Archibald Geikie on the Last Elevation of Scotland

Abstract

Archibald Geikie announced in 1861 that Scotland had been elevated twenty-five feet since Roman times. In stratified sediments at Leith, he identified pottery fragments as Roman. Other observers promptly noted that the beds had not been deposited under water but were made ground, and that the pottery was recent. Geikie still insisted on the elevation of Scotland since Roman times, based on the terminations of the Antonine Wall. In 1871, David Milne Home showed that if in Roman times Scotland had been twenty-five feet lower than at present, Roman roads, fords, and buildings would have been submerged. In 1873, Milne Home showed further that the eastern end of the Antonine Wall would have been under water. In 1863, in Antiquity of Man, Sir Charles Lyell accepted Geikie's claims, but in the fourth edition of Antiquity in 1873 he presented Milne Home's evidence against them. Geikie never forgave Lyell for exposing his error and subsequently did his utmost to belittle him.