Ashtabula weekly telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1880-1886, 1880-03-26

some HnotWAhbloMh On tNO AOhaAuib ANe
Of Man.
WE have been so long accustomed to
look upon man as a creature Of yester-
day that Il almost takes our breath
away even 10 be told that he probably
preceded the glacial epoch some two
hundred thousand years ago. But then
to be asked to believe that the pre-
glacial men themselves were compare
lively late and half-civilized specimens
of humanity is perhaps too much for our
weak faith. Yet the Able Bourgeois
has found clue which may possibly
help to bridge over the gap and to lead
us into embracing even this last and
most difficult clause in the modern
scientific creed. In the calcaire de
Beauce, French miocene stratum, the
fearless able has ventured to discover
flint objects which he believes to be hui
man OF semi-buman implements. They
consist of flakes, not chipped off by a
blow like the paleolitbic knives, but
apparently split by means of fire.
Specimens of these presumed flint
weapons were exhibited at the AM
thropological Congress at Paris last
year, and were allowed by many ex-
perts to look suspiciously like the handi-
craft of man. Even earlier than the
Able Bourgeois discovery bones had
been observed at st. Prest which ap-
peared as though they had been cut
with sharp instrument primeval
stone hatchet. But, If these observa-
tions are really correct, then we must
push back the first appearance of man,
or, at least, OF q weapOn-making
animal, far into the past of the
tertiary formations. The time which
elapsed between the Miocene or
Pliocene periods and the days of
the fint-chippers must be reckoned, in
all probability, not by hundreds of
thousands, but by millions of years. l
cannot pretend that these data are
very certain, but, at any rate, when we
consider the many marks of compare
| lively high cultivation exhibited by
pal@olithic man, they need not be re-
regarded as preposterous or extrava-
giant. Just as we know little about the
previous history of man during the
time which precedes our glimpse OF
his existence in the paleolithic stage,
so we know little about him in the long
interval which separates that stage
from the all but historical neolithic
period. The glacial epoch seems to
have swept away almost the whole
fauna, and a large part of the flora, OF
northern Europe, and with it the black
fellows who worked the flints of AK.
mouth and of st. Acheul. For about
one hundred and fifty thousand years,
roughly speaking, England and the op-
posite continent seem to have been un.
inhabited by the human race. When
next we find traces of mans occupa.
tion, in the neolithic burial-grounds
man had progressed to far higher
grade of practical arts, and the face oi
the European fauna had entirely al
tered. The great river-horses, mann.
moths, elks and reindeer were gone
and in their place roamed the familiar
denizens of our modern forests. The
Mongolian or Eukarian inhabitant:
were men who used exquisitely
polished hatchets of green stone
whose material was brought by
regular commerce from the dis.
tant Kuen-Lun Mountains of Cen
tral Asia. They knew how TO make
pottery; they dwelt in regular and we'll
built villages; they buried their dead il
splendid tumuli. They had fixed gov
ernment by ehieftains, for whom these
tumuli were raised. They had reached
at least one great religious idea, that o.
human Immortality; for beside the
corpses of their chieftains they PLACED
the weapons and ornaments which the,
would need in the other world. Thel
j lived mainly or entirely upon their do
:. mesticated animals-the cow, sheep
pig and goat. They trained the dol
to assist them in their hunting expedi
tions. They cultivated wheat and bar
ley, which they crushed with corn
breakers into rough meal. They ever
titled flax and wOve from it coarse liner
cloth. Such regular government, set
tied communities, fixed kingship, relig
! ious belief, domestication of animal
and advanced tillage show, of course
that immense strides in civilization ha,
been made between the two periods
The men who came back to Northern
Europe in the neolithic epoch must hay
been developing and improving for age
elsewhere before they could have reach
ed so high type Of culture. We d
! not yet know where the intermediat
stages were passed. and it may perhap
! happen that no record of the passag
!, from the clipped-hint stage to the pol
, ished-stone stage anywhere exists. Blu
when the rest of the world has been a
: thoroughly explored as Northwestern
, Europe we may reasonably hope 70
! some further light upon the inteTmedi
/ Of eNnng Dos.,,bsH NFyro,-ss,s I..f"Ha|s" .