The anti-monopolist. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1874-1878, 1874-12-10
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
Paper Read by Ir. 7. T. Mann Be-
fore the Academy Of Natural
Sciences at the November Meeting.
st. Paul.

st. Paul.
Mr.. President-Ladies and Gentlemen Of the
Academy:
As [ write with pain on account of a
partially disabled arm. necessity has
forced me to condense as compactly as
possible what | am about to say on the
condition of primal man. To such as
have made ethnography a study, hint
IS sufficient to disclose the bearings of
long train of argument; while to such
as listen to the subject for the first
time regret to say l present them
with meagre and, | apprehend, unin-
terestlng outline skeleton.
Of all subjects which through the
long lapse Of ages have presented them
selves for consideration, no one has oc-
cupied so much of the time-world' S
thought, or has had centered about it
such variety of opinions or has evoked
such intense interest and concern as
the primeval history Of our own race.
Owing TO discoveries, both linguistic
| and geological, made within the last
half century, we are to-day enabled to
, trace out man. descent with more sat
isfactory results than could have been
done at any former period. Egyptolo-
gists had already carried back a men
tai culture in Egypt to point of time
antedating the old Testament; this
subject was interesting to the archeolo-
gist, but Of little value to the ethnolo-
gist. They simply gave the outline his
tory of civilized race or nation ex-
tracted from remaining monuments; but
failed to touch upon that indefinite lapse
Of ages which runs back from the pyr-
amlds and discovers the infantile savage
bCrrowing in the ground OF sheltered in
caverns, without fuel, agriculture or
law, but procuring precarlous subsis-
tence from the wild elements about him
1t is truly marvellous what philology
has accomplished in kindling up a
beacon light which conducts us back
ward through the stream of time for
thousands Of years with unerring GER
tainty. We now have in our libraries
the Rig Veda. the oldest book in the
world, and can read at our leisure the
thoughts, the hopes, the aspirations
and fears of people that lie so far off
upon the misty horizon Of time that we
identify them more readily with geo.
logical strata than: with the human
race. And yet when the Veda
was written man was already civilized.
Philology has now disclosed TO US per-
haps all that We may anticipate from
that quarter. We possess to-day wha.
the Emperor Akbar $50 years ago was
unable to procure-the whole Of the
sacred canon of the Buddhists; the
Brahmlnicai vedas the doctrines of
Zoroaster; of CoEfucius and Loat.se,
beside the sacred canons of the He
brewS. In fact we are enabled to trace
Aryan, the Semitic, or Turanian races,
but of course when We stop we are still
within the bounds of civilization. Com
paratlvely it may not be very high
order of civilization, but in contrast
with the lower order of savagery the
difference is unreasonable.
But in order to open the way to bet
ter understanding of the theory of pro-
EresSive evolution, (which if permitted
| hope to make the subject of future
paper,) | will this evening touch briefly
only upon two preliminary points which
1t Is proper to have fairly stated. The
one : a Legitimate subject for argument;
the other is simply fact. The argumen-
tativc subject is what was the mental
condition Of primeval man - The
subject of fact. as shall show, Is his
high antiquity.
Some writer's maintain that in his
earliest estate man possessed high de-
gree of mental culture. In fact the
field is open for them to fix, undisput-
cd, the standard high or low. But no
sooner have they done this. than they
are compelled to face a most perplex-
ing dilemma. If they fix it too low
man remains in barbarism; if they fix
it above this. and endow man with a
high grade of civilization they must &C
count for the whole theory
of degradation. You will
readily see il Is impossible for them TO
avoid meeting this question squarely.
If we admit into the highest civiliza-
ton only that fragment of the Aryan
race, which accepted theo-
logical doctrine rejected by the
Semitic people, then seventy-eight
one-hundredths of the worlds pop
ulation are still in a degraded state,
reaching from the lowest savagerv up
to limited degree of civilization. Nor
is this ALL The advocates of the deg
radiation of the human family. from a
higher to lower level. should be able
to give satisfactory reasons why. start
ing the race with a high order of INTEL
lectual culture, ii failed to make pro-
greSS in the line that progress is made
at the present day. The argument of
Lyell. the geologiSt. is certainly we'll
put. His argument is that had the
original stock of mankind been really
endowed with superior intellectual pow
erS, and possessing the same improbable
nature as their posterity, they must
have reached an extreme point of ad-
yancement. Instead of the rudest
pottery or flint tools, we should now
DC finding sculptured forms SURPRISING