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Preface
- The University of Alabama Press
- Chapter
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PREFACE. Pre-historic man has for some time excited a justifiable interest not only among men of science but among men of intelligence everywhere. The first revelations in regard to the co-existence of man with extinct animals were received not only with surprise but with natural incredulity. Soon, however, proofs of such weight multiplied, that doubt became no longer reasonable, and we are now able to assert with confidence that, at a period from which we are separated by many centuries, man inhabited the earth, already old at the time of his appearance. The length of this period can be measured by no chronology, no calculation can compute it, history and tradition are silent with regard to it; and it is only by the study of works which may be almost termed stupendous, and by the most careful reasoning that traces of pre-historic man have been followed up through an almost fabulous past and some idea has been gained of the rude pioneers who were the ancestors of the human race. With some probability Asia has been fixed upon as the primceval cradle of humanity, from which by successive migrations, during an incalculable period, man spread to the uttermost parts of the Old W orId. At an epoch not far distant, men probably derived from the same source, made their appearance in the New W orId, wandering on the shores of either ocean. Like their nomad contemporaries of the other hemisphere they knew no shelter save that afforded by nature in her forests and rocks. Rudely shaped stones served them alike for tools and weapons and their social condition was paralleled by that known for their European contemporaries under the name of the Stone age. In accordance with a universal law of x PREFACE Nature now well recognized, men alike in habits, physique, and mental culture, though in the midst of most diverse conditions of fauna, flora, and climate, were traversing the forests of India and the frigid regions of the north, chasing the reindeer or the bear on the banks of the Delaware or the Mississippi as well as along the Thames or the Seine. Nor is this all; the inhabitants of distant continents passed through strictly analogous phases of culture. The nomads were succeeded by sedentary tribes who settled by the banks of rivers or the shores of ocean, wherever the bounty of the waters afforded subsistence. Shell-heaps and kitchen middens bear witness to the long duration of their sojourn. Centuries passed, new wants were fcIt,