00000481 |
Previous | 481 of 595 | Next |
|
small (250x250 max)
medium (500x500 max)
Large
Extra Large
large ( > 500x500)
Full Resolution
All (PDF)
|
436 LWE-
which scarcely comprises the lapse of one hundred and fifty generations,
extends a space of time, certainly much longer, known to us only by pure
tradition. Then mankind, rising to a more enlarged self-consciousness,
'linked age to age by legends, poems, and symbolic formula; the reminiscences of great events, migrations, wars of races, alliances, exterminations,
and triumphs of industry, were incorporated into religion itself, and, in an
increasingly varied form, were handed down from age to age as the heritage of nations. In still more ancient times, in the dim mist of by-gone
ages, our ancestors lived the life of wild beasts in forests and caves. Tradition, no less than history, is dumb as to this epoch of the human race;
but the strata of the earth, explored in our time by geologists, are beginning to reveal to us both the existence and the customs of these ancestors
of ours long unknown to us.
To say nothing of the objects discovered at various epochs at a time
when science, still timid, refused to recognize the antiquity of man, so
many human remains and so many productions of primitive industry have
been lately met with, that, comparatively speaking, there can no longer
be any doubt as to the long duration of our species. Not only did our
ancestors inhabit forests contemporaneously with the Bos urus, now banished into the Caucasus, and in Europe represented in a few parks by one
or two specimens; but anterior to this epoch they also existed during the,
glacial period, at a time when France and Germany presented the aspect
now offered by Scandinavia, and the reindeer, now banished to the vicinity of the northern zone, frequented the glaciers of the Alps and the Pyrenees. At a still more ancient period, at an epoch when the European
climate, which must subsequently have become so much cooler, was, on
the contrary, much warmer than in the present time, the cave-men had
for their contemporaries certain species of rhinoceros and elephants which
are now extinct, and even then artists, humble predecessors of Phidias
and Raphael, endeavored to carve representations of mammoths upon
their implements which have been preserved in the earth of caves. Before this epoch man still existed, striving for mastery against a formidable enemy, the great cave-bear, representations of which he likewise left
engraved on stone; and still farther back, in the dim mist of ages, we
learn from other remains—those ofthe Elephas antiquus and meridionalis
— that our ancestors were already in being during a period whose life
was once believed to have been separated from the present era by a succession of sudden cataclysms. How many thousands or even millions of years
have elapsed since that time ? This question as yet no one can answer.*
The shape of the skull shows that the human remains found at Eyzies,
near the border of Dordogne, must have belonged to a race which even
now might be reckoned among the most beautiful of its kind: the skulls
found by M. Garrigou in the caves of Ariege, and perhaps belonging to
people ofthe historic epoch, are of very noble proportions; but the skulls
found at Engis, in Belgium, Neanderthal, in Rhenish Prussia, Borreby, in
* Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Christie, Lyell, Lubbock, Garrigou, Broca, etc.
| Title | The ocean, atmosphere, and life |
| Creator | Reclus, Elisée |
| Publisher | Harper |
| Place of Publication | New York |
| Date | 1873 |
| Language | eng |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Title | 00000481 |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Transcript | 436 LWE- which scarcely comprises the lapse of one hundred and fifty generations, extends a space of time, certainly much longer, known to us only by pure tradition. Then mankind, rising to a more enlarged self-consciousness, 'linked age to age by legends, poems, and symbolic formula; the reminiscences of great events, migrations, wars of races, alliances, exterminations, and triumphs of industry, were incorporated into religion itself, and, in an increasingly varied form, were handed down from age to age as the heritage of nations. In still more ancient times, in the dim mist of by-gone ages, our ancestors lived the life of wild beasts in forests and caves. Tradition, no less than history, is dumb as to this epoch of the human race; but the strata of the earth, explored in our time by geologists, are beginning to reveal to us both the existence and the customs of these ancestors of ours long unknown to us. To say nothing of the objects discovered at various epochs at a time when science, still timid, refused to recognize the antiquity of man, so many human remains and so many productions of primitive industry have been lately met with, that, comparatively speaking, there can no longer be any doubt as to the long duration of our species. Not only did our ancestors inhabit forests contemporaneously with the Bos urus, now banished into the Caucasus, and in Europe represented in a few parks by one or two specimens; but anterior to this epoch they also existed during the, glacial period, at a time when France and Germany presented the aspect now offered by Scandinavia, and the reindeer, now banished to the vicinity of the northern zone, frequented the glaciers of the Alps and the Pyrenees. At a still more ancient period, at an epoch when the European climate, which must subsequently have become so much cooler, was, on the contrary, much warmer than in the present time, the cave-men had for their contemporaries certain species of rhinoceros and elephants which are now extinct, and even then artists, humble predecessors of Phidias and Raphael, endeavored to carve representations of mammoths upon their implements which have been preserved in the earth of caves. Before this epoch man still existed, striving for mastery against a formidable enemy, the great cave-bear, representations of which he likewise left engraved on stone; and still farther back, in the dim mist of ages, we learn from other remains—those ofthe Elephas antiquus and meridionalis — that our ancestors were already in being during a period whose life was once believed to have been separated from the present era by a succession of sudden cataclysms. How many thousands or even millions of years have elapsed since that time ? This question as yet no one can answer.* The shape of the skull shows that the human remains found at Eyzies, near the border of Dordogne, must have belonged to a race which even now might be reckoned among the most beautiful of its kind: the skulls found by M. Garrigou in the caves of Ariege, and perhaps belonging to people ofthe historic epoch, are of very noble proportions; but the skulls found at Engis, in Belgium, Neanderthal, in Rhenish Prussia, Borreby, in * Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Christie, Lyell, Lubbock, Garrigou, Broca, etc. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| B |
|
| C |
|
| G |
|
| H |
|
| M |
|
| T |
|
| U |
|
| Y |
|
|
|
