CHAPTER xxix 



ANCIENT AND MODERN MAN 



The written history of man goes back about five thousand 

 years. The recorded history of the Greeks and Romans 

 dates from about ten centuries or less before Christ although 

 it is certain that the actual history of the Grecian people 

 is far older. The earliest writings of the Chinese and 

 Egyptians and Arabians carry us back to a period three or 

 perhaps four thousand years earlier than the Christian era. 

 But it is also certainly true that the civilization of these 

 peoples extends far into prehistoric times. Traces of the 

 ancient Ethiopian civilization of 10,000 years ago are claimed 

 to have been found. 



Where history leaves off archaeology takes up the work of 

 deciphering man's earlier civilization and manners, and 

 where there are no more sculptured stones and pictured 

 walls discoverable, the student of geology and paleontology 

 and the student of anatomy unite to interpret the story 

 told by exhumed bones and relics of man and his earliest 

 animal companions. 



Bones of undoubted human origin have been found in 

 long-buried caves with those of the mammoth, the cave-bear 

 and other extinct animals of Glacial times. There is no 

 doubt that man lived on this earth at least as far back as 

 the beginning of this present geologic epoch, the Quaternary 

 (or Pleistocene) and it is probable, though not proved to 

 anything like the unanimous satisfaction of anthropologists, 

 that he existed in late Tertiary times. 



At any rate the human species, upright, large-brained, 

 with wit enough to chip flints into rough weapons, and to 



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