Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1881-11-21
8eligious department.
THE PREHISTORIC MAN.


curious to see how many of the biblical |
statements which we're once sneered at
as inconsistent with science have In the |
end been confirmed by science when she
has been more fully developed and es-
tablished Not long since, for example,
some of the evolutionists were quite
sure that Moses had blundered in rep !
resenting Adam as both intellectual
and pure hearted, and that the "wise
man" was in fact very foolish when he
declared "God hath made man up
right, but they have wrought out many
inventions On the contrary the orig
inal state of man aOaS, in their estima-
ton, brutal and barbarous. and out of
the primitive savage has been develop
ed, by the law of the survival of the
fttest" and other agencies, the present
splendid specimens of humanity with
their large brains, and generous hearts,
and Incompatible arts of civilization.
But unfortunately for this theory two
great lines of science are showing that
man, SO far as his career can be posi-
lively traced, has often developed down
ward instead of upward, or to put it in
the words of Alfred Russell Wallace
"Our existing savages are the success
ors of higher races" The prehistoric
man, instead of being miserable and
degraded animal, was in many instances
he thinks, being equal in intellectual
capacities to ourselves, and possessed of
a skull that might have belonged to
philosopher" The first proof of this is
found in archaeological remains. In one
of the Pacific Islands called "Easter,"
now inhabited by beastial tribes, are
immense stone images whose construc-
tion required aesthetic taste and knowl-
edge of mechanical forces; in Ohio are
found old and extensive Notifications
and sacred Enclosures Indicative of a
vast population in a far off antiquity
and of their familiarity with the princi-
pies of geometry; in Egypt the great
Pyramid with its perfect masonry, its
marvels of skillful construction and con-
formity to mathematical relations, stands
as an unanswerable exponent of the SUI
periority of the prehistoric man. And
now DR.. Arthur Mitchell is out with an
intensely interesting work, calling at
tention to the deep significance of many
similar remains. "The poor people, %
he says, "who squat round the ruins of
Copan and Palenque are incapable Of
understanding how their forefathers
erected those marvels of architecture
so great with them is this fall from a
high estate.
The astonishing "fnds" of Schlienanr
in the Troad and Mycene, and of Gen
di Cesnola in the tombs of Cyprus. tel
the same story. We cannot here en-
large upon the evidences of these arch
geological remains but we are able tt
say, in the words of the author jus
quoted, that all discoveries hilbert,
made show that the prehistoric man wa
as good physically as the historic man
and if the size of the head be taken a
test, as good also Intellectually. Vol
Martius, the distinguished authority Oh
American Ethnology, concludes that th
savage tribes whose ancient relics he s
carefully studied, had fallen away fror
higher state of civilization. Vo
Humboldt held the same opinion. Th
savage state is not the dawning of sc
ciety about to rise, but rather 1--WE cor
dense his words) the fading remains c
one sinking amid storms, overthrow
and shattered by overwhelming cata'
trophies. To add but one more author
ty: 1.-The famous historian, Niebuhr,
also recorded to have strongly express
ed his full conviction that all savage
are the degenerate remnants of mo-
civilized races, which had been owe
thrown by enemies and driven to tai
refuge in woods, there to wander, see
ing precarious subsistence till thu
had forgotten most of the arts of settl,
life and sunk into wild state"
The other line of evidences is four
in the science of PhiloIogy. Moffe
who spent twenty-five years in Afric
found tribe who had no word expire,
ing the idea of Supreme Being. Up
careful inquiry, however, he discover
an old man who remembered havi
heard when boy word that indicat
such an idea. Thus the tribe wor
appear to have been going downwa
evermore into vice and animalism, pt
and simply, until, having by degr
lost the thought of Supreme Bel
they had at last dropped the wo
that once conveyed this thought, emit
ly out of use and memory. Archbish,
Whately and Trench both found
philology similar grounds for concl
ing that mans evolution had been fl
the higher to the lower, instead of fl
the lower to the higher, forms of
and culture and happiness. Profes
Max Muller. by his researches into {