Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1917-03-09
By GARRETT P. SERvISS.

1t is not many years ago that the
horizon of human history, as seen by
all but a few eyes, extended only four
or five thousand years behind us. An
Gent Egypt and Babylonia seemed to
most readers to be dimmed with the
mists of almost measureless antiquity.
"As old as the Pyramids" was a
phrase that produced on the mind the
same effect as the discovery of a
moldering tombstone i'll forgotten
graveyard.
The statement that Adam lived
5000 years ago had about it the ven
erableness OF incredible age. The
orators tongue hung upon and mo-
mentously heightened out, the re-
sounding syllables: "Six-Thousand
Years" until they seemed to echo
from the abysm of profoundest time
1t was not difficult to believe that
man might have lived in a Garden
of Eden and talked with angels SO
long ago as that.
But within few years past the dis
coveries Of archaeology have thrown
human history so much farther back
that Egypt, Chaldea, Adam, Noah and
all that was formerly looked upon
as representing the extreme of an.
tiqu:y seem to be persons and things
of~yesterday. Twenty-Five thousand
years is very moderate estimate
of the length of the backward leap
that has been taken from the remot-
est verge of the stage of hitherto
recorded history into the darkness oil
the prehistoric ages.
The adventurous leapers into the
abyss have found solid ground un.
der their feet cleaning with dusty
riches. At one stroke, almost, they
have more than doubled, and perhaps
tripled or quadrupled the range OF
human records on this planet.
The footsteps of man-not man.
monkey, but man-thinker-can now
be seen extending backward until
they disappear under the glittering
front of the Great Ice Age. The
sting of the glaciers breath was still
in the air when men began to adorn
the caverns of the Pyrenees and the
Cantabrian mountains with rock
paintings and frescoes, some of which
are as fresh today as in their prime.
The makers OF these pictures were
familiar with bisons, reindeer, mann
moths, cave-bears and other animals
long since extinct or unseen by man
in that part of the earth since history
began to be written or inscribed.
Every year, now, sees some advance
in this uncoyering of the ancientest
of all history, and each new discov-
cry increases the wonder. Remem.
Der tina this is the man of the old Stone
Age, Palaeolithic man who has done
and left these things. The world
that he looked out upon was in many
ways different from the world that
we see today. The climate was diff.
erent, the scenery was different, the
animals and plants around him were,
in many cases, different.
Yet he was essentially, potentially
the equal of historic man. His kind
has already developed several dis
tinct races, and one Of these, whose
bones and skulls have been found
was in appearance so like some OF
the strongest and most intellectual
races of today that it is startling to
look upon their reconstructed figures
and faces, as psychologists have been
able to present them to us.
This was the Cro-Magnon race
Go and look in the Museum OF Ma.
tural History, at the models of these
wonderful countenances which have
come peering out of the past to show
us that tens of thousands of year:
ago man was already clutching al
the edges of the high plateau OF pro
gress on which we now stand, ant
from which we are going to clint
still higher as the ages roll on.
Sir Arthur Evans, the discovers
of the palace of King Minos anc
the Cretan Labyrinth, speaking be
fore the British Association for thu
Advancement of Science on the re
cent advances of archaeological