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could not, it is thought, have taken place later than 

 3000 B. c. a date seven hundred years prior to that as- 

 signed by the old chronology to the Deluge. Those 

 races coexisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations, 

 already civilized, and as distinct from each other in 

 feature as they are now. 



Improvement in Architecture. The earliest periods, 

 then, were characterized by the utmost simplicity of in- 

 vention and construction. Later, the efforts for defence 

 from enemies and for architectural display, which have 

 always employed so much time and power, began to be 

 made. The megalithic period has left traces over much 

 of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each 

 other in the simplest form in Southern India, and the 

 circles of stones planted on end in England at Stone- 

 henge and Abury, and in Peru at Sillustani, are relics 

 of that period. More complex are the great Himyaritic 

 walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the 

 Phoenicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workman- 

 ship of the Pelasgi in Greece and Italy. In the iron 

 age we find granitic hills shaped or excavated into tem- 

 ples; as, for example, everywhere in Southern India. 

 Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill 

 is cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet 

 in elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic 

 cones, one thousand miles from the west coast of South 

 America, in the bosom of the Pacific, possesses several 

 colossi cut from the intrusive basalt, some in high relief 

 on the face of the rock, others in detached blocks re- 

 moved by human art from their original positions and 

 brought nearer the sea-shore. 



Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate 

 and complex structures of Central America, of Cam- 



