HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 673 



HOW THE EARTH WAS PEOPLED. 



By M. le Marquis G. De SAPOETA. 



I. 



WHY should the study of prehistoric man excite bitter passions ? 

 Why should it trouble timorous souls ? Its aim, with real sci- 

 entific inquirers, is simply to attain an objective reality, worthy of the 

 respect of all ; and it has had the happy fortune to unite in a common 

 pursuit minds of the most diverse character, having neither the same 

 motives nor the same tendencies, but animated by the pure desire of 

 increasing the domain of knowledge. In this way freethinkers and 

 priests, men of the world and men of the study, collectors, pioneers, 

 philosophers, and practicians, whether spiritualistic and Christian or 

 positivists, resolute partisans of the doctrine of evolution or opponents 

 of it, have labored hand-in-hand in prehistoric investigation that is, 

 in collecting all the signs, observations, and things which relate to the 

 existence of man in the times anterior to history. The objects of this 

 study also lie back of all chronology, and it is in question whether it 

 is possible to make an estimate of the time within which they were 

 embraced. History, as founded on documents and monuments of defi- 

 nite import and intelligible traditions, goes back to the foundation of 

 the Egyptian empire by Menes, five thousand years before Christ, and 

 there stops. At that time, the Egyptians had an organization, a well- 

 developed civilization, and cities. It is not hazarding too much to 

 add as many years to the figure we have named, or to accept Plato's 

 statement that the Egyptian people were ten thousand years old in his 

 time. 



Prehistoric times begin at this period twelve thousand years ago 

 and extend back into a much more remote past. Without written 

 data, without even conjectural dates, is it possible to estimate their 

 duration ? All that we have are the marks that man has left on Na- 

 ture, who, in her incessant action burying these marks under accumu- 

 lations of successive strata, give3 us a kind of relative chronology. It 

 is now admitted by science that the life of man crosses the whole 

 Quaternary period, and if we can measure the duration of that period 

 we shall be able to fix approximately the age of our race. This is 

 what M. de Mortillet attempts to do in formulating the conclusions of 

 his book on the " Prehistoric Antiquity of Man." 



The circles of growth of trees on American ruins and the rates of 

 formation of river deltas and alluvions have been made the bases of 

 partial and doubtless insufficient calculations from which an age of 

 five or six thousand years has been assigned to the polished-stone 

 period of Robenhausen, and thirteen thousand years for the accumu- 

 lation of Nile-mud over a brick which was found beneath a statue of 

 vol. xxni. 43 



