THE ANTIQUITY OF THE RED RACE IN AMERICA. 1045 



The discovery of America found the nativCvS in that stage of culture 

 known in Europe as the neolithic period, or polished stone age. His 

 cuttiug implements were of stone and not of metal, and by whatever 

 method he shaped or made them, the finishing was by grinding or pol- 

 ishing. The similarities of the Indian's culture with that of other 

 couutries show that, if he migrated from any of these countries bring- 

 ing this culture with him, he did so at a period when they were in the 

 neolithic stage. This stage, aud the one subsequent to it, was, in 

 the Eastern hemisphere, entirely in prehistoric times, and came to an 

 end at an early period. It belonged to the first and second, possibly 

 the third, cities of Troy, on the plain of Hissarlik, and came to an end 

 before the beginning of culture in (Ireece. When Homer wrote, it had 

 passed, not only behind the beginnings of Eome, but behind her j)rede- 

 cessors in Italy, the Etruscans. The introduction of bronze into France 

 and England, probably 2,000 years B. O., sounded the death knell of 

 the neolithic period and was the beginning of its end in those countries. 

 In Asia the historical evidence shows even an earlier cessation of the 

 neolithic period. The period of the Chinese civilization carries us back 

 much farther, and shows the people of that country to have passed 

 beyond the neolithic or polished stone age ranch earlier. Now the occu- 

 piers of American soil were emigrants from some, or, possibly, all of 

 the countries mentioned, but, whichever it may have been, the emigra- 

 tion must have taken place during the neolithic age, and not after its 

 close. Western Europe was the latest country in which the neolithic 

 l)eriod came to a close and was succeeded by the age of bronze. So 

 the commencement of the age of bronze in Europe aflbrds a supposi- 

 titious mark in the history of our country as the latest date at which 

 the neolithic migration to America could have taken place. How much 

 earlier it might have been, is a matter of speculation. 



These arguments, based upon facts which appear indisputable, go to 

 show that the migration by which the American race came to occupy 

 the Western Hemisphere could not have been less than two thousand 

 years prior to the Christian era, but that, if they came from other 

 countries, they might have come a long time before. 



