The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-03-04
SUNDAY.

To my mind graveyards are the
greatest repositories of knowledge in
all the world and those who occupy
them the most learned professors. For
thousands of years the origin and
birthplace of one of the greatest
branches of the human race remained
a profound secret and the schools OF
the ages have disputed over it and the
secret was not revealed until recent
times and then only thrOug1 the graves
Of our ancestors. The cold skeletons
and the grinning skulls of our ancient
forefathers have given us the key to
many mysteries and have told us a
story that is fascinating beyond artic-
ulate expression.
One school of thought and investi-
CATION held that the Aryans had their
cradle in one part of Asia while anoth-
er held that it was in that part. They
wasted a Niagara of ink over the con-
troversy and fought it out bitterly
from the banks of the Gauges to the
mouth of the shannon. Then, in recent
years, came a man who had true
conception of the art of obtaining
knowledge upon the subject and he
obtained it, as all true scholars must
obtain knowledge, by digging for it.
He laid down his pen, took up his
spade and opened up the mounds and
barrows and other tumuli of the world.
In the long barrows of British
Europe he found men who were buried
in the paleolithic age-that cold and
rigid period which began something
like a quarter of a million years ago.
They were men who lived in caves and
chased the mammoth and the woody
rhinoceroS with weapons of unpol1sh-
ed stone. These were the 1berians,
supposed to be the original tenants or
the British Isles. he dug IN the e BROAD
BarroWs near by and found different
race-the Celts. The former were
very small and to my mind and ac-
Cording to my theory were the fairies
of ancient legend. The others were
giants in comparison, their skeletons
being six feet or more. Moreover their
skulls had an index measurement of
about eighty-six while the skulls of the
Iberians had an index meaSur ement OF
only seventy-four. And it is by those
skulls that scholars are able to iden-
tify the races and to trace their migra-
lions through the ages-and, might
add-through the grave. Being my
ancestors I wished to know them bet
ter and during my recent transatlantic
visit called upon them in the great
museums of Europe. 1 met them face
to face and learned from them how
they lived and loved, what they ate
and drank what they wore and
what they thought and how they oc-
cupied Their time and enjoyed them
selves in the days of long ago-eight
The distinguished student of ethnol-
ogy who uncovered their secrets trail
ed them in their migrations with his
trusty spade. He tracked the Iberians
down through western Europe, through
France and Spain to Northern Africa
where they seemed to have paused in
their journeyings for a long period. He
found none of them in North eastern,
or eastern Europe, but, on the con-
trary he found the heavier and harder
Celt everyWh ere-apparently dominant
in every region. He found their graves
more numerOusly in Southeastern
Europe which fact led one man to ar
rive at the unique theory that the
Celts originated in Europe and that
small branch of them migrated to
Asia Whatever was their line of mi
grafton this one thing is certain that
they preserved the history of their
times in the grave and it has faithfully
been kept there for the intellectual
benefit of their descendants.
The modes of disposing of the bodies
Of the human dead have been as vari-
Gus as they are interesting and it is of
them I want to speak Religious
thought has influenced them greatly.
For instance those who believed in the
resurrection of the body at the day of
the general judgment have always
disposed of human bodies by inhuma-
tion-that is by burial in the ground.
Those who did not believe in resur-
rection had different ideas of burial.
but all of those ideas were shaped
more or less by either the religion or
the superstition of their times The
Jews and the Egyptians stood for
burial, and the latter went so far as to
preserve bodies by embalming to make
them respond more readily to the
bugle of our friend Gabriel. On the
other hand the Greeks stood for ere