Beaufort Republican. [volume] (Beaufort, S.C.) 1871-1873, 1873-01-30
Early Traces Of Men.

When quarrymen uncovered slabs OF
Connecticut sand stone, bearing i'm
pressions exactly like bird tracks, geol-
ogists reasonably inferred that, at the
time the rock was forming and was as
vet iut wet sand, there existed gigantic
birds or bird-hke animals, wAch strobe
along these ancient sea shores much as
beach birds do along the shores of to-
day. The fact that traces of birds had
never been found before in strata so
ancient, much less the popular theory
that birds were of later creation, did
not invalidate the inference; one posi-
tive fact, as is well known, outyalues
any amount of negative assertion, and
the old theory had to give way.
When workmen, digging canal near
Stockholm, came upon buried hearth
with charcoal on it, exactly like those
which uncivilized people now make and
use, the natural inference was that some
one of mere than brute intelligence had
lived there before the overlying earth
was deposited. Had the hearth been
slightly buried, say six feet below the
surface, there would have been no ques-
tion of its artificial origin; it would have
been accounted the work of man as
surely as if human skeleton had been
found living beside it. Should the in
ference be considered less legitimate
because there happened to be sixty feet
of earth above the hearth =? True, that
accumulation of erratic blocks and sand
and sea shells gave unmistakable evil
dence of great geological changes since
the hearth was last used-glacial action,
submergence of the land and its subse-
uuent elevation,-all involving long
periods of time; but that told not so
much against the testimony OF the
hearth as against the belief that man
was of more recent creation.
Now that such witnesses have been
multiplied to an almost infinite number,
forming a continuous chain from the
earliest historic times far back into the
tertiary period, the evidence is over.
whelming; the "alleged antiquity of
man, as it is styled by those who have
never investigated the matter, passes
from the domain Of hypothesis into the
region of demonstrated fact. The vista
Of human antiquity opened up by these
surprising discoveries is indeed vast, so
vast that even those who have most pa
tiently followed them and assisted in
their development are overwhelmed
with the thought of it. No wonder,
then, that those to whom it comes as q
sudden revelation should fatty refuse
to admit its reality.
As Mr.. Evans remarks in the closing
paragraph of his magnificent work on
the ancient stone implements, weapons
and ornaments of Great Britain, it is
impossible not to sympathize with those
who, from sheer inability to carry their
vision so far back into the dim past, and
from Inconsistencies of tbs cogency
of other (than the fossils described in
the work above vementioned) and distinct
evidence as 10 the remoteness Of the or
igin of the human race, are unwillingto
believe in so vast an antiquity for man
as must of necessity be conceded by
those who have fully and fair
" weighed the facts which modern dis
coveries have unrolled before their
eyes," Yet while we sympathize with
the natural incredulity OF those whs
lack the basis of intelligent Judgment,
we need not initiate their unreasoning
assurance in contradicting the deduc'
tions of science while refusing to exam
inc either the ground of their own con
victions or the evidence of the different
convictions of others.
The geological proofs of the antiqui'
ty of man, to which Mr.. Evans alludes,
are of threefold character
/. The association of human bones
with the bones of extinct animals, un
der conditions which prove them to be
of equal age.
Q. The signs of human action on the
bones of extinct animals: the breaking
of them to extract marrow, after the
manner of existing savages the shap
ing and polishing of them for use and
ornament; and more instructive skill
the tracing on them of the outlines o.
mammoths and ether animals now ex
tinct or driven by change of climate tc
distant parts of the earth. .
3. The discovery of wrought stone
implements, weapons and ornaments
under uni isturbed strata demonstrably
a. ,,arin5e raonbipo fo1