transcriptions of Foreign Names,
Terms and Bibliographical References
Index
List of Figures
16. A Shang ceremonial complex compared with 241-3

representative cult centers in other regions
of nuclear urbanism
I. Hsiao-T‘un
II. Copán in Honduras
III. Cempoala in Vera Cruz, Mexico
IV. The ceremonial center at Teotihuacán in
the Valley of Mexico
V. Polonnaruva, chief ceremonial city of Ceylon from
the ninth to the fourteenth century AD
VI. Yasodharapura in Cambodia as it was in the
time of Jayavarman VII (AD 118l-c.1220)
VII. Afin QYQ in 1937
17. Settlements traditionally providing services and 263
corvée for the afins of QYQ and QWQ
18. The relative chronology of urban genesis 322-3
19. The course of urban genesis in selected regions 327
of the Old World
20. The course of urban genesis in selected regions 327
of the New World
21. The layout of T‘ang Ch‘ang-an 412
22. A reconstruction of the probable ground plan 413
of Mohenjo-daro
ˆ
23. **Giwang-dieng (Wang-Ch‘eng) as it was 415
ˆ
traditionally ˆsupposed to have been laid out according
to the canonical plan
24. A late-Ch‘ing depiction of the Great Protector 422
selecting the site of the future city of
**Glak-diang (Lo-yang)
ˆ
25. Chin-T‘ang hsien-city as depicted by 424
Hsieh Wei-chieh in Chin-T‘ang Hsien Chih (1810)
26. The City of the Dipper. The constellations of 443
Ursa Major and Ursa Minor superimposed
on the plan of Han Ch‘ang-an
-------
THE EARLY CHINESE CITY

IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
•
3
THE EARLIEST URBAN FORMS
Whenever, in any of the seven regions of primary urban generation (as pro-
posed on p. 9 above), we trace back the characteristic urban form to its
beginnings we arrive not at a settlement that is dominated by commercial
relations, a primordial market, or at one that is focused on a citadel, an arche-
typal fortress, but rather at a ceremonial complex. Of course, the modes of
religious expression are often more stylized and repetitive than are those of,
say, petty commerce or political organization, and are consequently likely to
be more readily discernible in archeological assemblages. It is also true that the
material manifestations of cult and ritual are likely to be cast in a durable form
capable of surviving the vicissitudes of time. Indeed some of the most ancient
are of striking impressiveness even today. Moreover, writing and representa-
tional art, on which we are dependent for a large part of our knowledge of these
centers, but which were both intimately associated with, and were perhaps born
of, ritual, may induce us to exaggerate the role of religious ceremonial. But even
allowing for the biases in interpretation thus induced by the nature of the
evidence, and discounting the number and visual preponderance of religiously
prescribed elements in the morphology of these complexes, the predominantly
religious focus to the schedule of social activities associated with them leaves
no room to doubt that we are dealing primarily with centers of ritual and
ceremonial. Naturally this does not imply that the ceremonial centers did not
exercise secular functions as well, but rather that these were subsumed into an
all-pervading religious context. Beginning as little more than tribal shrines, in
what may be regarded as their classic phases these centers were elaborated into
complexes of public ceremonial structures, usually massive and often extensive,
and including assemblages of such architectural items as pyramids, platform
mounds, temples, palaces, terraces, staircases, courts, and stelae. Operation-
ally they were instruments for the creation of political, social, economic, and
sacred space, at the same time as they were symbols of cosmic, social, and moral
order. Under the religious authority of organized priesthoods and divine
monarchs, they elaborated the redistributive aspects of the economy to a
p 225
THE NATURE OF THE CEREMONIAL CENTER [331
position of institutionalized regional dominance, functioned as nodes in a web
of administered (gift or treaty) trade, served as foci of craft specialization, and
promoted the development of the exact and predictive sciences. Above all, they
embodied the aspirations of brittle, pyramidal societies in which, typically, a
sacerdotal elite, controlling a corps of officials and perhaps a praetorian guard,
ruled over a broad understratum of peasantry.!
CEREMONIAL CENTERS in regions of primary urban generation

Mesopotamia. In the regions of primary urban generation the existence of such
ceremonial centers has long been recognized as a prelude to full urban develop-
ment. The most amply (though still wholly inadequately) documented, as well
as the most thoroughly (though still, by all desirable standards, only meagerly)
investigated, of these regions of nuclear urbanism occupied the plains of Lower
Mesopotamia from the neighborhood of present-day Baghdad roughly to the
confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, some fifty or so miles north of modern
Ba~rah.2 Within this region the earliest cult centers developed in the extreme
south, and are typified by such well-known names as Eridug, Ur, Uruk, Girshu,
and probably Lagash, Ninii, and Umma. From 'Ubaid times, when these
ceremonial foci first appeared in the archeological record, through the Warqa
and early Protoliterate periods such developments were apparently restricted
to a narrow zone of territory, not much more than fifty miles long, lying
between the latitudes of present-day Tell Abii Shal).rain and Fara. In the second
half of the fourth millennium, however, with the emergence, if not the actual
founding, of Shuruppak, Nippur, Kish, and Eshnunnak,3 it is possible to dis-
cern the spread of such cult centers northwards to approximately the latitude
of Baghdad, and even on to the plains of the lower Diyiilii, at the same time as
there seems to have been a decline in the prosperity of the south. Eridug was
virtually abandoned at the end of the 'Ubaid period, and Ninii and La gash in
Early Dynastic I and II. It has been suggested that this shift in the center of
gravity of Sumerian civilization may have been induced by salinization of the
soil under protracted cultivation with only imperfect drainage techniques.4
There is no basis on which to reconstruct a city plan prior to those of the
Early Dynastic period (c. 2900 -c. 2370 BC) in the Diyalii basin, and the com-
plete picture, in so far as archeological research allows, has to be assembled
from fragmentary, and perhaps unrepresentative, evidence. However, the pre-
dilection of archeologists for excavation within ceremonial precincts has pro-
vided us with a sequence of temple evolution reaching back to the earliest
occupation levels at Eridug. The first significant development preserved in the
archeological record was the conversion of the small village or domestic shrine
into a temple, a transformation that took place during the first half of the fourth
millennium BC. At Tell Abii Shal).rain, the ancient Eridug, no less than thirteen
such temples have been discovered in 'Ubaid levels (c. 4000-3500 BC). The
226
332] THE EARLIEST URBAN FORMS
earliest of which a ground plan has been preserved was found in Level xvr.
It consisted of a small, roughly square room, with a single door in the south-
eastern side, and two short screens suggesting a division of the interior. An altar
was placed in a recess in the rear wall, and signs of burning revealed the exist-
ence of an offering-place in the center. By the end of the 'Ubaid period a
tripartite arrangement had been evolved, in which a central cella was flanked on
either side by rows of small rooms.s The architectural form thus established
was sustained, with increasing complexity, for something like a thousand years,
until by the middle of the third millennium it had crystallized into a massive
complex of traditionally arranged cult chambers surrounded by dwellings,
workshops, granaries, and storehouses. During the second half of the fourth
millennium, for example, this building tradition was exemplified in a series of
temple precincts laid out on a magnificent scale, and located not only at Warqa
itself but also at Tell 'Uqair, at Khafajah in the Diyalii, and even as far north
as Tell Brak in the Khabiir valley. One of the most remarkable of these struc-
tures is the complex known today as the Pillar Temple at Warqa (Sumerian
Uruk, Biblical Ere eh, Greek Orchoe ). It is still incompletely excavated so that
its plan is unknown, but its columned portico is impressive enough. Set on a
raised platform entirely decorated with the characteristic Sumerian cone
mosaic, it consists of a hall with a double row of eight free-standing, mosaic
columns, supplemented by a row of engaged columns along one of the side
walls. Some of the columns are as much as 2·62 meters in diameter, and the
portico constitutes the earliest known example of large-scale columnar archi-
tecture. More completely excavated is the White Temple, also at Warqa, and
dated to about 3100 B c. This building, constructed on the 'Ubaid tripartite plan
that was already ancient in Warqa times, is of mud-brick with whitewashed
walls, and its fa9ade and nave are decorated with elaborate buttresses and
recesses. The temple itself measured 22·3 x 17·5 meters, but it was raised on
a platform 70 meters long by 66 wide and some 13 meters high. This platform,
or ziggurat, incorporated the remains of many earlier sanctuaries. Because
the god of the temple was considered to be the landowner in perpetuity of the
ground that had been consecrated to him, his shrine could not easily be
transferred to a new site. Consequently, when the temple had to be renewed,
the old structure was filled solid with brickwork and the new building raised
on the summit of the terrace thus formed. Not infrequently some of the
possessions of the god were also buried inside the abandoned temple. In
later centuries both temples and their supporting ziggurats, the 'mountains'
where the natural potency of the earth and therefore of all life was concentrated,
became still larger and more elaborate, and well into the Early Dynastic period
the temple far exceeded any other building in both size and complexity.6 It is
uncertain when full-time priests first appeared, but they were depicted on seals
and stone carvings from about 3000 BC, and almost certainly existed in earlier
227
times. On the basis of comparative studies, it has been inferred that they were
probably the first persons to be released from the stultifying routine of direct
subsistence labor. Ration lists found in temples 7 would seem to indicate that
in Early Dynastic times, at least, these priests were not concerned exclusively
with spiritual matters but also participated actively in the administration of
earthly affairs- in so far, that is, as these two categories of activities could ever
at this time have been deemed distinct.
From a study ofSumerian mythology as written down in the dynastic period
but preserving the social and political institutions of an earlier age, Thorkild
Jacobsen has argued that, during the closing centuries of the fourth millennium
BC, political authority resided in an assembly of the adult male members of the
community.s Archeological evidence for the concentration of power in the
hands of a secular personage or class does not occur until the beginning of the
third millennium. Then the rise of kingship is attested by the presence of monu-
mental palaces 9 and royal tombs. The term for 'king' also appears in Sumerian
epigraphy at this time. Equally significant is the differentiation of classes that
was taking place, as witnessed both by grave furniture in successively later
cemeteries and by Early Dynastic texts. By 27 50 B c there had developed a social
and economic stratification that, royalty apart, ranged from grand palace
dignitaries controlling estates of no mean order, through minor officials,
artisans, and cultivators to a small but not unimportant slave class.
Contemporaneously defensive walls began to be built around the settle-
ments 1o and, from about 3000 B cat latest, there began to develop a distinctive
morphological pattern within the enceintes. Straight streets wide enough for
wheeled vehicles radiated outwards from a nexus of public buildings, both
sacred and secular. The residences of the wealthier members of the community
were located along these thoroughfares, with those of the poor dispersed on no
apparent plan in the maze of alleys that filled the interstices between the main
avenues. So far nothing corresponding to a market-place or bazaar for private
trade has been discovered, but several of the larger settlements that had
developed in Lower Mesopotamia by about 2500 BC encompassed as many as
250 acres within their walls and one of them, Uruk, occupied all of 1,100 acres
with, according to an informed estimate, a population of the order of 50,000
persons.ll
Naturally these decisive changes in the social structure and settlement
pattern of Lower Mesopotamia stimulated new types of economic demand,
which were in turn reflected in the realm of technology. As late as 3500 B c full-
time craftsmen were very few 12 and their output was consigned almost wholly
to the temples for cult purposes. A millennium later, however, the need for
weapons and other military equipment generated by the chronic raiding and
warfare that accompanied the rise of the city-states, the commissioning of
luxury and status products for both palace and temple display, as well as the
228
private needs of a small middle class, had induced a burgeoning of production.
But it is significant that this was a change in quantity of production rather than
in style or technology.
Egypt. Apart from North China, which has been discussed in detail in Chapter
One, there are two other regions of primary urban generation in the Ancient
World, namely the Nile and Indus valleys. About these it is not possible to be
so specific, in the case of Egypt because the evidence is still (and perhaps for
all time) buried beneath Nile mud, in the case of the Indus because archeo-
logical investigation has barely turned its attention to the problem with which
we are concerned in this study, namely the transformation from folk to urban
society. The meagerness of the evidence at our disposal makes it very difficult
to say anything worthwhile about the social, political and economic conditions
of pre-dynastic Egypt. Prior to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, by
which is meant not the historic units known by those names but the territories
lying between some point north of the First Cataract and some point within
the Delta, the basic unit of settlement, as indeed of government, appears to
have been the village, under the leadership of a chieftain and the protection
of a local incarnation of one of the universal deities.l3 At least some of these
villages were walled, as is apparent both from excavations at Marimdah beni
Salamah and from a survey at Hierakonpolis,14 and this has led several authors
to refer to them as 'towns', though the published records afford no evidence
of urban status, as far as I can see. Rather they seem to indicate a Lung-shan
type of walled village, associated, as far as can be deduced from not wholly
satisfactory evidence, with a Lung-shan type of stratified society (cf. p. 28
above).
So far incipient cult centers have not been recognized among these villages,
but there is no doubt that, with the unification of the Two Lands, monumenta
mortuary complexes and royal ceremonial centers began to feature among the
more dramatic elements in the cultural landscape of the Nile valley, and it is
most unlikely that such ritual instruments had no evolutionary development
behind them. The importance of Memphis, allegedly the first of these sacred
enceintes, is reflected in the text known today as the Memphite Theology, which
deals in large part with the cosmological roles of Memphis and of the Memphite
god Ptah, and with the ceremonies which took place at that city.ls According
to an account which persisted into Greek times, this ceremonial center was
founded, a little to the south of modern Cairo, on land newly reclaimed by
diverting a branch of the Nile, and was called the White Walls, white being the
color of the mother-goddess Nekhbet, protectress of Upper Egypt, whence
came, according to these late sources, Menes, unifier of the kingdom. Although
Memphis was thus established as the supremely sacred cult center of ancient
Egypt (and indeed remained so for some fifteen hundred years), the Pharaohs
229
of the First and Second Dynasties resided in palaces at Thinis and were buried
in neighboring Abydos. This practice set a pattern for the development of royal
ceremonial centers, in which individual Pharaohs each established their earthly
palace enclaves conveniently near the great mortuary complexes which would
be their more permanent residences. During the lifetime of the Pharaoh, work
would continue on the pyramid and its temple, while government would be
conducted from a neighboring ceremonial center but, on the king's death, the
palace precinct would often be abandoned to the priests and officials charged
with the management of the royal cult and the mortuary estate. Hence we find
the royal cult center migrating from Memphis to Herakleopolis, to Thebes, to
Lisht, to Avaris, back to Thebes, and then to Ramses. Each center in its turn
consisted of a palace and one or more temple complexes, together with suites
of structures ancillary to each and, near by, the royal tomb. It has been sug-
gested, moreover, that the mortuary cities built by the Pharaohs may in some
respects have reflected the layouts of the capitals. Professor Fairman writes,
'Just as in life the courtiers could seek houses close to the palace, so in death
they desired their "houses of eternity", their tombs, to be near the resting
place of their lord. This can be seen most clearly at Gizeh where a veritable
city of the dead exists around the pyramids. In the center is the pyramid and
around in neat and orderly rows, in streets and cross streets, are the mastabas
of the nobles, sometimes having the external appearance of houses, and
grouped and graded, moreover, according to the rank of their owners. It
is hard to escape the conclusion that these pyramid cities do reflect to a
certain extent the lay-out of the capital, though possibly the plan is an ideal
one and the reality may not have been quite so orderly.' 16
Available information relates almost wholly to the most splendid of these
centers, those which served as the seat of a divine Pharaoh, so that it is difficult
to say whether or not a hierarchy oflesser cult centers existed in the Nile valley
at this time.
The Indus valley. When we turn our attention to the rise of ceremonial centers
in the Indus valley the difficulty of evaluating the evidence is exacerbated by a
variety of circumstances. Not least among them is the fact that the earlier
excavators ofthe sites ofMohenjo-daro and Harappa were, generally speaking,
concerned with different questions from those for which the present work is
attempting to provide partial answers, so that for nearly forty years we were left
with a description of an allegedly mature urban civilization whose antecedents
were completely unknown. Not until comparatively recently has the work of
Sir Mortimer Wheeler at Harappii, ofDr F. A. Khan at Kot Diji, and ofMessrs
B. B. Lal and B. K. Thapar at Kalibangan made reference to earlier stages in
the development of the Indus civilization. And then, to add to our difficulties,
this decade is witnessing an as yet incomplete re-evaluation of the available
230
evidence, so that it would be a pleasant relief to be able to defer the writing of
these paragraphs for a few years. However, the situation as it appears at the
moment is as follows.
By about the middle of the third millennium B c there had come into being
an urbanized culture best known from its two largest cities, Mohenjo-daro on
the banks of the Indus in Sind, and Harappa beside a former course of the
Ravi, in the Panjab, some 400 miles to the northeast. However, in recent years
it has been discovered that this culture stretched far beyond the Indus valley,
reaching from the foot of the Simla hills to the neighborhood of Karachi, and
from Sutkagen-dor, just behind the Makran coast, through KathiawaQ. to the
estuaries of the Narbada and the Kim on the Gulf ofCambay.t7 The uniformity
of this culture over an extensive area, and its stability over a millennium, have
been subjects of comment since its first discovery. The idea that Mohenjo-daro
and Harappa, both more than three miles in circumference, were densely
populated urban foci with a more or less full range of urban functions has
recently been disputed by Waiter Fairservis, who regards them rather as
ceremonial centers with functions 'similar to the centers of the Old Kingdom
Egyptians and the Mayans'. 18 Fairservis has, in fact, sought to connect these
Indus cult centers with much smaller shrines which have come to light in the
Quetta valley, in Loralai, Zhob, Kalat and Las Bela.t9 In the Quetta valley, for
example, Fairservis has himself traced an evolutionary sequence of settlement
forms which, beginning with villages dependent on sheep and goat pastoralism
combined with limited cultivation, culminated in an elaborate ceremonial
complex replete with monumental buildings, fertility figures, and what he
interprets as ablutional and sacrificial facilities. In his opinion there was in the
third millennium B c a cultural continuum embracing both the Baluch hills
and the Indus plains, the only important difference between these two major
ecological zones being a quantitative one. In both regions the chief settlements
shared features indicative of a ceremonial function. Fairservis summarizes his
position as follows:
'This pre-Harappan evidence in Sind [provided by excavations at Amri 20
and Kot Diji] and our awareness of the increasing cultural complexities in
pre-Harappan Baluchistan, where many prototypes of Harappan traits
occur, suggest that the Harappan civilization is but the latest phase in a long
development. ... It would appear that the Harappan culture is the most
Indianized, but I think that its essential roots are unquestionably Iranian.
We can, in fact, envision two parallel, mutually influential developments
occurring in the Indus valley and in Baluchistan. The Indus valley cultures
became more and more Indianized, and this Indianization diffused to
Baluchistan, both areas achieving greater cultural complexity as a result of
these processes. Certainly the Indus valley with its soil and water resources
must have encouraged and supported denser populations. There too, the
231
native fauna and flora and the still hypothetical surviving forest cultures
aided in the Indianization which is already apparent, for example, in pre-
Harappan Kot Diji. The Harappan civilization as the last phase is the most
complex of the Indianized cultures in the Indus valley.' 21
By no means all specialists in the study of the Indus civilization have accepted
this interpretation of the evidence. Fairservis is probably on firm ground when
he describes some of the structures in settlements of the last major prehistoric
phase in the Quetta valley as ceremonial buildings, and credits them with being
centers for ritual bathing and sacrifice. On top of the mound ofDamb Sadaat
( Mian Ghundai ), for example, was found a large mud-brick platform furnished
with stone drains and providing evidence for the former existence of some sort
of architectural structure on its surface, as well as for a massive wall enclosing
the enceinte.22 Associated with these remains were indications of a mother-
goddess cult since discovered to be widespread in the Loralai and Fort Sande-
man districts and in southern Afghanistan, together with numbers of bull
figurines.23 And Fairservis would seem justified in categorizing the Las Bela
Complex A as 'a ceremonial hierarchy supported by farmers'. But that
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were exclusively ceremonial centers is a point of
view that few other scholars have been prepared to adopt. The prevalent urban
dispositions as revealed in these two great cities, and at the smaller sites of
Kalibangan 24 and Lothal,25 would seem to have taken the dual form of a
monumental architectural complex raised on a natural or artificial mound and
constituting something in the nature of an acropolis, and a lower city laid out
on a fairly rigorously defined grid pattern. At Harappa and Kalibangan,
cemeteries were located in close proximity to the acropolis. The precise
role of this so-called 'acropolis' is not wholly clear. Whereas in a smaller
settlement partially excavated at Chanhu-daro it was apparently lacking
altogether, at Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and particularly at Kalibangan, it
exhibited signs of fortification. The prominence of facilities for ablution that
must almost certainly have been of a ritual nature apparently define ceremonial
roles for at least some of these settlements, at the same time as the presence of
granaries at Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and Lothal, and the construction of a
dock at the last-named site, presumably imply an economic function. Clearly,
ceremonial occupied a prominent place in the life of these cities, but whether it
played such a dominant part that they deserved to be called ceremonial or cult
centers awaits a great deal of further investigation. Possibly the roles of
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa differed in this respect from those of the smaller
settlements as, say, that of Pei-ching has customarily differed from those of
lesser Chinese cities, or the function ofMakka from that of Jidda. Nevertheless,
the main difference between Fairservis's description of the layout of the Late
Kullian Complex A, quoted below, and that of Mohenjo-daro as summarized
in any of the works listed in Note 17 is evidently mainly one of scale.
232
'Initial observation revealed a consistent plan : large structures, on the bluffs
overlooking the river, consisted of ascending stages receding as they rose in
ziggurat fashion, and crowned at the top with platforms supporting brick
buildings. These platforms were reached by ramps or steps. There are two
good examples of drains let into the body or edge of a platform. Surrounding
these high structures, some of which rose over 30 feet above the surrounding
area, are complexes of structures with intervening lanes or streets, stone-
paved floors and drains or cisterns located in these floors, apparently in
small chambers. Beyond these structures groups of rectangular buildings,
some over 70 feet long and compartmented, present a formal appearance,
suggesting hierarchical living quarters or perhaps tombs.' 26
Of course, this gross morphological similarity between the cult centers of
marginal hill peoples of Baluchistan and the civilizational nuclei of the Indus,
even though they may reflect the operation of analogous but quantitatively dis-
parate processes, cannot be held to imply lineal continuity. Speculation about
the origins of the Indus cities is likely to be illusory until archeologists provide
more evidence of pre-Harappan settlements. So far the most instructive of such
materials for present purposes comes from the site of Kot Diji, about twenty-
five miles northeast of Mohenjo-daro, where F.A.Khan has discovered a
fortified village underlying an open Indus settlement. On the information
presently available, this Kot Dijian settlement appears to have been morpho-
logically not too dissimilar from those at Marimdah and Lung-shan.
The dating of the Harappan culture in its entirety, let alone of individual
cities, is far from precise. Until recent years it depended entirely on the evidence
of trade links with Mesopotamia, which implied dates ranging from about 2350
to some time in the 16th century BC. Contact between these two civilizations
was especially strongly attested during the Sargonid period, which is now
securely dated to 2370-2284. Somewhat more than a dozen radio-carbon
analyses, and borings into the Indus floodplain at Mohenjo-daro carried out
by G. F. Dales in 1965, have done little more than confirm the general validity
ofthis time span. In any case it is not necessary that all the regional components
of a civilization as widespread as the Harappan should have been terminated
contemporaneously. Indeed, such evidence as we,have indicates that they were
not. Whereas in the Indus valley proper, particularly at Mohenjo~daro, there
are sporadic and uncertain indications of a dramatic ending to cities already
in economic decline, in Saurashtra a late regional Indus cultural tradition
apparently underwent a slow transformation into sub-Indus and successor
cultures. The evident economic decline at Mohenjo-daro has been variously
attributed to deforestation in the process of providing fuel for the brick kilns,
over-grazing, a rising water-table, soil salination, interruption of trade with
Mesopotamia, and what Sir Mortimer Wheeler has called 'the wearing out of
the landscape'.27 Among the instruments which may have administered the
233
coup de grace, catastrophic flooding and Aryan invaders have been invoked
most frequently. Certainly there is evidence of a massacre in the closing years of
Mohenjo-daro. But it is not necessarily- or even probably- to be extrapolated
to the rest of the Harappan culture realm. It is true that the earlier investigators
of the Indus cities considered Mohenjo-daro and Harappa as contemporary,
sometimes even as twin capitals of a theocratic state, but recently Robert
Raikes has suggested that Mohenjo-daro was in fact replaced by Harappa when
uplift of the northern shores of the Arabian Sea ponded back the waters of the
Indus and induced severe flooding in parts ofSind.28 Some ofFairservis's con-
clusions as to the chronology of the Harappan civilization are not inimical to
such an interpretation.29
Mesoamerica. In the New World ceremonial centers developed in two regions.
The first of these was the culture realm that existed as a distinctive entity from
the emergence of effective food production, in about the middle of the second
millennium ne, until the Spanish conquest in the 16th century AD, and which
Paul Kirchhoffhas aptly denoted by the term Mesoamerica.3o It comprised the
southern two-thirds of mainland Mexico, Guatemala, British Honduras, the
western half of Honduras, El Salvador, the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, and the
northwestern sector of Costa Rica. The second New World nucleus of urban
development comprised various tracts of territory in and adjoining the Central
Andes which were bases for cultures that Wendell Bennett has compositely
characterized as the Peruvian Co-tradition.Jl The area of particular concern in
the present context includes the coast and highland of Peru, together with the
adjoining Titicaca basin in Bolivia.
Let us turn first to the emergence and distribution of ceremonial centers in
Mesoamerica. Here the earliest examples appear to have arisen in upland
valleys, particularly in the basins of Guatemala, Oaxaca, and the Valley of
Mexico. Temple mounds adjacent to sedentary village compounds, and dated
as early as 1000 B c, have been reported from the neighborhood ofKaminaljuyu
in the Guatemalan highlands,32 and by about 300 ne this particular site had
evolved into a major cult center, with huge adobe platform mounds containing
richly furnished burials of priests or chiefs.33 A fragmentary carved-stone altar
bearing hieroglyphic inscriptions affords additional evidence of the ceremonial
nature of this site. At much the same time temple enclaves began to appear in
other parts of Mesoamerica. At Monte Alban in Oaxaca mound architecture
occurred in association with hieroglyphics; 34 at La Venta in lowland Tabasco
several groups of mounds were raised, including one no less than thirty-two
meters in height, all in association with courtyards, stone cist graves covered
by mounds, carved stelae and altars, and carved human heads; 35 in the Valley
of Mexico plastered terraces and stairways36 foreshadowed a slightly later
development of large ceremonial mounds at Cuicuilco in the Pedregal of San
234
Angel,37 at the same time as a platform mound and plaza were laid out at the
site that was subsequently to witness the rise of Teotihuadin.38 Simultaneously
the practice of temple building was extended into the Maya lowlands, as is
testified by the temple E-VIl-sub at Uaxactun39 and a mound of impressive
dimensions at Yaxuna.40
In the succeeding Late pre-Classic and Classic periods( c.300Bc- AD 90041)
ceremonial centers, often of great size, were found in large numbers from
Tamaulipas to Honduras and from Oaxaca to Yucatan. So far more than a
hundred such architectural clusters have been discovered in the Maya terri-
tories alone, including such imposing cult complexes as Tikal, Copan, Uxmal,
Uaxactun, Dzibilchaltun, Calakmul, Piedras Negras, and Palenque.42 Typic-
ally these were distinguished by stone architecture of considerable pretensions
and including large multi-chambered buildings, structures somewhat resemb-
ling cloisters, priestly dwellings and seminaries, storehouses, courts for the
ritual ball game, stairways, and masonry platforms, all set round a plaza,
and dominated by one or more temple-pyramids that may also on occasion
have served as mausolea or cenotaphs. By the late pre-Classic period the
ceremonial center at Kaminaljuyu had come to cover several square kilo-
meters. 43 Even more extensive are the ruins of Teotihuacan (=House of the
Gods) in the Valley of Mexico, a cult center which covered nearly thirty square
kilometers early in the first millennium AD, and whose architectural structures
fully merit the cliched epithets 'massive' and 'monumental'.44 The Pyramid of
the Sun, which may have been built at the end of the pre-Classic, and which in
any case is not younger than the early Classic period, is 689 feet square at the
base, 210 feet high, and contains 1,300,000 cubic yards of earth. Beyond the
watershed, to the southeast, in the Puebla valley, there was raised more or less
contemporaneously the pyramid of Cholula which, with a height of 181 feet
and covering an area of 40 acres, exceeds in magnitude the pyramid built by
Cheops at Gizeh.
Some of the ceremonial complexes which flourished in Mesoamerica during
the Classic phase fell victims to attacks by their neighbors, others failed in
economic competition, a great many faded from the scene for reasons which
cannot be known. Still others acquired a new range of functions which, while
not suppressing their ceremonial role, greatly modified the character of the
city; but not a few persisted - as far as can be deduced at this distance of time-
purely as cult centers, until the Spanish conquest in the first half of the 16th
century destroyed the religious foundations on which they had been raised, and
brought to an end a Mesoamerican tradition of ceremonial architecture that
had endured for more than 2,000 years.
The Central Andes. In Peru, the southernmost sector of Nuclear America,4s
religious ceremonialism can be traced back to about the beginning of the first
235
millennium B c, when some of the earliest farmers in the vicinity of Aspero, in
Supe, erected a rude structure of natural stones for purposes of worship. An
equally crude contemporary temple has also been discovered in the Viru
valley.46 By the beginning of the latter half of the same millennium impressive
ceremonial centers had made their appearance, among them the one at Chavin
de Hmintar, on a tributary of the Marai'ion river. This complex of raised plat-
forms, a sunken court, terraces, mounds, plazas, and stone buildings honey-
combed with galleries and chambers interconnected by stairways and ramps,
the whole oriented to the cardinal points of the compass, occupies a space of
more than 640,000 square feet. A triple-terraced pyramid crowning a hill crest
at Kuntur Wasi, on the upper reaches of the Jequetepeque river, seems to have
formed part of a similar complex; other examples are known from the Viru,
Nepei'ia and Casma valleys; and possibly Pucara in the northern part of the
Titicaca basin should be placed in a similar category. This last site has not been
excavated, so that only three of the larger buildings, believed to be temples,
have so far been distinguished. 47 John Rowe has drawn attention to what seems
to have been an abrupt compaction, at a somewhat later date, of the population
of the lea valley into large settlements 48 which were certainly urban by his
definition but may not have been by ours.49 The most prominent of these
settlements in the archeological record to date are those at Tajahuana, in the
middle section of the valley, and at Media Luna, in the oasis of Callango far
below. Presently existing mounds in both complexes are believed to have been
the foundations of former temples. Ceremonial centers such as these, occurring
over a wide area in the northern highlands and along the northern and central
coastal tracts, exhibit considerable variety of detail, but all appear to have
shared the common function of serving as administrative centers for surround-
ing tracts of territory.
Succeeding centuries witnessed the spread of functionally analogous com-
plexes into southern Peru. Cahuachi, in the ravine of Nazca, for example,
comprises shrines, plazas, cemeteries, and habitation sites which extend along
the valley side for more than a kilometer,so and Tambo Viejo, in the Acari
valley, is equally large and, additionally, enclosed within walls of fieldstone
and adobe. A site at Marango, between Lima and Callao, is distinguished by
a cluster of impressive temple mounds, and Howe has written of contemporary
large settlement sites in the vicinity of Ayacucho. 51 In the second half of the first
millennium AD and in the first half of the second a whole series of massive
complexes came into being, including Old I ea in the Pago de Tacaraca (where
there is a large cluster of adobe temple mounds, but little habitation refuse),
Patan-qotu and Qotu-qotu in central Peru,s2 Pachacamac on the central coast,
Cajamarquilla in the Rimae valley, and, most impressive of all, Tiahuanaco,
situated at an elevation of 13,000 feet on a treeless puna, some thirteen miles
southeast of Lake Titicaca. Here are masonry structures occupying about a
236
sixth of a square mile and including a stone-faced pyramid, stairways and
enclosures, and a carved monolithic gateway. Little archeological investigation
has been undertaken at this site, and no credible traditions serve to illuminate
its sacred function, but there can be no doubt that, in this bleak environment,
it cannot have been other than a ceremonial focus, probably visited by pilgrims
from the lower valleys at certain seasons of the year. Building had taken place
on the site of Tiahuanaco during much earlier periods but, in the absence of
controlled excavation, it is virtually impossible to assign all the elements in the
complex to their precise horizons.
The century and a half after about AD 1300 is known to some archeologists
as the Urbanist or City Builder phase of Peruvian history, 53 which is an adequate
epitomization of one form of social grouping characteristic of the period, the
series of urban complexes along the length of the coastal lowland, which was
at this time divided among three competing states. Most of the documentation
for this period relates to these coastal tracts, and particularly to those of the
Chimu, whose kingdom extended from the Lambayeque and Piura valleys
in the north to the Casma valley in the south. It is apparent that the overall
design of urban forms, manifested in a gen.eral rectangularity and a combina-
tion of pyramids, stairways, terraces and courts, was similar throughout all
three territories. Virtually every valley leading from the highlands down to the
coast had its city, but the grandest of those in the northern region was Chanchan,
on the outskirts of the present-day city ofTrujillo.S4 Alden Mason's description
of the ruins of the city reads in part as follows:
'Chanchan is a stupendous site- and sight. The ruins cover over eight square
miles, filled- the major part at least- with great tall boundary walls, smaller
house walls, streets, reservoirs, pyramids, and other edifices and features
expected of a great metropolitan center. All are built of large rectangular
adobe bricks. The occasional torrential rains have eroded the tops of the
great walls and covered their bases, but they still tower to a height of some
thirty feet (9 m.) ...
The city was apparently composed often large units, generally rectangular,
each, probably, the locale or ward of a clan or some other social group, and
the domain of a sub-chief. Each unit is surrounded by one or more great high
walls, within which is a gridiron of streets with many small houses, large
pyramids - probably for temples - reservoirs, gardens, and cemeteries. In
between the wards there were apparently irrigated and cultivated areas,
marshes, cemeteries, and some isolated small structures. Some of the units
are said to be as large as 1,100 by 1,600 ft (355 by 480 m.), or about forty
acres.' 55
In the central sector of the coast, Pachacamac and Cajamarquilla continued
as massive ceremonial centers, but in the more restricted valleys of the south
coast, settlements tended to be smaller. Despite the general resemblance of
237
their layouts to those of the northern and central complexes, it is probable that
none attained urban status in the manner in which it is defined in Chapter Four.
Meanwhile, from the beginning of the 13th century or thereabouts, there
was consolidating in the highlands around Cuzco the militaristically inclined
dynasty of the Inca. For many years Cuzco was a relatively small, and presum-
ably compact, settlement, but it was rebuilt in the form of a ceremonial center
by Pachakuti, the architect oflnca expansion who ruled probably from AD 1438
to about 1471 . At the center were a group of palaces, temples, and government
buildings, separated by open country from a circle of residential villages, a lay-
out which became the pattern for the provincial administrative centers estab-
lished by the Incas as they extended the boundaries of their empire throughout
the Central Andean realm. Dorothy Menzel has distinguished this separation
of commoners' dwellings from the religious and administrative enclave, for
example, in the Inca foundation in Acarf.S6 The exceptions to this mode of
planning may, according to Rowe,s7 have occurred in some of the provincial
capitals of the north, such as Pumpun, Wanuku (Hminuco Viejo ), and Tumi-
pampa. In the fourth decade of the 16th century the Inca empire disintegrated
before the onslaught of a handful of Spaniards, and the foundations were laid
for a new pattern of settlements compounded of both indigenous and foreign
elements.
Southwestern Nigeria. Finally there remain to be considered the ceremonial
centers which developed in theY oruba territories of Nigeria, possibly towards
the end of the first millennium AD- though the evidence for this dating is far
from satisfactory. The information available about these centers is derived
from the accounts of European travellers from the 16th century onwards, from
Y oruba traditions which have clearly undergone an archetyping process, and
especially from observation of the examples extant today. This means that,
although it is virtually impossible to say anything significant about the origins
of these cult centers in antiquity, they are the only ones among those discussed
in these pages which have survived into the 20th century and whose functioning,
though greatly modified, can therefore be observed at first hand.S&
At the heart of each of the major settlements ofYorubaland was an ajin, the
palace precinct of an rba, supreme ruler of one of the kingdoms which made up
the Yoruba culture realm. The Qba was, in the words of Afolabi Ojo, 'the visible
symbol of the deity among the Yorubas ... the High Priest of his kingdom' ,59
and the afin was his seat, from which he brought power and prosperity to his
territories. Sharing the afin with the Qba were important national deities. The
combined sacredness of the Qba's person, the shrines dedicated to these deities,
and a variety of other sacred places raised the sanctity of the afin far above that
of any other shrine in the kingdom. It was, as Ojo says, a temple of temples.
Whenever possible the afin was erected on rising ground, whence it could over-
238
THE EARLIEST URBAN FORMS
look the compounds of the surrounding settlement. It appears that in the past
there was only one pattern of afin, but accidents of history, interacting with
regional custom, have generated a diversification ofform which to some extent
expresses differences in functions. In recent times there existed a triple-ranked
hierarchy of afins which reflected a parallel hierarchy of Qbas, in which author-
ity descended from four who were traditionally pre-eminent through those of
the second rank to a class of uncrowned Qbas, more properly termed bales. It
followed that the status of any particular afin depended on the traditional
ranking of its ruling Qba, rather than on the intrinsic character of the settlement
with which it was associated. In fact, in earlier times the official residence of a
bale did not qualify as an afin, and was known simply as ili pl(Jja or 'the house
of the lord ofthe market'- even though Ibadan, now the largest indigenous city
in tropical Mrica, was such a settlement.
In ancient times it seems that there was only a single Qba, the Oduduwa
QlQfin of If~t, and consequently only a single afin, but subsequently three other
supreme Qbas established claims over roughly the northern, western and
southern sectors of the Y oruba cultur.e realm, namely the Alafin of QyQ, the
Alake of Ab~tokuta, and the A wujal~t of Ij~tbu-Ode. Each of these in turn
delegated authority to Qbas of the second class, a majority of whom claimed
historical- though probably in fact fictional-links with If~t. The rest traced
their origin to other powerful kingdoms such as QyQ and Ij~tbu-Ode, and even
to Benin, a neighboring (but not a Yoruba) state. Previously, too, there was
only one afin in a settlement, and even today there is still only a single afin in
the whole of the QyQ major kingdom, and in the If~t major kingdom only one
to each city. In the Ij~tbu and :egba kingdoms, however, there are pluralities of
afins even within individual settlements. In all but one city oflj~tbu, for example,
where the office of Qba circulates among several grand lineages, there are as
many afins as there are ruling houses, although the official palace at any
particular time is that occupied by the currently ruling Qba. The exception to
this rule is Sagamu, where four crowned Qbas rule simultaneously over separate
quarters of the city, a situation which arose in the second half of the last century
as a result of a process of synoecism involving thirteen separate settlements.
The co-existence of sectional Qbas is also characteristic of the :egba major
kingdom, where existing afins are mostly of fairly recent date. The synoecism
of 153 settlements to form the township of Ab~tokuta in 1830 resulted in the
establishment of five Qbaships and five afins, one in each of the more important
quarters of the city. In Ilaro and Otta, by contrast, where formerly single Qbas
each acceded to single afins, in recent times an inability to maintain the trad-
itional afins has led each succeeding Qba to designate his family residence as the
official afin. In these circumstances it is not surprising that afins vary widely in
size, ranging from QwQ with a precinct of 108·5 acres down to Itaji, I~an, Ikere,
Is~t, and Emur~t with less than three acres each. In the past the important afins
239
THE NATURE OF THE CEREMONIAL CENTER
seem often to have been on a grand scale. It was reported in 1829, for instance,
that the afin of Old QyQ occupied a square mile of land.
The afin was the seat of the Qba, whence he issued forth only on rare cere-
monial occasions, and even then his face was shielded from the gaze of the
people by the fringes of a beaded crown. With him in the afin lived his, often
numerous, wives, and some of his other relatives. In fact, the large size of
some of the afins was the direct result of the size of the harem. Outside the
ruling Qba's lineage, the inhabitants of the afin were restricted to eunuch
servants and attendants, the most talented artists and craftsmen in the king-
dom who were summoned from their homes to produce objects and materials
for the personal use of the Qba, and people afflicted with natural deformities,
who had the right to attach themselves to the afin. Uncastrated servants, and
some craftsmen producing for the palace though not for the personal use of the
Qba, generally returned to homes outside the afin at night. Among these were
the drummers, trumpeters and flautists whose business it was to notify the Qba
by means of signal-tunes of the sequence of his ritual activities. The drummers
also had the responsibility of keeping the Qba informed of events beyond the
walls of the afin. There was, too, another group who helped to bridge the gulf
between the closed community of the afin and the world at large. This consisted
of a clientele of visitors, dependents, and hangers-on who made their home in
the afin, and whose presence was often regarded as an indication of the popular-
ity of the Qba. However, the location of their apartments, usually on the side
nearest to the main gate, signified quite clearly that these clients were function-
ally in, but not of, the afin. Apart from matters of accommodation and susten-
ance, their interests were directed outwards to the secular settlement rather than
inwards to the sacred, ceremonial enclave.
240
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
In the Keuper beds of southern Sweden there are found workable
seams of coal, and the beds of this district have yielded numerous
well-preserved examples of the Triassic flora. A more impure coal
occurs in the lower Keuper of Thuringia and S.-W. Germany, and to
this group of rocks the term Lettenkohle is occasionally applied.
In the Rhaetic Alps of Lombardy, in the Tyrol, and in England, from
Yorkshire to Lyme Regis, Devonshire, Somersetshire, and other
districts there are certain strata at the top of the Triassic system
known as the Rhaetic or Penarth beds. The uppermost Rhaetic
beds, often described as the White Lias, afford evidence of a change
from the salt lakes of the Trias to the open sea of the succeeding
Jurassic period. Passing beyond this period of salt lakes and wind-
swept barren tracts of land, we enter on another phase of the earth’s
history.
IX. Jurassic.
The Jura mountains of western Switzerland consist in great part of
folded and contorted rocks which were originally deposited on the
floor of a Jurassic sea. In England the Jurassic rocks are of special
interest, both for geological and historical reasons, as it is in them
that we find a rich fauna and flora of Mesozoic age, and it was the
classification of these beds by means of their fossil contents that
gained for William Smith the title of the Father of English Geology. A
glance at a geological map of England shows a band of Jurassic
rocks stretching across from the Yorkshire coast to Dorset. These
are in a large measure calcareous, argillaceous, and arenaceous
sediments of an open sea; but towards the upper limit of the series,
both freshwater and terrestrial beds are met with. Numerous
fragments of old coral reefs, sea-urchins, crinoids, and other marine
fossils are especially abundant; in the freshwater beds and old
surface-soils, as well as in the marine sandstones and shales, we
have remnants of an exceedingly rich and apparently tropical
vegetation. This was an age of Reptiles as well as an age of Cycads.
An interesting feature of these widely distributed Jurassic strata is
the evidence they afford of distinct climatal zones; there are clear
indications, according to the late Dr Neumayr, of a Mediterranean, a
middle European, and a Boreal or Russian province[61]. The
subdivisions of the English Jurassic rocks are as follows[62]:—
Purbeck beds
Portland beds Upper
Kimeridge clay
Corallian beds Oolite.
Jurassic Middle
Oxford clay, with Kellaways rock
Great Oolite series
Lower
Inferior Oolite series
Lias
In tracing the several groups across England, and into other parts
of Europe, their characters are naturally found to vary considerably;
in one area a series is made up of typical clear water or
comparatively deep sea sediments, and in another we have shallow
water and shore deposits of the same age. The Lias rocks have
been further subdivided into zones by means of the species of
Ammonites which form so characteristic a feature of the Jurassic
fauna. In the lower Oolite strata there are shelly limestones, clays,
sandstones, and beds of lignite and ironstone. Without discussing
the other subdivisions of the Jurassic period, we may note that in the
uppermost members there are preserved patches of old surface-
soils exposed in the face of the cliffs of the Dorset coast and of the
Isle of Portland.
X. Cretaceous.
In the south of England, and in some other districts, it is difficult to
draw any definite line between the uppermost strata of the Jurassic
and the lowest of the Cretaceous period. The rocks of the so-called
Wealden series of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and the Isle of Wight, are
usually classed as Lower Cretaceous, but there is strong evidence in
favour of regarding them as sediments of the Jurassic period. The
Cretaceous rocks of England are generally speaking parallel to the
Jurassic strata, and occupy a stretch of country from the east of
Yorkshire and the Norfolk coast to Dorset in the south-west. The
Chalk downs and cliffs represent the most familiar type of
Cretaceous strata. In the white chalk with its numerous flints, we
have part of the elevated floor of a comparatively deep sea, which
extended in Cretaceous times over a large portion of the east and
south-east of England and other portions of the European continent.
On the bed of this sea, beyond the reach of any river-borne detritus,
there accumulated through long ages the calcareous and siliceous
remains of marine animals, to be afterwards converted into chalk
and flints. At the beginning of the period, however, other conditions
obtained, and there extended over the south-east of England, and
parts of north and north-west Germany and Belgium, a lake or
estuary in which were built up deposits of clay, sand and other
material, forming the delta of one or more large rivers. For these
sediments the name Wealden was suggested in 1828. Eventually
the gradual subsidence of this area led to an incursion of the sea,
and the delta became overflowed by the waters of a large
Cretaceous sea. At first the sea was shallow, and in it were laid
down coarse sands and other sediments known as the Lower
Greensand rocks. By degrees, as the subsidence continued, the
shallows became deep water, and calcareous material slowly
accumulated, to be at last upraised as beds of white chalk. The
distribution of fossils in the Cretaceous rocks of north and south
Europe distinctly points to the existence of two fairly well-marked
sets of organisms in the two regions; no doubt the expression of
climatal zones similar to those recognised in Jurassic times. In North
America, Cretaceous rocks are spread over a wide area, also in
North Africa, India, South Africa, and other parts of the world. Within
the Arctic Circle strata of this age have become famous, chiefly on
account of the rich flora described from them by the Swiss
palaeobotanist Heer. The fauna and flora of this epoch are alike in
their advanced state of development and in the great variety of
specific types; the highest class of plants is first met with at the base
of the Cretaceous system.
XI. Tertiary.
“At the close of the Chalk age a change took place both in the
distribution of land and water, and also in the development of organic
life, so great and universal, that it has scarcely been equalled at any
other period of the earth’s geological history[63].” The Tertiary period
seems to bring us suddenly to the threshold of our own times. In
England at least, the deposits of this age are of the nature of loose
sands, clays and other materials containing shells, bones, and fossil
plants bearing a close resemblance to organisms of the present era.
The chalk rocks, upheaved from the Cretaceous sea, stood out as
dry land over a large part of Britain; much of their material was in
time removed by the action of denuding agents, and the rest
gradually sank again beneath the waters of Tertiary lakes and
estuaries. In the south of England, and in north Europe generally, the
Tertiary rocks have suffered but little disturbance or folding, but in
southern Europe and other parts of the world, the Tertiary sands
have been compacted and hardened into sandstones, and involved
in the gigantic crust-movements which gave birth to many of our
highest mountain chains. The Alps, Carpathians, Apennines,
Himalayas, and other ranges consist to a large extent of piled up and
strangely folded layers of old Tertiary sediments. The volcanic
activity of this age was responsible for the basaltic lavas of the
Giants’ Causeway, the Isle of Staffa, and other parts of western
Scotland.
During the succeeding phases of this period, the distribution of
land and sea was continually changing, climatic conditions varied
within wide limits; and in short wherever Tertiary fossiliferous beds
occur, we find distinct evidence of an age characterised by striking
activity both as regards the action of dynamical as well as of organic
forces. Sir Charles Lyell proposed a subdivision of the strata of this
period into Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, founding his
classification on the percentage of recent species of molluscs
contained in the various sets of rocks. His divisions have been
generally adopted. In 1854 Prof. Beyrich proposed to include another
subdivision in the Tertiary system, and to this he gave the name
Oligocene.
Occupying a basin-shaped area around London and Paris there
are beds of Eocene sands and clays which were originally deposited
as continuous sheets of sediment in water at first salt, afterwards
brackish and to a certain extent fresh. In the Hampshire cliffs and in
some parts of the Isle of Wight, we have other patches of these
oldest Tertiary sediments. Across the south of Europe, North Africa,
Arabia, Persia, the Himalayas, to Java and the Philippine islands,
there existed in early Tertiary times a wide sea connecting the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans; and it may be that in the Mediterranean
of to-day we have a remnant of this large Eocene ocean. Later in the
Tertiary period a similar series of beds was deposited which we now
refer to as the Oligocene strata; such occurs in the cliffs of Headon
hill in the Isle of Wight, containing bones of crocodiles, and turtles,
with the relics of a rich flora preserved in the delta deposits of an
Oligocene river. At a still later stage the British area was probably dry
land, and an open sea existed over the Mediterranean region. In the
neighbourhood of Vienna we have beds of this age represented by a
succession of sediments, at first marine and afterwards freshwater.
Miocene beds occur over a considerable area in Switzerland and the
Arctic regions, and they have yielded a rich harvest to
palaeobotanical investigators.
On the coast of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, the south of Cornwall, and
other districts there occur beds of shelly sand and gravel long known
under the name of ‘Crag.’ The beds have a very modern aspect; the
sands have not been converted into sandstones, and the shells have
undergone but little change. These materials were for the most part
accumulated on the bed of a shallow sea which swept over a portion
of East Anglia in Pliocene times. In the sediments of this age
northern forms of shells and other organisms make their
appearance, and in the Cromer forest-bed there occur portions of
drifted trees with sands, clays and gravels, representing in all
probability the débris thrown down on the banks of an ancient river.
At this time the greater part of the North Sea was probably a low-
lying forest-covered region, through which flowed the waters of a
large river, of which part still exists in the modern Rhine. The
lowering of temperature which became distinctly pronounced in the
Pliocene age, continued until the greater part of Britain and north
Europe experienced a glacial period, and such conditions obtained
as we find to-day in ice-covered Greenland. Finally the ice-sheet
melted, the local glaciers of North Wales, the English Lake district
and other hilly regions, retreated, and after repeated alterations in
level, the land of Great Britain assumed its modern form. The
submerged forests and peat beds familiar in many parts of the coast,
the diatomaceous deposits of dried up lakes, “remain as the very
finger touches of the last geological change.”
GEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION.
The agents of change and geological evolution, which we have

passed in brief review, are still constantly at work carrying one step
further the history of the earth. A superficial review of geological
history gives us an impression of recurring and widespread
convulsions, and rapidly effected revolutions in organic life and
geographical conditions; on the other hand a closer comparison of
the past and present, with due allowance for the enormous period of
time represented by the records of the rocks, helps us to realise the
continuity of geological evolution. “So that within the whole of the
immense period indicated by the fossiliferous stratified rocks, there is
assuredly not the slightest proof of any break in the uniformity of
Nature’s operations, no indication that events have followed other
than a clear and orderly sequence[64].”
CHAPTER IV.
THE PRESERVATION OF PLANTS AS FOSSILS.
“The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,

But wonder how the devil they got there.”
Pope, Prologue to the Satires.
The discovery of a fossil, whether as an impression on the surface

of a slab of rock or as a piece of petrified wood, naturally leads us
back to the living plant, and invites speculation as to the
circumstances which led to the preservation of the plant fragment.
There is a certain fascination in endeavouring, with more or less
success, to picture the exact conditions which obtained when the
leaf or stem was carried along by running water and finally sealed up
in a sedimentary matrix. Attempts to answer the question—How
came the plant remains to be preserved as fossils?—are not merely
of abstract interest appealing to the imagination, but are of
considerable importance in the correct interpretation of the facts
which are to be gleaned from the records of plant-bearing strata.
Before describing any specific examples of the commoner
methods of fossilisation; we shall do well to briefly consider how
plants are now supplying material for the fossils of a future age. In
the great majority of cases, an appreciation of the conditions of
sedimentation, and of the varied circumstances attending the
transport and accumulation of vegetable débris, supplies the solution
of a problem akin to that of the fly in amber and the manner in which
it came there.
OLD SURFACE-SOILS.
Seeing that the greater part of the sedimentary strata have been
formed in the sea, and as the sea rather than the land has been for
the most part the scene of rock-building in the past, it is not
surprising that fossil plants are far less numerous than fossil animals.
With the exception of the algae and a few representatives of other
classes of plants, which live in the shallow-water belt round the
coast, or in inland lakes and seas, plants are confined to land-
surfaces; and unless their remains are swept along by streams and
embedded in sediments which are accumulating on the sea floor, the
chance of their preservation is but small. The strata richest in fossil
plants are often those which have been laid down on the floor of an
inland lake or spread out as river-borne sediment under the waters
of an estuary. Unlike the hard endo- and exo-skeletons of animals,
the majority of plants are composed of comparatively soft material,
and are less likely to be preserved or to retain their original form
when exposed to the wear and tear which must often accompany the
process of fossilisation.
The Coal-Measure rocks have furnished numberless relics of a
Palaeozoic vegetation, and these occur in various forms of
preservation in rocks laid down in shallow water on the edge of a
forest-covered land. The underclays or unstratified argillaceous beds
which nearly always underlie each seam of coal have often been
described as old surface-soils, containing numerous remains of roots
and creeping underground stems of forest trees. The overlying coal
has been regarded as a mass of the carbonised and compressed
débris of luxuriant forests which grew on the actual spot now
occupied by the beds of coal. There are, however, many arguments
in favour of regarding the coal seams as beds of altered vegetable
material which was spread out on the floor of a lagoon or lake, while
the underclay was an old soil covered by shallow water or possibly a
swampy surface tenanted by marsh-loving plants[65].
The Jurassic beds of the Yorkshire Coast, long famous as some of
the richest plant-bearing strata in Britain, and the Wealden rocks of
the south coast afford examples of Mesozoic sediments which were
laid down on the floor of an estuary or large lake. Circumstances
have occasionally rendered possible the preservation of old land-
surfaces with the stumps of trees still in their position of growth. One
of the best examples of this in Britain are the so-called dirt-beds or
black bands of Portland and the Dorset Coast. On the cliffs
immediately east of Lulworth Cove, the surface of a ledge of Purbeck
limestone which juts out near the top of the cliffs, is seen to have the
form here and there of rounded projecting bosses or ‘Burrs’ several
feet in diameter. In the centre of each boss there is either an empty
depression, or the remnants of a silicified stem of a coniferous tree.
Blocks of limestone 3 to 5 feet long and of about equal thickness
may be found lying on the rocky ledge presenting the appearance of
massive sarcophagi in which the central trough still contains the
silicified remains of an entombed tree. The calcareous sediment no
doubt oozed up to envelope the thick stem as it sank into the soft
mud. An examination of the rock just below the bed bearing these
curious circular elevations reveals the existence of a comparatively
narrow band of softer material, which has been worn away by
denuding agents more rapidly than the overlying limestone. This
band consists of partially rounded or subangular stones associated
with carbonaceous material, and probably marks the site of an old
surface-soil. This old soil is well shown in the cliffs and quarries of
Portland, and similar dirt-beds occur at various horizons in the Lower
and Middle Purbeck Series[66]. In this case, then, we have
intercalated in a series of limestone beds containing marine and
freshwater shells two or three plant beds containing numerous and
frequently large specimens of cycadean and coniferous stems, lying
horizontally or standing in their original position of growth. These are
vestiges of an ancient forest which spread over a considerable
extent of country towards the close of the Jurassic period. The trunks
of cycads, long familiar in the Isle of Portland as fossil crows’ nests,
have usually the form of round depressed stems with the central
portion somewhat hollowed out. It was supposed by the quarrymen
that they were petrified birds’ nests which had been built in the forks
of the trees which grew in the Portland forest. The beds separating
the surface-soils of the Purbeck Series, as seen in the sections
exposed on the cliffs or quarries, point to the subsidence of a forest-
covered area over which beds of water-borne sediment were
gradually deposited, until in time the area became dry land and was
again taken possession of by a subtropical vegetation, to be once
more depressed and sealed up under layers of sediment[67].
A still more striking example of the preservation of forest trees
rooted in an old surface-soil is afforded by the so-called fossil-grove
in Victoria Park, Glasgow, (Frontispiece). The stumps of several
trees, varying in diameter from about one to three feet, are fixed by
long forking ‘roots’ in a bed of shale. In some cases the spreading
‘roots,’ which bear the surface features of Stigmaria, extend for a
distance of more than ten feet from the base of the trunk. The stem
surface is marked by irregular wrinklings which suggest a fissured
bark; but the superficial characters are very imperfectly preserved. In
one place a flattened Lepidodendron stem, about 30 feet long, lies
prone on the shale. Each of the rooted stumps is oval or elliptical in
section, and the long axes of the several stems are approximately
parallel, pointing to some cause operating in a definite direction
which gave to the stems their present form. Near one of the trees,
and at a somewhat higher level than its base, the surface of the rock
is clearly ripple-marked, and takes us back to the time when the
sinking forest trees were washed by waves which left an impress in
the soft mud laid down over the submerged area. The stumps
appear to be those of Lepidodendron trees, rooted in Lower
Carboniferous rocks. From their manner of occurrence it would seem
that we have in them a corner of a Palaeozoic forest in which
Lepidodendra played a conspicuous part. The shales and
sandstones containing the fossil trees were originally overlain by a
bed of igneous rock which had been forced up as a sheet of lava into
the hardened sands and clays[68].
Other examples of old surface-soils occur in different parts of the
world and in rocks of various ages. As an instance of a land surface
preserved in a different manner, reference may be made to the thin
bands of reddish or brown material as well as clays and shale which
occasionally occur between the sheets of Tertiary lava in the
Western Isles of Scotland and the north-east of Ireland. In the
intervals between successive outpourings of basaltic lava in the
north-west of Europe during the early part of the Tertiary period, the
heated rocks became gradually cooler, and under the influence of
weathering agents a surface-soil was produced fit for the growth of
plants. In some places, too, shallow lakes were formed, and leaves,
fruits and twigs became embedded in lacustrine sediments, to be
afterwards sealed up by later streams of lava. In the face of the cliff
at Ardtun Head on the coast of Mull a leaf-bed is exposed between
two masses of gravel underlying a basaltic lava flow; the impressions
of the leaves of Gingko and other plants from the Tertiary sediments
of this district are exceptionally beautiful and well preserved[69]. A
large collection obtained by Mr Starkie Gardner may be seen in the
British Museum.
In 1883 the Malayan island of Krakatoa, 20 miles from Sumatra
and Java, was the scene of an exceptionally violent volcanic
explosion. Two-thirds of the island were blown away, and the
remnant was left absolutely bare of organic life. In 1886 it was found
that several plants had already established themselves on the
hardened and weathered crust of the Krakatoan rocks, the surface of
the lavas having been to a large extent prepared for the growth of
the higher plants by the action of certain blue-green algae which
represent some of the lowest types of plant life[70]. We may perhaps
assume a somewhat similar state of things to have existed in the
volcanic area in north-west Europe, where the intervals between
successive outpourings of lava are represented by the thin bands of
leaf-beds and old surface-soils.
On the Cheshire Coast at Leasowe[71] and other localities, there is
exposed at low water a tract of black peaty ground studded with old
rooted stumps of conifers and other trees (fig. 6). There is little
reason to doubt that at all events the majority of the trees are in their
natural place of growth. The peaty soil on which they rest contains
numerous flattened stems of reeds and other plants, and is
penetrated by roots, probably of some aquatic or marshy plants
which spread over the site of the forest as it became gradually
submerged. A lower forest-bed rests directly on a foundation of
boulder clay. Such submerged forests are by no means uncommon
around the British coast; many of them belong to a comparatively
recent period, posterior to the glacial age. In many cases, however,
the tree stumps have been drifted from the places where they grew
and eventually deposited in their natural position, the roots of the
trees, in some cases aided by stones entangled in their branches,
being heavier than the stem portion. There is a promising field for
botanical investigation in the careful analysis of the floras of
submerged forests; the work of Clement Reid, Nathorst, Andersson
and others, serves to illustrate the value of such research in the
hands of competent students.
Fig. 6. Part of a submerged Forest seen at low water on the Cheshire

Coast at Leasowe. Drawn from a photograph.
The following description by Lyell, taken from his American travels,
is of interest as affording an example of the preservation of a
surface-soil:
“On our way home from Charleston, by the railway from Orangeburg, I observed a
thin black line of charred vegetable matter exposed in the perpendicular section of the
bank. The sand cast out in digging the railway had been thrown up on the original soil,
on which the pine forest grew; and farther excavations had laid open the junction of the
rubbish and the soil. As geologists, we may learn from this fact how a thin seam of
vegetable matter, an inch or two thick, is often the only monument to be looked for of an
ancient surface of dry land, on which a luxuriant forest may have grown for thousands of
years. Even this seam of friable matter may be washed away when the region is
submerged, and, if not, rain water percolating freely through the sand may, in the course
of ages, gradually carry away the carbon[72].”
FOSSIL WOOD.
In addition to the remnants of ancient soils, and the preservation of

plant fragments in rocks which have been formed on the floor of an
inland lake or an estuary, it is by no means rare to find fossil plants in
obviously marine sediments. In fig. 7 we have a piece of coniferous
wood with the shell of an Ammonite (Aegoceras planicosta Sow.)
lying on it; the specimen was found in the Lower Lias clay at Lyme
Regis, and illustrates the accidental association of a drifted piece of
a forest tree with a shell which marks at once the age and the marine
character of the beds. Again in fig. 8 we have a block of flint partially
enclosing a piece of coniferous wood in which the internal structure
has been clearly preserved in silica. This specimen was found in the
chalk, a deposit laid down in the clear and deep water of the
Cretaceous sea. The wood must have floated for some time before it
became water-logged and sank to the sea-floor. In the light coloured
wood there occur here and there dark spots which mark the position
of siliceous plugs b, b filling up clean cut holes bored by Teredos in
the woody tissue. The wood became at last enclosed by siliceous
sediment and its tissues penetrated by silica in solution, which
gradually replaced and preserved in wonderful perfection the form of
the original tissue. A similar instance of wood enclosed in flint was
figured by Mantell in 1844 in his Medals of Creation[73].
Fig. 7. Aegoceras planicosta Sow. on a piece of coniferous wood, Lower

Lias, Lyme Regis. From a specimen in the British Museum. Slightly
reduced.
Fig. 8. Piece of coniferous wood in flint, from the Chalk, Croydon. Drawn
from a specimen presented to the British Museum by Mr Murton
Holmes. In the side view, shown above in the figure, the position of the
wood is shown by the lighter portion, with holes, b, b, bored by Teredos
or some other wood-eating animal. In the end view, below, the wood is
seen as an irregular cylinder w, w, embedded in a matrix of flint. ⅓ Nat.
size.
The specimen represented in fig. 9 illustrates the almost complete
destruction of a piece of wood by some boring animal. The circular
and oval dotted patches represent the filled up cavities made by a
Teredo or some similar wood-boring animal.
Fig. 9. Piece of wood from the Red Crag of Suffolk, riddled with holes
filled in with mud. From a specimen in the York Museum. ⅓ Nat. size.
CONDITIONS OF FOSSILISATION.
Before discussing a few more examples of fossils illustrating

different methods of fossilisation, it may not be out of place to quote
a few extracts from travellers’ narratives which enable us to realise
more readily the circumstances and conditions under which plant
remains have been preserved in the Earth’s crust.
In an account of a journey down the Rawas river in Sumatra,
Forbes thus describes the flooded country:—
“The whole surface of the water was covered, absolutely in a close sheet, with petals,
fruits and leaves, of innumerable species. In placid corners sometimes I noted a
collected mass nearly half a foot deep, among which, on examination, I could scarcely
find a leaf that was perfect, or that remained attached to its rightful neighbour, so that
were they to become imbedded in some soft muddy spot, and in after ages to reappear
in a fossil form they would afford a few difficult puzzles to the palaeontologist, both to
separate and to put together[74].”
An interesting example of the mixture of plants and animals in

sedimentary deposits is described by Hooker in his Himalayan
Journals:—
“To the geologist the Jheels and Sunderbunds are a most instructive region, as
whatever may be the mean elevation of their waters, a permanent depression of ten to
fifteen feet would submerge an immense tract, which the Ganges, Burrampooter, and
Soormah would soon cover with beds of silt and sand.
“There would be extremely few shells in the beds thus formed, the southern and
northern divisions of which would present two very different floras and faunas, and
would in all probability be referred by future geologists to widely different epochs. To the
north, beds of peat would be formed by grasses, and in other parts temperate and
tropical forms of plants and animals would be preserved in such equally balanced
proportions as to confound the palaeontologist; with the bones of the long-snouted
alligator, Gangetic porpoise, Indian cow, buffalo, rhinoceros, elephant, tiger, deer, bear,
and a host of other animals, he would meet with acorns of several species of oak, pine-
cones and magnolia fruits, rose seeds, and Cycas nuts, with palm nuts, screw-pines,
and other tropical productions[75].”
In another place the same author writes:

“On the 12th of January, 1848, the Moozuffer was steaming amongst the low, swampy
islands of the Sunderbunds.... Every now and then the paddles of the steamer tossed up
the large fruits of Nypa fruticans, Thunb., a low stemless palm that grows in the tidal
waters of the Indian Ocean, and bears a large head of nuts. It is a plant of no interest to
the common observer, but of much to the geologist, from the nuts of a similar plant
abounding in the Tertiary formations at the mouth of the Thames, having floated about
there in as great profusion as here, till buried deep in the silt and mud that now forms
the island of Sheppey[76].”
DRIFTING OF TREES.
Of the drifting of timber, fruits, &c., we find numerous accounts in

the writings of travellers. Rodway thus describes the formation of
vegetable rafts in the rivers of Northern British Guiana:—
“Sometimes a great tree, whose timber is light enough to float, gets entangled in the
grass, and becomes the nucleus of an immense raft, which is continually increasing in
size as it gathers up everything that comes floating down the river[77].”
The undermining of river banks in times of flood, and the transport

of the drifted trees to be eventually deposited in the delta is a familiar
occurrence in many parts of the world. The more striking instances
of such wholesale carrying along of trees are supplied by Bates,
Lyell and other writers. In his description of the Amazon the former
writes:
“The currents ran with great force close to the bank, especially when these receded to
form long bays or enseadas, as they are called, and then we made very little headway.
In such places the banks consist of loose earth, a rich crumbling vegetable mould,
supporting a growth of most luxuriant forest, of which the currents almost daily carry
away large portions, so that the stream for several yards out is encumbered with fallen
trees, whose branches quiver in the current[78].”
In another place, Bates writes:

“The rainy season had now set in over the region through which the great river flows;
the sand-banks and all the lower lands were already under water, and the tearing
current, two or three miles in breadth, bore along a continuous line of uprooted trees
and islets of floating plants[79].”
The rafts of the Mississippi and other rivers described by Lyell
afford instructive examples of the distant transport of vegetable
material. The following passage is taken from the Principles of
Geology;
“Within the tropics there are no ice-floes; but, as if to compensate for that mode of
transportation, there are floating islets of matted trees, which are often borne along
through considerable spaces. These are sometimes seen sailing at the distance of fifty
or one hundred miles from the mouth of the Ganges, with living trees standing erect
upon them. The Amazons, the Orinoco, and the Congo also produce these verdant
rafts[80].”
After describing the enormous natural rafts of the Atchafalaya, an

arm of the Mississippi, and of the Red river, Lyell goes on to say:
“The prodigious quantity of wood annually drifted down by the Mississippi and its
tributaries is a subject of geological interest, not merely as illustrating the manner in
which abundance of vegetable matter becomes, in the ordinary course of nature,
imbedded in submarine and estuary deposits, but as attesting the constant destruction
of soil and transportation of matter to lower levels by the tendency of rivers to shift their
courses.... It is also found in excavating at New Orleans, even at the depth of several
yards below the level of the sea, that the soil of the delta contains innumerable trunks of
trees, layer above layer, some prostrate as if drifted, others broken off near the bottom,
but remaining still erect, and with their roots spreading on all sides, as if in their natural
position[81].”
The drifting of trees in the ocean is recorded by Darwin in his

description of Keeling Island, and their action as vehicles for the
transport of boulders is illustrated by the same account.
“In the channels of Tierra del Fuego large quantities of drift timber are cast upon the
beach, yet it is extremely rare to meet a tree swimming in the water. These facts may
possibly throw light on single stones, whether angular or rounded, occasionally found
embedded in fine sedimentary masses[82].”
Fruits may often be carried long distances from land, and

preserved in beds far from their original source. Whilst cruising
amongst the Solomon Islands, the Challenger met with fruits of
Barringtonia speciosa &c., 130–150 miles from the coast. Off the
coast of New Guinea long lines of drift wood were seen at right
angles to the direction of the river; uprooted trees, logs, branches,
and bark, often floating separately.
“The midribs of the leaves of a pinnate-leaved palm were abundant, and also the
stems of a large cane grass (Saccharum), like that so abundant on the shores of the
great river in Fiji. Various fruits of trees and other fragments were abundant, usually
floating confined in the midst of the small aggregations into which the floating timber
was everywhere gathered.... Leaves were absent except those of the Palm, on the
midrib of which some of the pinnæ were still present. The leaves evidently drop first to
the bottom, whilst vegetable drift is floating from a shore; thus, as the débris sinks in the
sea water, a deposit abounding in leaves, but with few fruits and little or no wood, will be
formed near shore, whilst the wood and fruits will sink to the bottom farther off the land.
Much of the wood was floating suspended vertically in the water, and most curiously,
logs and short branch pieces thus floating often occurred in separate groups apart from
the horizontally floating timber. The sunken ends of the wood were not weighted by any
attached masses of soil or other load of any kind; possibly the water penetrates certain
kinds of wood more easily in one direction with regard to its growth than the other,
hence one end becomes water-logged before the other.... The wood which had been
longest in the water was bored by a Pholas[83].”
The bearing of this account on the manner of preservation of

fossils, and the differential sorting so frequently seen in plant beds, is
sufficiently obvious.
As another instance of the great distance to which land plants may
be carried out to sea and finally buried in marine strata, an
observation by Bates may be cited. When 400 miles from the mouth
of the main Amazons, he writes:
“We passed numerous patches of floating grass mingled with tree trunks and withered
foliage. Amongst these masses I espied many fruits of that peculiar Amazonian tree the
Ubussú Palm; this was the last I saw of the great river[84].”
The following additional extract from the narrative of the Cruise of

H.M.S. Challenger illustrates in a striking degree the conflicting
evidence which the contents of fossiliferous beds may occasionally
afford; it describes what was observed in an excursion from Sydney
to Berowra Creek, a branch of the main estuary or inlet into which
flows the Hawkesbury river. It was impossible to say where the river
came to an end and the sea began. The Creek is described as a
long tortuous arm of the sea, 10 to 15 miles long, with the side walls
covered with orchids and Platycerium. The ferns and palms were
abundant in the lateral shady glens; marine and inland animals lived
in close proximity.
“Here is a narrow strip of the sea water, twenty miles distant from the open sea; on a
sandy shallow flat close to its head are to be seen basking in the sun numbers of sting-
rays.... All over these flats, and throughout the whole stretch of the creek, shoals of Grey
Mullet are to be met with; numerous other marine fish inhabit the creek. Porpoises
chase the mullet right up to the commencement of the sand-flat. At the shores of the
creek the rocks are covered with masses of excellent oysters and mussel, and other
shell-bearing molluscs are abundant, whilst a small crab is to be found in numbers in
every crevice. On the other hand the water is overhung by numerous species of forest
trees, by orchids and ferns, and other vegetation of all kinds; mangroves grow only in
the shallow bays. The gum trees lean over the water in which swim the Trygon and
mullet, just as willows hang over a pool of carp. The sandy bottom is full of branches
and stems of trees, and is covered in patches here and there by their leaves. Insects
constantly fall in the water, and are devoured by the mullet. Land birds of all kinds fly to
and fro across the creek, and when wounded may easily be drowned in it. Wallabies
swim across occasionally, and may add their bones to the débris at the bottom. Hence
here is being formed a sandy deposit, in which may be found cetacean, marsupial, bird,
fish, and insect remains, together with land and sea shells, and fragments of a vast land
flora; yet how restricted is the area occupied by this deposit, and how easily might
surviving fragments of such a record be missed by future geological explorers![85]”
MEANING OF THE TERM ‘FOSSIL.’
The term ‘fossil’ suggests to the lay mind a petrifaction or a

replacement by mineral matter of the plant tissues. In the scientific
sense, a fossil plant, that is a plant or part of a plant whether in the
form of a true petrifaction or a structureless mould or cast, which has
been buried in the earth by natural causes, may be indistinguishable
from a piece of recent wood lately fallen from the parent tree. In the
geologically recent peat beds such little altered fossils (or sub-
fossils) are common enough, and even in older rocks the more
resistant parts of plant fragments are often found in a practically
unaltered state. In the leaf impressions on an impervious clay, the
brown-walled epidermis shows scarcely any indication of alteration
since it was deposited in the soft mud of a river’s delta. Such fossil
leaves are common in the English Tertiary beds, and even in
Palaeozoic rocks it is not uncommon to find an impression of a plant
on a bed of shale from which the thin brown epidermis may be
peeled off the rock, and if microscopically examined it will be found
to have retained intact the contours of the cuticularised epidermal
cells. A striking example of a similar method of preservation is
afforded by the so-called paper-coal of Culm age from the Province
of Toula in Russia[86]. In the Russian area the Carboniferous or
Permian rocks have been subjected to little lateral pressure, and
unlike the beds of the same age in Western Europe, they have not
been folded and compressed by widespread and extensive crust-
foldings. Instead of the hard seams of coal there occur beds of a

The Origins and Character of The Ancient Chinese City Volume 2 The Chinese City in Comparative Perspective Paul Wheatley

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Origins and Character of The Ancient Chinese City Volume 2 The Chinese City in Comparative Perspective Paul Wheatley

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Origins and Character of the

Ancient Chinese City Volume 2 The

Reinventing the Chinese City 1st Edition Richard Hu

Sounds and the City Volume 2 Brett Lashua

The Urbanization of People The Politics of Development

Spectacle and the City Chinese Urbanities in Art and

Learning Chinese Language and Culture Intermediate

Careers in Shanghai The Social Guidance of Personal

Sun Yat Sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution

The Book of Chinese Medicine Volume 2 1st Edition Henry

THE ORIGINS AND

THE CHINESE CITY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Published 2017 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 1971 by Paul Wheatley.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2008018010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN-13: 978-0-202-36203-8 (pbk)

Chapter 4. The Urban Character of the Ceremonial Complex 371

Chapter 5. The Ancient Chinese City as a Cosmo-Magical

16. A Shang ceremonial complex compared with 241-3

THE EARLY CHINESE CITY

THE EARLIEST URBAN FORMS

CEREMONIAL CENTERS in regions of primary urban generation

The agents of change and geological evolution, which we have

“The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,

The discovery of a fossil, whether as an impression on the surface

Fig. 6. Part of a submerged Forest seen at low water on the Cheshire

In addition to the remnants of ancient soils, and the preservation of

Fig. 7. Aegoceras planicosta Sow. on a piece of coniferous wood, Lower

Before discussing a few more examples of fossils illustrating

An interesting example of the mixture of plants and animals in

In another place the same author writes:

Of the drifting of timber, fruits, &c., we find numerous accounts in

The undermining of river banks in times of flood, and the transport

In another place, Bates writes:

After describing the enormous natural rafts of the Atchafalaya, an

The drifting of trees in the ocean is recorded by Darwin in his

Fruits may often be carried long distances from land, and

The bearing of this account on the manner of preservation of

The following additional extract from the narrative of the Cruise of

The term ‘fossil’ suggests to the lay mind a petrifaction or a

You might also like