Primitive Man. 65 



universally prevailing worship of the dead, or worship of 

 deities at the tombs of the deceased, points to the same 

 conclusion. 



The period, or stage of culture, denoted by the use of 

 bronze implements, brings us well within historic times. 

 The date of the disuse of bronze, and the adoption of iron 

 as the most serviceable metal for general use in the con- 

 struction of tools and weapons, is as difficult of approxi- 

 mation as the periods of the rise and cessation of the early 

 ages of stone, for one reason, among many, that the use 

 of bronze in the manufacture of ornamental work contin- 

 ued far down into the iron epoch. Sir John Lubbock 

 places the close of the Bronze age at the period of the 

 Trojan war ; and the mention of brass (as the word bronze 

 is improperly translated) in Deuteromony, so much more 

 frequently than iron, denotes that the same age among the 

 early Hebrews had not then closed. 



The object of this Essay being, particularly, an inquiry 

 into the life and relics of more primitive races, our space 

 has been mostly given to the discoveries and conclusions 

 relating to the earlier old and new stone periods. Within 

 the limits of a single paper, we can do little more than 

 suggest, not discuss at length, the most important topics 

 and results of prehistoric archaeology. The literature of 

 the subject is voluminous and increasing, bvit it is not 

 appropriate, in a popular series, that we should enter into 

 scientific details, nor is such treatment in fact necessary or 

 important. The significance of the whole discussion for us, 

 in this course upon Sociological Evolution, hinges upon the 

 question of man's existence in the palaeolithic age. If we 

 establish, as a truth, the fact of man's existence upon the 

 planet at a period remote from us by 80,000 years, or even 

 half that time; if we find him, at that distant age, so 

 low in respect to habits, manners, and intelligence, that for 

 uncounted centuries lie had to take almost even chances of 

 survival with the cave-bear and the mammoth, frozen by 

 glaciers or scorched with torrid heat; toilsomely shaping 

 his rough-hewn flints wherewith barely to hold his own in 

 the struggle for existence; if these things be a proven 

 fact, and if from this state have emerged the complex and 

 elaborate civilizations, arts, commerce, industries, and im- 

 mensely specialized activities of the modern centuries, the 

 doctrine of the continuous evolution of man and of society 



