286 WALKS AND TALKS. 



They felt the notion of a Supreme Divinity stirring within 

 them. A little later they erected altars and built rude tem- 

 ples. The paraphernalia and accessories of worship imply a 

 Being worthy of worship. The Stone Folk of Europe were 

 every way MEN. 



Who were they? And whence did they come? The 

 latest researches show their skulls to possess affinities with the 

 Mongoloid race. They were not members of the White race. 

 Modern Europeans are not descended from them ; but un- 

 doubtedly their blood mingles with that of Europeans, and 

 some ethnologists think the different types of prehistoric peo- 

 ple can be detected in the populations of different parts of 

 Europe. On the whole, there are many reasons for believing 

 the stone folk nearly related to modern Esquimaux and 

 Laplanders. 



But when we shall have reached every possible conclusion 

 from the study of prehistoric Europeans, we lack much of 

 penetrating the mystery of the human species at large. These 

 men were not the first men who ever lived. They came from 

 somewhere. If they were Mongoloids, they came, in all prob- 

 ability, from Asia. Whoever they were, they had spread 

 over all Europe, Asia, and North Africa before the first white 

 men visited those regions apparently as early as 4000 B. C. 

 The Pelasgic empire was at its meridian about 2500 B. C. ; 

 and the Pelasgians were the first descendants of Noah who 

 penetrated beyond the borders of Asia. These primitive Mon- 

 goloids, known to antiquity as Cyclopes, had dispersed them- 

 selves over America probably at a date equally remote. 



Beyond these general determinations we have neither his- 

 tory, tradition, or monuments to light our path. The succes- 

 sive migrations of families of the White Kace from Asia into 

 Europe are fairly well cleared up. We follow first the Ha- 

 mites (Pelasgian Egyptians), then the Semites (Phoenicians, 

 Tyrians, Carthaginians) and lastly the Japhetites (Thracians, 

 Hellenes, Ligures, Ombro-Latins, Kelts). But what were 

 the genetic relations between these Asiatic peoples and the 

 Asiatic Mongoloids? Whence came the White and Mongo- 



