ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 207 



ever have been found to connect man with any of 

 those terraces and raised beaches which mark the 

 elevation of the land out of the glacial seas. 



The actual American race can make no monumental 

 pretensions to a great antiquity, for its oldest remains, 

 those of the ancient Alleghan nations, situated as they 

 are on the modern alluvium of the western rivers, claim 

 no greater antiquity than the similar mounds on the 

 banks of the Tigris, and possibly are much less 

 ancient. The only actual evidence of great age known 

 in connection with them that afforded by the growth 

 of forest trees would not carry them back farther 

 than the earlier centuries of our era, and the decayed 

 condition of the bones in the burial mounds is well 

 known to be a criterion of very uncertain value. The 

 languages, customs, and religions of the Americans, 

 as well as their physical characters, are allied to those 

 of Post-diluvian nations of the Old World, and though 

 they indicate migrations belonging to an early part 

 of the historical period, while the Turanian race was 

 still dominant, go no farther back than this. The 

 American traditions of the Atlantis, of the Deluge, 

 and of the huge extinct quadrupeds, can scarcely be 

 held as proving anything more than a common inherit- 

 ance. Thus our primitive American men seem to fall 

 short in interest of those pre-historic races in Europe 

 with which we have been comparing them, and which 

 are by many believed to reach backward to a time 

 enormously exceeding that to which any history, 

 sacred or secular, extends. The real interest of the 



