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CHAPTER X. 



ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN, Continued. 



IT is hardly necessary to say that the preceding chapters 

 do not contain all the facts upon which those who 

 believe in the great antiquity of the human race chiefly rely. 

 It is, indeed, by no means only of late years, or among 

 archaeologists, that the difficulties in Archbishop Usher's 

 chronology have been felt to be insuperable. Historians, 

 philologists, and physiologists have alike admitted that the 

 short period allowed could hardly be reconciled with the 

 history of some eastern nations, that it did not leave room 

 for the development either of the different languages, or of 

 the numerous physical peculiarities, by* which the various 

 races of men are distinguished. 



Thus, Dr. Prichard says, "Many writers who have been by 

 no means inclined to raise objections against the authority of 

 the Sacred Scriptures, and in particular Michaelis, have felt 

 themselves embarrassed by the shortness of the interval 

 between the Noachic Deluge and the period at which the 

 records of various nations commence, or the earliest date to 

 which their historical memorials lead us back. The extrava- 

 gant claims to a remote and almost fathomless antiquity, 

 made by the fabulists of many ancient nations, have vanished 

 before the touch of accurate criticism ; but after abstracting 

 all that is apparently mythological from the early traditions 

 of the Indians, Egyptians, and some other nations, the pro- 



