THE ADVENT OF MAN. 251 



people, living in a country well supplied with food, must have 

 multiplied greatly, and must have left considerable remains. To 

 allow us to suppose that these men inhabited Europe even for 

 2,000 years, we have to suppose that the greater part of their 

 remains have been swept away, or remain under the waters, or 

 buried out of sight in diluvial sediments. 



(6; Much importance has been attached to the early works 

 and high culture of Egypt and Chalda^a, as evidence of vast 

 time during which arts were growing from a supposed rude 

 stone age. But it must be observed that no such period is 

 known to antedate civilisation in the East, and that if the early 

 empires were established by survivors of the Deluge, they must 

 have brought with them the culture of Antediluvian times. 

 Farther, the notion of men emerging from a half-brutal state, 

 and from the use of the rudest implements, is purely conjectural 

 and not supported by facts. In America, where the semi- 

 civilised agricultural races are unquestionably the oldest, the 

 rudest possible implements were used by these partially civilised 

 agricultural people along with polished stone and metal ; and 

 Schliemann has shown that a rude stone age succeeded the 

 civilisation of Troy, and this at a time when Phoenicia and 

 Egypt were at the height of their civilisation. Such facts, 

 which might fill volumes, show how little value is to be attached 

 to supposed ages of rough and polished stone. 



(7) The difficulties attending the establishment of geological 

 dates for deposits Hke those containing the remains of men are 

 very great. They are altogether superficial and local, not wide- 

 spread marine beds in which a distinct order of superposition 

 can be clearly traced. They are not easily separated from the 

 glacial beds below, or from those above which have beenrnodi- 

 fied by human agency, by land-floods, or by landslips. Thus 

 the application of geological criteria of age to them is very 

 difficult and uncertain. Evidence of this could easily be given, 

 in the many errors which have been promulgated, and which 

 have had to be retracted by their authors, or have been 



