The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1870-06-24
NUMBER %.
THE ORIGINAL MAN:

Does the unwritten history of our race
reach back to an antiquity incompatible
with prevalent views upon the age of
man? Here. Us elsewhere, the enemies
of revelation have sought material for
the use of unbelieyers. They have
sought in vain. There is more in the
history of primeval man that confirms
our Scriptures than there is in conflict
with them. We have persistently held
the race to be about six thousand years
old but our researches show that man
lived with the bear, hyena, mammoth,
and other animals now extinct, and
some of which became extinct on the
decline of the glacial epoch. 1t is not
claimed that man lived before the gla-
cial epoch, and theeyidences of his con-
temporaneOus existence with the reign
of ice have been shown to be fallacious.
The remains of man, reputed to have
been found in glacial drifts of the valley
of the Somme, are in truth buried in
deposits of much later date, as has been
shown by DIR. Andrews, of Chicago, as
well as by others. Man had no place
till after the reign of ice. But it has
been imagined that the close of the reign
of ice dates back perhaps a hundred
of this. The cone of: drift materials ac-
cumulated at the mouth of the Tiniere,
in which have been found human re-
mains, was estimated by Morlot to be
from ninety-six to one hundred and for
ty-three thousand years old: but DIR.
Andrews has exposed curious arith-
metical blunder, the correction of which
reduces the time to within five thousand
years. We have no rule for the meas
urement of post-tertiary time which ne
cessitates the admission of so high
ont IN mi tn .lI. Nfyn hnx- han
accustomed to think of the extinction
of the cave bear as dating back to high
antiquity, we now discover that he lived
with man, and the reindeer, and other
animals which still survive. The exist
ence of even the cave bear may not have
been so very remote. What are the rea-
sons assigned for the prevalent opinion
that it was many ages ago that the gla-
ciers began to disappear from Europe?
Simply the existence at that time of
quadrupeds now extinct, together with
the presumption, unsupported, as it
seems, by the facts, that no animals have
co-existed with man, except those of the
recent fauna. The is, we came our
selves upon the earth in time to witness
the retreat of the glaciers. They still
HngeP in the valleys of the Alps, and
along the northern shores of Europe
and Asia, while the disappearance of
animals once contemporaries of man is
still continuing. Not only did cotem-
poraries of man become extinct during
the age of stone some survived to the
twelfth, fourteenth, and sixteenth CEN
turtles, as already stated; the Moa, of
New Zealand, and the Aepiornis, of
Madagascar, have become extinct with
the epoch of tradition, as indeed has the
Mammoth of North America the Dodo,
of Mauritius, disappeared in the seven
teenth century; the great AUX, of the
Arctic regions, has not been seen for
half century and every one must be
convinced that the beaver, elk, panther,
buffalo, and other quadrupeds of North
America are approaching extinction by
perceptible steps. The fact is, we are
not so far out of the dust, and chaos
and barbarism of antiquity as we had
supposed. The very beginnings of our
race are still almost in sight. Geologic
al events, which, from the force of habit
in considering geological events, we had
imagined to be located far back in the
history of things, are found to have
TRANSFERRED at our very doors. Our own
race has witnessed the submergence of
thousands of square miles of the coast
of China, SO that the seats of ancient
capitals are now rocky isiets far at sea /;
the emergence of the ancient country of
LectOnia the drainage of the vast lake
which once overspread the prairies of
Illinois; the alterations of forests, and
many other events which we once as
ISOLATED with high antiquity. =
| There is no more reason in this day,
| than fifty years ago, to claim hundred
thousand years for the past duration of
our race WincheLPs Sketches.