22 
toner's address. 
were, at the same time in a climatic condition to sup- 
port life. The submergence and re-emergence to which 
continents have been subjected in geological times 
were doubtless dependent in some way on the pre- 
viously alluded to varying eccentricities of the earth's 
orbit, and possibly coincident with the extremes of 
heat and cold which produced the different glacial 
epochs.'^ 
The earliest records we have of the human race, lo- 
cate its genesis in Asia, near the Tropic of Cancer, and 
nearly on a parallel with the most ancient civilization 
known to history on the American continent.f 
The belief that a very early civilization, possessing 
a knowledge of the arts and a written language, existed 
in Arabia, Hindustan, and in China, is becoming a 
settled conviction among scholars, and the opinion is 
also held that there were other early nations which had 
■^Edward Hitchcock, in his illustrations of surface geology, pub- 
lished in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, says (page 
86): "We may then be quite sure of at least three depressions of the 
North American continent beneath and an equal number of eleva- 
tions above the ocean, since the fossiliferous rocks began to be 
formed." 
•j- The ruins of magnificent cities in Central America, brought prom- 
inently to the knowledge of the world by the intelligent labors of Mr. 
Stephens, was a great surprise to everybody, and particularly to those 
who had fixed opinions of the age of the world and the nations and 
peoples who had lived upon it, based on biblical chronology. "Here 
was a spectacle," says Mr. Stephens, speaking of Central America, " of 
a people skilled in architecture, sculpture, and drawing, and beyond 
doubt other more perishable arts, possessing the cultivation and re- 
finement attendant upon these, and not derived from the Old World, 
but developing and growing up here without models or masters 
having a distinctly separate, independent existence, like plants and 
fruits to the soil indigenous." 
