THE FIRST MEN: 



THEIR EPOCH, HABITAT AND CRANIA. 

 By Stephen" C. Hutchixs. 



[Read before the Albany Institute, February 15, 1881.] 



Thn subject which I propose for consideration this evening is one 

 which is attracting general attention, and the solution of which is 

 engaging the critical examination of the most eminent scientific iii- 

 Testigators. My purpose is to gather together the sum of present 

 knowledge concerning the first men, free from detail, and to connect 

 it with certain hypotheses ; the whole forming what it seems to mc is 

 the provisional answer men are preparing to give to questions concern- 

 ing the epoch, habitat and crania of their original ancestors. I trust 

 I shall not be deemed presumptuous in presenting for your considera- 

 tion so intricate and involved a problem, for I shall assume that when 

 scientific men have thoroughly explored the accessible sources of knowl- 

 edge, the results of their investigations are to be accepted as the best 

 attainable truth, if not as actually the truth itself. At the same time 

 I shall feel at liberty to disregard conjecture, or even hypothesis, and 

 to supply suppositions of my own, in cases where it seems necessary to 

 do so, in order to preserve the continuity of the provisional history 

 which I shall briefly outline, subject to verification. 



Among the sources of our knowledge we ascribe high authority to the 

 book of Genesis. While we do this, however, we must at the same time 

 carefully distinguish between the book itself and its interpretations. 

 It is within the memory of most of us that it was regarded as heresy 

 to deny that the earth was created in six days of twenty-four hours 

 each. Now, this construction »of the ancient record has been cast aside, 

 and there has been no better use found for the vast number of printed 

 volumes enforcing it than to grind them into pulp again, perchance to 

 afford the white pages upon which to print a history of creation far 

 more in harmony with the character of the great Author whose press 

 has been the forces of the universe, the leaves of whose work have been 

 the stratified rocks of the earth, and whose types have been the fossi- 

 lized remains of flora and fauna, ranging from the tiniest, most simple 

 and most delicate to the largest, most complex and most ponderous. 

 As we have cast into heaps of literary rubbish the interpretations which 

 men were once arrogant enough to claim as the only literal and author- 

 ized version of a revealed account of creation, so one must discard the 

 crude constructions of the antediluvian portion of the narrative, and 



