THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 191 



the human pedigree. All believers in 

 Scripture know the creation of the earth 

 took place " in the beginning," and how 

 many millions of years ago that was, the 

 little mind of finite man has not the faintest 

 idea. Scripture is also clear that the 

 human race was called into existence by the 

 fiat of the Creator in round numbers about 

 6000 years ago, and there is no evidence 

 of man's existence on earth at any earlier 

 period. Indeed, the earliest proof, as 

 distinct from speculation, of man's exis- 

 tence is to be found in a tablet in the 

 Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, which, 

 according to the new tablet of Abydos, 

 may be safely dated about B.C. 2200, or 

 perhaps a century earlier, the date which 

 Champolion, the illustrious founder of 

 Egyptology, rightly assigned to the oldest 

 monuments in the land of Ham. I am 

 aware that in the 19th century many half- 

 informed chronologers persistently de- 

 clared that the era of Menes,* the first co- 



* See Appendix S. 



