24 MAN I PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Of the so-called " Prehistoric Age " it is obvious that no strict 



definition can be given. It comprises in a general 



historic Age in way that vague period prior to all written records, 



dim memories of which popular myths, folklore, 



demi-gods 1 , eponymous heroes 2 , traditions of real events 3 lingered 



on far into historic times, and supplied ready to hand the copious 



materials afterwards worked up by the early poets, founders of new 



religions, and later legislators. 



That letters themselves, although not brought into general use, 

 had already been invented, is evident from the mere fact that all 

 memory of their introduction beyond the vaguest traditions had 

 died out before the dawn of history. The works of man, while in 

 themselves necessarily continuous, stretched back to such an 

 inconceivably remote past, that even the great landmarks in the 

 evolution of human progress had long been forgotten by later 

 generations. 



And so it was everywhere, in the New World as in the Old, 

 amongst Eastern as amongst Western Peoples. 



and in China. _ . 



In the Chinese records the ' Age of the Five 

 Emperors " -five, though nine are named answers somewhat to 

 our prehistoric epoch. It had its eponymous hero, Fu Hi, reputed 

 founder of the empire, who invented nets and snares for fishing 

 and hunting, and taught his people how to rear domestic animals. 

 To him also is ascribed the institution of marriage, and in his time 

 Tsong Chi is supposed to have invented the Chinese characters, 

 symbols, not of sounds, but of objects and ideas. 



Then came other benevolent rulers, who taught the people 

 agriculture, established markets for the sale of farm produce, 



Homer's ^(.Qiuv yevos avSpuv, 11. xn. 23, if the passage is genuine. 



! Such as the Greek Andreas, the " First Man," invented in comparatively 

 recent times, as shown by the intrusive d in di/5pe? for the earlier d^epes, 

 " men." Andreas was of course a Greek, sprung in fact from the river 

 Peneus and the first inhabitant of the Orchomenian plain (Pausanias, IX. 34, 5). 



3 For instance, the flooding of the Thessalian plain, afterwards drained by 

 the Peneus and repeopled by the inhabitants of the surrounding mountains 

 (rocks, stones), whence the myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who are told by the 

 oracle to repeople the world by throwing behind them the "bones of their 

 grandmother," that is, the "stones" of mother Earth. 



