DIVERSITY OF RACES. 183 



there, profusely spread, are found the vestiges of ancient and 

 unknown races.* Those strange mounds, called "giant's tombs," 

 which have long been the wonder of the Northmen, have opened 

 up for antiquaries a field of most interesting research. By the 

 differences, not only in their structure, but in the relics they 

 contain, there has been made a chronological division of them 

 into three distinct classes. In the most recent are found various 

 implements of iron, which metal is known to have been in use 

 among the tribes of the North long before the Christian era. 

 Other tumuli, different from these, present only relics of gold, 

 bronze, and copper, which, before the age of iron, were long the 

 materials on which was exercised the ingenuity of a polished 

 race. But in a third series of barrows, by far the most numer- 

 ous, appear only ornaments of amber and weapons of stone. 

 Not a trace is here found of any remains that would indicate the 

 knowledge of metals among the tribes which deposited them. 

 Both the numerousness of the rude relics of this class, and the 

 wide extent over which they are spread, bear evidence that the 

 people who wrought them were for long ages the sole inhabitants 

 of Northern and Western Europe. What then must be the ex- 

 treme antiquity of the original race which there began to work 

 its slow and toilsome way into the advanced state which it 

 occupied even at a very distant epoch from the earliest date of 

 its history or traditions ? 



Thus have we attempted to thread a few of the windings in 

 the labyrinth of the past, and have shown, we think, that from 

 such researches may be deduced the strongest probabilities in 

 favor of several distinct centers of distribution, and consequently 

 of the original diversity of races in the human family. Nor can 

 such a supposition be justly construed as at variance with revela- 

 tion. That the history of creation in Genesis, so beautifully and 

 appropriately written thus for the imaginative Jews, is allegori- 

 cal, science is daily proving more and more conclusively, and the 

 learned are now agreed in the belief that the true beginning of 

 things is but darkly figured forth in the work of those six days. 

 Then why select from the very midst of an otherwise continuous 



* Pricliard, vol. 3, p. 294, also p. xvii xxii. 



