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THE

CHAPTER XXXII.

PRIMEVAL MAN.

HE history of our race, traced back a few thousand years, loses itself in traditions and myths. We come down out of a cloud of obscurity, in which we can just discern the rude forms of men clad in skins, frequenting the caves of wild beasts, fashioning rude pottery, and practicing in the chase with the primeval bow and arrow. Out of the haze which hangs over the verge of antiquity come sounds of conflict in arms, pæans of peace, hymns to religion, and the hum of barbaric industry."

Our written history does not extend back to the origin of man. The Mosaic records, which are undoubtedly the oldest of our authentic documents, represent the western portion of Asia as swarming with a population tolerably advanced in the arts at a period two or three thousand years antecedent to our era. There was, consequently, a long interval of human history still anterior to this date. What destinies befell our race-how did they live, whither did they wander, during that prolonged infancy of whichRevelation aside-we have no other information than such as we have gleaned of the Mastodon, the Megatherium, or the Zeuglodon?

The quickened intellectual activity of the modern age has started new and interesting inquiries in this direction. There are no questions which more profoundly interest us than the history of primeval man. The investigation has been pushed far beyond the limits of the most ancient written documents. It has passed over the remoter domain of

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archæology and stepped upon the ground consecrated to the researches of geology.

The chief sources of our information respecting the earliest periods of human history are, 1st. The remains of man himself, which have been found in caves or buried in deposits of gravel or peat. 2d. Human works, of which we have the so-called Druidical remains of Great Britain and other countries, known as dolmens or cromlechs-rude megalithic monuments of unhewn stone, which we now know to be ancient tombs. Other human works more abundant and more universally distributed are implements of war, of the chase, of industry, or of ornament. These are found in gravel-beds along the valleys of rivers or at their mouths; in peat beds; in caves, and among the refuse piles contiguous to the camping or dwelling-places of tribes which subsisted partly upon molluscs. These refuse heaps are composed mostly of shells of recent species, bones of domestic or wild animals suitable for food or service, fragments of pottery, arrow-heads, fish-hooks, stone implements, ornaments, and the like. A vast supply of the relics of primeval man has been obtained from the pile-habitations, or ancient dwellings constructed upon platforms supported by piles driven in the water. The dredging of the bottoms of these lakes has brought to light immense quantities of the remains of pre-historic art and industry. 3d. The manner in which the relics of man are associated with those of other animals enables us to extend to our race many of the generalizations deduced in reference to the earlier history of the existing fauna. Lastly, the nature and magnitude of the geological changes which have transpired during the existence of man throw some light upon the antiquity of the race.

As in the history of organic life in general, so in the gelogical history of man, we find him mounting from lower

to higher manifestations in the progress of the ages. There seems, however, to be a fundamental difference in the two kinds of progress. With the lower animals it is a structural advance; with man, an education. With the former the steps of the advance are marked by successive species; with man by successively higher attainments of the intelligence. With the other vertebrates the highest is structurally different; with the succession of human races, the highest and the lowest are structurally identical.

Archæologists distinguish three ages in the history of man-the Age of Stone, the Age of Bronze, and the Age of Iron. In the Age of Stone, the uses of the metals had not been discovered, and human implements were constructed of flint, serpentine, diorite, argillite, and other suit-· able rocks. In the Age of Bronze, implements of bronze began to be introduced, and we descend to the verge of historic times. The Age of Iron is characterized by the use of that metal, and the arts and industries of the most advanced civilization.

Most anthropologists are inclined to subdivide the Age of Stone into two or three epochs. Vogt, Lartet, and Christy divide it into two: first, the Cave-Bear Epoch, or epoch of hewn stone implements; secondly, the Reindeer Epoch, or epoch of polished stone implements, carved and artfully decorated bones, and other evidences of "a very intelligent, art-endowed race of men."

It is not by any means certain, however, that these two epochs were successive. The more skilled workmen of the Reindeer Epoch may have lived contemporaneously with the Cave-Bear men, as natives of all degrees of civilization have co-existed upon the earth in all ages. Neither is it supposed that the three ages represent three man civilization, each of which, in turn, has been worldwide. We find simply that in the history of every race

stages of hu

there is a Stone Age; and if the race advances, this is followed by an Age of Bronze, and this by an Age of Iron. Some Eastern nations passed out of their Stone Age three thousand years or more before the Christian era. Some of the peoples of Central and Northern Europe were in their Stone Age when Cæsar subjugated Gaul. The Sandwich Islanders were in their Stone Age when first visited by Capt. Cook, while the Esquimaux and the North American Indians generally are still in their Stone Age. The Age of Stone is simply the stage of infancy. Different peoples have emerged at different epochs from the state of national infancy.

When man first made his advent in Europe, that continent was still the abode of quadrupeds now long extinct. The contemporaries of man in the Hewn-stone epoch were the Cave-Bear (Ursus spelaus), followed by the Cave-Hyena (Hyena spelaa) and the Cave-Lion. These gradually gave place to gigantic herbivores the Hairy Mammoth (Elephas primigenius), the Hairy Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros tichorinus), and the Reindeer. The mammoth roamed in herds over the whole of Europe, Northern Asia, and even North America. The hairy, or two-horned rhinoceros, in company with another two-horned species, thundered through the forests, or wallowed in the jungles and swamps. The rivers and lakes of Southern Europe were tenanted by hippopotami and beavers-the former as huge and unwieldy, and with tusks as large as any which terrify the African Bushman. Three kinds of wild oxen, two of which were of colossal strength, and one of these “maned and villous like the Bonassus," grazed with the marmot, and wild goat, and chamois upon the plains which skirt the Mediterranean. The musk-ox and the reindeer browsed in the meadows of Perigord, in the south of France, while a gigantic elk (Megaceros hibernicus) ranged from Ireland to the borders of Italy (Fig. 99).

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