240 Original Articles. [April, 



but as the History of the Jews begins at a much earlier date than 

 the History of Eome, and the History of England succeeds after 

 a lapse of some hundreds of years, so it is scarcely possible to 

 say that a Prehistoric Age of the Jews ever existed, whilst that 

 of the South and of the North of Europe, of the Roman and the 

 Teuton, extended to very different dates in the world's history. 

 Other ages, too, besides those mentioned above will be referred to, 

 such as the age of a particular kind of dwelling or mode of life, or, it 

 may be, of a peculiar character of Flora in certain countries ; we shall 

 have to speak of the periods of the Lake-Dwellings, the Kitchen- 

 middens, the Fir, the Oak, and the Beech ; but these are neither co- 

 extensive with the former, nor can they altogether be separated from 

 them. With regard to these latter, we may say at once that Sir 

 Charles Lyell,* on the authority of the Danish antiquaries, makes 

 the Stone Age extend throughout that of the Scotch Fir (Pinus sylves- 

 tris) into that of the Oak, with which that of the Alder Birch (Betula 

 verrucosa) flourished. The Bronze Age takes the remainder of the 

 Oak, whilst the Iron corresponds nearly with that of the Birch. 

 Again, some of these different ages may be contemporaneous — a 

 Bronze Age in Britain might have existed at the same time as an Iron 

 Age in Italy, j and probably an early Stone Age lasted in Britain 

 whilst the Aryans still remained in their Asiatic home. 



It would be impossible, in the space allotted to the present article, 

 to give anything like a full account of the mode of procedure by which 

 comparative philologists have arrived at a tolerably sure knowledge of 

 the condition of the AryanJ race before it was dispersed over India 

 and Europe. Comparative Philology reveals to us much concerning 

 our ancestors. When we find words evidently common to all the 

 nations descended from our forefathers, we can safely predicate that 

 the idea represented by that word was known before the Dispersion, 



Thus, if we observe that the Roman languages all contain similar 

 names for many inventions and appliances of civilized life, we might 

 deduce, even if we did not know it from other sources, that the 

 Romans were acquainted with these inventions, and the elements of 

 the appliances. In a similar way, many facts concerning the common 

 ancestors of the Scandinavian and Hindoo may be deduced from the 

 number of words possessed in common by their descendants. In the 

 same way, the particular characters of any class of words will give us 

 a clue to the history of a nation. If, for instance, the words referring 

 to a particular branch of art or manufacture have all a foreign origin, 



* • Antiquity of Man,' chap, i and ii. 



t A Roman historian (Polybius, I believe) speaks of the Gauls, in a battle 

 during one of their early raids in Italy, straightening their swords by treading 

 on them after a blow. 



X The word Aryan has now been generally adopted to signify the race to 

 which F. Schegel, in the early dawn of this science, gave the name of Indo- 

 Germanic, which was afterwards extended to Indo-European. Erin and Iran, 

 the native names respectively of Ireland and Persia, contain the root of tbis word 

 Aryan, which is said to signify noble, and which is connected with that widely- 

 diffused root AR to plough, from which we get the verb and the words ear, earth, 

 arable, oni, &c, &c. 



