Prehistoric history

“ The investigations carried on in mounds and caves and tombs and lake-dwellings, the collection of early stone and bronze implements, and of human skulls and bones found along with those of other animals, have thrown a great deal of new light upon primitive man, his way of life, and his migrations from one region to another. As history proper has been carried back many centuries beyond its former limit, so has our knowledge of prehistoric times been extended centuries above the furthest point to which history can now reach back. ”

“ The evidence of an extended past for man is not, however, wholly of a geological nature, though these have been the ones principally relied on. The archæologist to-day summons to his aid the science of language, studies into the origin of civilization and the comparison of the different races of men, and derives from each and all of these concurrent testimony as to a vast, shadowy, and profound antiquity for man, one stretching way beyond the dawn of history, far into the very night of time. ”

“ Nor does there appear to be any reason why those methods of examination which have proved so successful in geology, should not also be used to throw light on the history of man in prehistoric times. Archæology forms, in fact, the link between geology and history. But, while other animals leave only teeth and bones behind them, the men of the earliest ages are to be studied principally by their works; they have left behind them houses, tombs, fortifications, temples, implements for use, and ornaments for decoration. ”

“ Everything betokens the close of the long Pagan era which we have followed down from that remote dawn of archæological annals in which we catch the first dim traces of the aboriginal Briton mingled among alluvial relics of strange animal life, to the commencement of authentic written history and inscriptions, preparatory to a new period of which our own century forms a part. ”

“ It remains here to deal generally with the early conditions of the prehistoric ancient world in their broader aspects, which constitute the starting-place for the archaeologist in various parts of the world at different times, and the foundations of our present understanding of the primitive epochs in the history of man. ”

“ Culture and Civilization
In the absence of positive chronology, every student of the pre-history of man will recognize the necessity of having some convenient method of tabulating the recorded phenomena in their order of succession, as geologists have so successfully done by collating fossils, and other organic remains, with the superposition of strata. ”

“ The difference between the culture of the Neolithic and the Iron Age is great, but it is simply a development, the result of a gradual growth. Civilization and history have only hastened this growth. If we look around us to-day we can trace the elements of our civilization back through the eras of history, and though the faint beginning of some can be noticed, yet many of them come down to us from prehistoric times. We have treated of these early people in the three stages of culture known as the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages. ”

“ HOW PREHISTORIC MANKIND IS REVEALED
Most of our knowledge of the earliest life of man has been revealed by the excavator. When at a certain depth below the earth’s surface the skeleton of a man is found, surrounded with rude stone weapons, ornaments, and the remains of domestic animals, a whole chapter in the life of Prehistoric Man stands revealed at one glance. Our photograph shows an actual skeleton and grave of the Stone Age, as discovered in the year 1875 near Mentone. ”

“ The science of archeology has contributed to our knowledge some of the most fascinating chapters in culture history, for it has brought to light, from the night of the past, periods of human development hitherto unrecorded. As the paleontologist through his method has revealed faunas whose like were formerly unknown to the naturalist, the archeologist by the use of the same method of research has resurrected extinct phases of culture that have attained a high development and declined before recorded history began. ”

“ We must not forget that these are the antiquities of our own country; that the broken archæological fragments we pick up will, when put together, give us a knowledge of tribes that lived here when civilization was struggling into being in the East. It should be to us far more interesting than the history of the land of the Pharaohs, or of storied Greece. Yet, strange to say, the facts we have just mentioned are unknown to the mass of our people. Accustomed to regard this as the New World, they have turned their attention to Europe and the East when they would learn of prehistoric times. ”

“ In a zoological point of view they include man and the existing races of animals, as well as extinct races which appear to have been contemporaneous with indigenous species. To the archæologist they are rich in records of that primeval transition in which the beginnings of history lie. How early in that closing geological epoch man appeared, or how late into that archæological era the extinct fossil mammals survived, are the two independent propositions which the sister sciences have to establish and reconcile. ”

“ The term prehistoric, invaluable to anthropologists since Professor Daniel Wilson introduced it more than thirty years ago, stretches back from times just outside the range of written history into the remotest ages where human remains or relics, or other more indirect evidence, justifies the opinion that man existed. Far back in these prehistoric periods, the problem of Quaternary man turns on the presence of his rude stone implements in the drift gravels and in caves, associated with the remains of what may be called for shortness the mammoth-fauna. ”

“ Tested by the canons of prehistoric archæology, superposition, association, and style, in the judgment of the writer the fact of the existence of palæolithic man upon this continent, and the distinction between the rude palæolithic implement and the skilfully chipped obsidian objects which belong to what is called in Europe the Solutré type (a development of the later period in the early stone age, which cannot be overlooked in discussing the question of the antiquity of man) , are truths as firmly established as any taught by modern science. ”

“ In order to understand the place of the Dinosaurs in world-history, we must first get some idea of the length of geologic periods and the immense space of time separating one extinct fauna from another.
The Age of Man. Prehistoric time, as it is commonly understood, is the time when barbaric and savage tribes of men inhabited the world but before civilization began, and earlier than the written records on which history is based. ”

“ In 1851 Professor Daniel Wilson, in his Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, first brought into use the designation “prehistoric” as expressing “the whole period disclosed to us by means of archæological evidence, as distinguished from what is known through written records; and in this sense the term was speedily adopted by the archæologists of Europe.” [1610] Eleven years later he published his Prehistoric Man: Researches into the [377] origin of civilization in the old and new world. ”

“ These chapters deal exclusively with a period believed to have long preceded written history, and of which we possess no other records than those that have been garnered in the grave, wherein is "no knowledge," or chance-found amid the alluvium and peat-mosses, in which the geologist discerns many evidences of antiquity, but from which he has yet failed to deduce any defined measure that will help us to their age. Still we have found, in the ruder productions of the primitive period, that the simplest works of man bear some ineffaceable traces of his intelligence. ”

“ FINDS, a term recently applied by English archæologists to deposits of objects connected with human life, and sometimes associated with human remains, but of prehistoric or unknown origin. The chief aim of scientific research in regard to them is to ascertain the historical relation and condition of the human beings which they represent. As the development of civilization is not a uniform process, the discovery of a few objects made and used by a prehistoric tribe is not a sufficient index to the exact place of that tribe in history. ”

“ As, however, the truths of geology became gradually formulated into a science, and men's minds got accustomed to apply the new methods of research to the elucidation of the origin and history of the human race, the sphere of prehistoric archæology became equally well defined. ”

“ The group of phenomena with which it attempts to grapple occupies a sort of neutral territory or borderland between geology and history proper, from both of which, however, it receives large nutrient offshoots. The essential element which characterises the science of prehistoric archæology is an inductive process which depends on the clearness and precision with which the most primitive remains of human art and industries can be identified. ”

“ The stage in European history we are thus called upon to inspect is known by the name Neolithic Age, so-called because a new and improved mechanical principle then came into general use, viz. the art of polishing stone implements by rubbing them with some hard material, so as to give them a sharper cutting edge than was possible by the old process of chipping. How far we have travelled in time to reach this phase of culture we cannot say in so many years, or centuries, or even millenniums. ”

“ This vast period of time, which includes the beginning, is known among geologists as Archean time.
From the close of this age, the history of life properly commences. It might be well to explain the means which the geologist uses to interpret the history of the globe. It is now understood that the forces of nature have always produced the same results as they do now. From the very earliest time to the present, rocks have been forming. ”

“ Viewing Archæology as one of the most essential means for the elucidation of primitive history, it has been employed here chiefly in an attempt to trace out the annals of our country prior to that comparatively recent medieval period at which the boldest of our historians have heretofore ventured to begin. ”

“ Everything we are concerned with goes back to the time before men learned to write. That is the prehistorian’s job—to find out what happened before history began.
17
THE CHANGING WORLD in which Prehistoric Men Lived
Mankind, we’ll say, is at least a half million years old. ”

“ If, as above seen, the study of human origins is largely a geological problem, the investigation of the later developments, during the Metal Ages and prehistoric times, belongs mainly to the field of Archaeology. ”

“ With such well-authenticated and altogether indisputable evidence already in our possession, the additions made to our grounds for belief in the antiquity of the prehistoric dawn of Britain or Europe do not materially affect the conclusions thereby involved, though they add to the apparent duration of the human era. ”

“ In that primeval transition of the ethnologist in which geology draws to a close, and archæology has its beginning, amid all the rudeness of palæolithic art, we may still recognise the rational lord of creation, the being endowed, not with physical but moral supremacy; in whom intelligence and accumulated experience were to prove more than a match for all the brute force of those gigantic mammalia so familiar to us now in fossil disclosures of the drift-gravels and cave-earth. ”

“ This geological claim for a vast antiquity of the human race is supported by the similar claims of prehistoric archaeology and the science of culture, the evidence of all three departments of inquiry being intimately connected, and in perfect harmony.
During the last half century, the fact has been established that human bones and objects of human manufacture occur in such geological relation to the remains of fossil species of elephant, rhinoceros, hysena, bear, &c., as to lead to the distinct inference that man already existed during the ancient period of these now extinct mammalia. ”

“ As we have now spent some time in tracing out the culture of these early ages, it may be well to see if there are any means at our command to determine the absolute chronology of the various ages. At the very outset of our inquiry, we shall perceive that we have no such class of facts as guided our investigations into the age of the Paleolithic remains. ”

“ Nowhere else has the prehistoric, the whole problem of man's antiquity, been studied with such thoroughness and with such happy results. Of the nearly one hundred years since prehistoric archeologv began to take shape and to grow into what is now becoming a real science, no decade has shown a more satisfactory record than the one just closed. ”

“ According to this theory, then, the Glacial Age commenced about two hundred and twenty thousand years ago. It continued, with one interruption of mild climate, for one hundred and forty thousand years, and finally passed away eighty thousand years ago.
What shall we say to these results? If true, what a wonderful antiquity is here unfolded for the human race, and what a wonderful lapse of time is included in what is known as the Paleolithic Age! How strikingly does it impress upon our minds the slow development of man! ”

“ These closing essays have impressed on us clearly and distinctly the isolation of the Paleolithic Age. When we reflect on its prolonged duration, its remoteness in time, and its complete severance from the Neolithic and succeeding ages, we are almost ready to wonder whether they were indeed human beings. But beginning with the Neolithic Age, we come to our own era. ”