A REVIEW OF " THE EPOCE OF THE MAMMOTH" 



473 



appeared on the earth more than six or ten thou- 

 sand years. He starts from the historical basis 

 offered by the Bible, and in support of chronology 

 ingrafted on the Holy "Writ by the unfortunate 

 ingenuity of Archbishop Usher, and, in defense 

 of the high civilization of primeval man, he seizes 

 some of the scraps of history flung out in the 

 struggle between various Babylonian and Egyptian 

 scholars. He adds to these his own views of the 

 discoveries at Hissarlik and Mycenae, and the re- 

 cent results of exploration in Etruscan tombs and 

 dwellings in Italy, ultimately arriving at the con- 

 clusion that man is not older in the Mediterranean 

 area than ten thousand years. To all this the 

 obvious answer suggests itself, that history can 

 tell us nothing as to the antiquity of the human 

 race, because written characters, essential to his- 

 tory, are the result of a high civilization. How 

 long it took mankind to work out through pict- 

 ure-writing a record of the past, is an idle ques- 

 tion, since we have no data bearing on the point ; 

 but we cannot believe that the art of writing was 

 elaborated in a short time. " Fortes vixere ante 

 Agamemnona " whose names we know not. 



To attempt to circumscribe the antiquity of 

 man within the limits of history appears to us as 

 idle and barren an attempt as could possibly be 

 undertaken. It would be as reasonable to seek 

 figs growing on thistles as to look for any proof 

 of the recent origin of man in the written record. 

 These facts are so obvious in the present condi- 

 tion of knowledge that we should not bring them 

 before our readers were they not utterly ignored 

 by the author of this work, as well as by some of 

 his critics. 



Our author having established to his own 

 satisfaction the recent origin of man in the Medi- 

 terranean countries, enters into the question of 

 the unity of the human race. The pre-Christian 

 cross, either in the form of the handle-cross of 

 the Mediterranean districts, or the Swastika of 

 the Buddhists, was widely spread among ancient 

 peoples. The tradition of a deluge is almost uni- 

 versal. That of a terrestrial paradise is widely 

 spread: we read of the gardens of Alcinous and 

 Laertes, of the Asgard of the Scandinavians, and 

 of sundry other gardens mentioned in various 

 writers, Indian, Chinese, and Arabian. Then we 

 have Megalithic monuments scattered over widely- 

 separated countries, and the habit of distorting 

 the human skull, and of scalping. The range, 

 also, of the boomerang, pointed out by General 

 Lane Fox, the custom of depositing flint imple- 

 ments in graves, and of worshiping phalli and ser- 

 pents, are taken to " prove the unity of the race 



almost without any other argument on the sub- 

 ject." 



Then the author proceeds to his application : 

 "If the human race is one, the Egyptian, the 

 Hindoo, the Babylonian, and the palaeolithic tribes 

 of the Somme Valley, were one ; and if Kephren 

 and Cheops were near of kin to the fossil man of 

 Mentone, or the savage who owned the Neander- 

 thal skull, and if, moreover, the antiquity of man 

 in Babylonia does not go farther back than some 

 ten thousand years, then the men of the French and 

 English river-gravels cannot be more than ten 

 thousand years old. The reverse would only be 

 possible on the hypothesis that the Egyptians 

 were the descendants of the men of the Somme 

 Valley. But this is excluded by the fact that the 

 Egyptians appear at once as a civilized race; 

 and, as we have stated, there are no earlier re- 

 mains of any kind in Egypt " (page 21). We 

 give this as an example of the style of reason- 

 ing. So far as we know, nobody, not even the 

 author, has ventured to assert that the two Egyp- 

 tian kings above mentioned " were near of kin " 

 to the so-called fossil man of Mentone, or stood 

 in any near relationship to any of the ancient in- 

 habitants of Europe. The argument is to us 

 wholly unintelligible. "Why should the Egyptians 

 be descended from the men of the Somme Valley 

 any more than the latter from the Egyptians? 

 The civilization of Egypt throws about as much 

 light upon the barbarism of the palaeolithic age 

 as that does upon the civilization of Egypt. 



The author has taken great pains to break 

 down the archaeological classification by the trite 

 argument that bronze, iron, and stone, have been 

 very frequently found together in various parts 

 of Europe. We suppose that no modern archae- 

 ologist has disputed the fact. Dr. John Evans 

 holds that they shade off into one another like 

 the prismatic colors of a rainbow ; Dr. Keller and 

 Mr. Lee, his able translator, give numerous ex- 

 amples from the pile-dwellings of Switzerland, 

 and other places, of the association of implements 

 composed of these materials. This association, 

 however, has nothing to do with the question as 

 to whether the archaeological classification is cor- 

 rect. The conclusion of the Scandinavian and 

 Swiss archaeologists, that the use of stone, bronze, 

 and iron, characterizes three distinct phases in 

 the civilization of mankind in Europe, has been 

 amply confirmed by the numerous discoveries 

 made during the last five-and-twenty years. 

 They are merely the outward marks of new 

 stages of culture. 



Nor has the subdivision of the stone age into 



