News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1882-05-25
THE AGES OF SILENCE.
The Men who Occupied the Earth
In Early Days.


The Men who Occupied the Earth
In Early Days.
Mr.. John Fiske, formerly a lecturer
and assistant librarian at Harvard Uni
versity, and the author of the most
noteworthy and valuable American
work on the philosophy of evolution,
has lately turned his attention to the
scientific study of history in its broader
aspects. His paper on the Carnival of
Man in Europe, published in the May
number of the atlantic Monthly, is one
of the results of his labor in this field of
research, and is remarkable for some of
the conclusions it suggests.
For his facts, of course, he has to
depend upon others. He takes what
Croll and Geikie and Dawkins tells us
about the physical and geological
changes which the earth has undergone
and the traces left by primitive man
upon or under its surface. From their
statements he constructs clear and
concise account of the arrival of man
kind in Europe. Beginning at the close
of a period of which the fossils in the
rocks furnish the only knowledge we
now possess, he finds that four races of
men have successfully dwelt in Euro
pean lands. First in order of time were
the men of the River Drift, who lived
wholly by hunting, and used only
Clipped stone implements of the rudest
sort. They were contemporary with
the rhinoceros in Western Europe,
where a sub-tropical climate must then
have prevailed. In the glacial period
which followed came the so. called Cave
men, now represented only by the Es-
quimaux. They possessed finer tools
and weapons than their predecessors,
yet of nothing but Clipped stone. "A
remarkable artistic sense seems to have
been developed among them. They
made pictures with sharp pointed fints
on the antlers of reindeer and on bones
and stones, outlined with remarkable
accuracy, and reproducing the distinct
i've characteristics in form of the various
animals with which they were familiar.
To the Cave men succeeded third
race, which Mr.. Fiske calls the Iber-
ians. These were the men of the Neo-
Hthic Or new stone age. They sharp
ened their stone implements not simply
by chipping, but by grinding SO that
the introduction of the grindstone must
be regarded as an important step in
human progress. The men of the new
stone age were farmers and weavers, as
well as hunters; they built houses and
boats, and made pottery and there is
reason to believe that they had some
idea of an existence after death. To this
race the Jake dwellers of Switzerland
are supposed to have belonged. Their
modern representatives are the swarthy
Basque inhabitants of Spain.
Finally came from Central Asia the
fourth and last race, the tall, fair COM
plexioned Aryans, who intermarried
with the darker Iberians, and together
with them became the progenitors of
the modern peoples of Europe.
When did these successive invasions
respectively begin? The earliest race,
the men of the River Drift, certainly
preceded the glacial period of the age
which biologists term the Pleistocene.
That age began 24O,0 years ago, and
Mr.. Fiske is evidently inclined to think
that human beings had inhabited Europe
at least 100, 600 years earlier. He thus
ascribes to our race an antiquity of not
less than 400, 900 years.
In this enormous length of time he
finds an argument in favor of the theory
of evolution, according to which man
is but the Development of non-human
race of creatures resembling the man
like apes.
eve see man living on the earth for
perhaps half million years, to all in
tents and purposes dumb, leaving none
but o geological record of his existence,
progressing with infinite slowness and
difficulty, making no history. Yet his
geologic record is not quite like that of
the dog or the ape, who could not chip
a flint, and in the incised antlers of the
Cave men we see the first faint CLEANS
of the divine intelligence that was by
and by to shine forth with the glories
of Michael Angelo. We cannot but
suppose that during those long dumb
ages through infinite hardship, and
through the stern regimen of deadly
competition and natural selection, man
was slowly. but surely acquiring that
intellectual life which was at last to
bloom forth in history, and which has
made him the crown and glory of the
universe
But if these long ages of silence were
needed to bring man from the animal
to the spiritual, from the mere beast to
the philosopher, the saint, or even the
skeptic, what becomes of the doctrine
of Immortality? Does modern science
demand that we shall reject the idea of
a life beyond the grave? If not, tell us
at what period of his development the
ape-like being from which man sprung
first acquired the attribute of immortal
life? No one will pretend that he
could have possessed it at the begin
ming.
The eloquent words which we have
quoted from Mr.. Fishes article sug-
gest questions which no man can answer
satisfactorily.
An English Princess.
The Princess Beatrice alone remains