Geography of the Prehistoric, 19 



Beyond it there gleams a dawn of mythology and 

 fable — but not the fable of an ape-man coming 

 up from the tribes of brutes; quite the opposite, 

 gods coming down to be heroes and men. Nor is 

 there any reason to believe that these are the 

 youngest of the nations; rather they are the oldest. 

 And some do not recede even into the twilight of 

 mythology; they are historic back to the very first, 

 scientifically and critically historic, if documentary 

 and monumental records have any value upon 

 earth. Cradle-lands such as these never had any- 

 thing to do with prehistoric races, except as bor- 

 dering on them, or as originating them, in the sense 

 which we shall explain farther on; inasmuch as 

 these are the lands which sent forth such races on 

 their melancholy wanderings, till the day should 

 come when, dead or alive, their relics would be re- 

 vealed in the far-off history of the future, and be- 

 come the subject of a science, anthropology, yet to 

 be. Alive, such relics appear in Australia and in 

 the land of the Bushman; dead, in the extinct 

 races of Canstadt, Cro-Magnon and others. 



12. The nations that stayed at home were those 

 of Egypt, Babylonia, Arabia, Persia, Phoenicia, 

 India. They were stationary in more Nations that 

 senses than one. They stayed at home, never retro- 

 and they were conservative besides. graded * 

 In consequence, they never lost so much that they 

 reached a state of savagery, or that they ever had 

 a journey to take back toward civilization. It may 



