Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1875-04-16
MISSING LINKS IN THE CHAIN OF
HUMANITY.

MISSING LINKS IN THE CHAIN OF
HUMANITY.
Prof. F. W. Putnam, Curator Of the
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology, in a paper read before the
Boston Society of Natural History, re-
ports the discovery of some very inter-
esting relics in certain caves in Ken
lucky. Salt Cave, which comprises an
important series Of su-bterranean pas.
sages, and is no great distance from
Mammoth Cave, supplied the following
articles: Remains Of rude fireplaces.
with traces Of fref; bundles of faggots
which may have served for torches or
for frewood. In some side passages
impressions of human feet, with san
dals, are found. Foot coverings made
of rush leaves, braided like the straw
sandals of China, were found, though
of a different shape. A piece of bark
cloth, nor than a foot square, woven
regularly and delicately, was also OBJ
tanned. This was died With black
stripes and darned in one r
ArrOw-points and pieces Of rope,
knotted where short lengths had been
tied together. It is thought these rel
les belong to the age of the mummy
which was discovered in that SECTION
some sixty years ago. But in what re-
mote terrestrial or human cycle shall
we place flesh on the bones recently
found in hundreds of skeletons in
Blount county, of this State, and for
more than three hundred miles down
the Tennessee river, exhumed by an
unprecedented freshet? Judging from
information obtained by u Well-in-
formed correspondent Mack, and facts
derived from other sources, We think it
highly probable that these last discoy-
cred relics are the remains Of a species
quite as extinct on u planet as those
Of the mammoth and the horse, Of
which Prof. Marsh and Others have
discovered so many. Ground washed
by the Tennessee is often called allu-
vial which is diluviaL, glacial, or still
older IN its geological relations.
Acting as a committee Of the State
Historical Society, we trust that Gen.
Kirby Smith and Prof. Stafford, Will
fix as near as may be the age and char
acter Of the earth deposits, where many
osseous remains were found. We have
seen beds of extinct giant oysters, in
elevations where it seemed impossible
or nature to have placed them. In
prehistoric times man fed largely on
these bivalves in Florida, Georgia and
elsewhere; but were these primitive b.
peds who might properly be called mem
as well as primitive oysters and print
tive horses on this continent, at the
time when the elephant, mastodon and
rhinoceros roamed over our plains? In
the, caves Of France and Italy man has
lefthis bones aud stone hammers side
by side with those Of the cave-bear and
other extinct q~uadrupeds. In some in.
stances stones have been used to crack
the bones of large animals TO facilitate
the extraction of their marrow. Human
bones have been treated in the same
way for a similar purpose.
The white man was then in his
paJeolithic age; but who knows when or
how the first link in the chain Of hui
mainly was forged? Prescott, the his
toriau, describes the remains Of a canal
five hundred miles In length, in Mex.
CO, constructed to irrigate cultivated
land, and long used for that purpose.
We know nothing, or next to nothing, |
Of the peoples who long preceded us on
American soil. The a~borigines discov-
cred by Columbus had never seen a
horse, and supposed that he and his
rider were one animal. While no a
tive horse has been found in North or
South America, fourteen species Of ex-
tinct horses have been discovered, and
probably not one part in a thousand of
the area Of the two continents has been
fully explored. Every year develops
new and most suggestive facts relating
to organic nature, with man'ati its head.
His n~ever-ending growth can no more
cease than the earth can stop turning
on its axis, or going round the sunonce
a year. In time, the whole continent
will pass down into the sea as mud in
the Mississippi and other rivers.
This ocean Of mud never stops flow
ing down stream, and never returns to
repair the waste Of hills, plains and
mountains. Man has hardly begun to
study time, space, motion, numbers,
and natural law; yet aside from these
distractions, where IS his humanity?
Humanity is a phenomenon very promi-
nent in q mass Of phenomena. In the
chain of his predecessors, man viii yet
discover thousand missing links.
Quatrefages is engaged on a work en-
titled "Crania of the Human Races"
and recently laid before the Paris
Academy of Sciences a synopsis of the
results which, he there proposes to es-
tabIsh. He Is using no less than
four thousand skulls, and acknowledges
the valuable assistance Of eminent
sarans Of Franceand the rest of Europe.
He holds that the fossil races are not
extinct, but that, on the contrary, they
have yet living representatives, charac-
terized by natural development. In
one sense, life has never become ex-
tinct, for on the whole species, genera
and varieties have increased in num-
bcrs, and multiplied IN individuals.
Blu if we say parents die while their
offspring live genera do likewise.