Rouge and Mariette Bey, has led to
the accurate classification of the monuments of Egypt. The deciphering
of the cuneiform inscriptions has given us the dates of the palaces of
Nineveh and Babylon; the interpretation by savants of other
inscriptions has made known to us those Hittites whose formidable
power at one time extended as far as the Mediterranean, but whose
name had until quite recently fallen into complete oblivion. The
rock-hewn temples and the yet more strange dagobas of India now
belong to science. Like the sacred monuments of Burmah and
Cambodia they have been brought down to comparatively recent dates;
and though the palaces of Yucatan and Peru still maintain their reserve,
we are able to fix their dates approximately, and to show that long
before their construction North America was inhabited by races, one of
which, known as the Mound Builders, left behind them gigantic
earthworks of many kinds, whilst another, known as the Cliff Dwellers,
built for themselves houses on the face of all but inaccessible rocks.
Comparative philology has enabled us to trace back the genealogies of
races, to determine their origin, and to follow their migrations. Burnouf
has brought to light the ancient Zend language, Sir Henry Rawlinson
and Oppert have by their magnificent works opened up new methods of
research, Max Muller and Pictet in their turn by availing themselves of
the most diverse materials have done much to make known to us the
Aryan race, the great educator, if I may so speak, of modern nations.
To one great fact do all the most ancient epochs of history bear witness:
one and all, they prove the existence in a yet more remote past of an
already advanced civilization such as could only have been gradually
attained to after long and arduous groping. Who were the inaugurators
of this civilization? Who ware the earliest inhabitants of the earth? To
what biological conditions were they subject? What were the physical
and climatic conditions of the globe when they lived? By what flora
and fauna were they surrounded? But science pushes her inquiry yet
further. She desires to know the origin of tire human race, when, how,
and why men first appeared upon the earth; for from whatever point of
view he is considered, man must of necessity have had a beginning.
We are in fact face to face with most formidable problems, involving
alike our past and future; problems it is hopeless to attempt to solve by
human means or by the help of human intelligence alone, yet with
which science can and ought to grapple, for they elevate the soul and
strengthen the reasoning faculties. Whatever may be their final result,
such studies are of enthralling interest. "Man," said a learned member
of the French Institute, "will ever be for man the grandest of all
mysteries, the most absorbing of all objects of contemplation."[1]
Let us work our way back through past centuries and study our remote
ancestors on their first arrival upon earth; let us watch their early
struggles for existence! We will deal with facts alone; we will accept
no theories, and we must, alas, often fail to come to any conclusion, for
the present state of prehistoric knowledge rarely admits of certainty.
We must ever be ready to modify theories by the study of facts, and
never forget that, in a science so little advanced, theories must of
necessity be provisional and variable.
Truly strange is the starting-point of prehistoric science. It is with the
aid. of a few scarcely even rough-hewn flints, a few bones that it is
difficult to classify, and a few rude stone monuments that we have to
build up, it must be for our readers to say with what success, a past
long prior to any written history, which has left no trace in the memory
of man, and during which our globe would appeal to have been subject
to conditions wholly unlike those of the present day.
The stones which will first claim our attention, some of them very
skilfully cut and carefully polished, have been known for centuries.
According to Suetonius, the Emperor Augustus possessed in his palace
on the Palatine Hill a considerable collection of hatchets of different
kinds of rock, nearly all of them found in the island of Capri, and which
were to their royal owner the weapons of the heroes of mythology.
Pliny tells of a thunder-bolt having fallen into a lake, in which
eighty-nine of these wonderful stones were soon afterwards found.[2]
Prudentius represents ancient German warriors as wearing gleaming
CERAUNIA on their helmets; in other countries similar stones
ornamented the statues of the gods, and formed rays about their
heads.[3]
A subject so calculated to fire the imagination has of course not been
neglected by the poets. Claudian's verses
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