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WILSON'S PRE-HISTORIC MAN.

Pre-historic Man. Researches into the Origin of Civilization in
the Old and New World. By Daniel Wilson, LL.D., Pro-
fessor of History and English Literature in University College,
Toronto, Author of the Archaeology and Pre-historic Annals of
Scotland, &c. Cambridge and London: Macmillan. 1862.
HOLY Scripture represents the whole human race to have
originated with the creation of Adam and Eve, whom God
formed out of the dust of the earth, and placed in Paradise.
How numerous the race had become before the flood, and over
how broad an area of the earth it was diffused, is not explained
in the six short chapters of Genesis which contain the only
historical records of that remote period. By the flood the
human race was reduced to four pairs of persons, and these
went forth from the ark to occupy and people the earth once
more, and to cultivate it for the production of their sustenance.
To the oneness of the origin of the human race, as thus
exhibited to us in the earliest history extant, there are frequent
references in the subsequent pages of Holy Scripture. Where-
ever men might be found, they are invariably regarded as the
descendants of one man, if reference is made to that subject.
St. Paul, an Asiatic Jew, wrote to the Christian converts in
Italy, that by one man sin entered into the world, and death
by sin, and that so death passed upon all men. (Rom. v. 12,
and the rest of the chapter.) To the people of Athens he
declared plainly, that God had "made of one blood all nations
of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth;" and had
determined "the bounds of their habitation." To the men of
Corinth he wrote that "in Adam all die;" and that "
in Christ, shall all be made alive."

even so,

This truth, that all men now existing have descended from one common stock, is often challenged in these days. We live in times when everything must submit to be called in question, and to stand a searching inquiry, and when many philosophers care little as to whether they agree with the Word of God, or contradict its teaching. Thus far, however, the antagonists of revelation do not appear to be agreed amongst themselves on this particular subject. They mingle conjecture with induction; and happily there are still many eminent men who are satisfied that philology, physiology, and a reasonable estimate of the progressive rate of growth of population, concur in upholding this testimony of God's holy word.

One important field of research, which has been supposed to

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encourage those who deny the common origin of all mankind, has been found in the Indian population of the great continent of America. Columbus, Cortes, and others, found themselves in the presence of various races and languages of men. Whence came these? say some modern philosophers, who in the next place answer themselves, to this extent at least, that Adam was not their father, neither could they be descended from Noah. This able author, Dr. Wilson, disputes this severance of the peoples of America from the old-world family of man. He digests into shape a vast amount of curious and interesting information, and maintains that no known facts can justly be made to impugn the common belief, that the present native races of America are derived from the self-same single stock from which the rest of mankind have sprung; and that, on the contrary, there is much to connect the inhabitants of the new continent with some of those families of men which occupy the old world, and of which Adam was the remotest forefather.

Moreover, he produces much forcible evidence to show that the present numerous and different nations of America, commonly designated by the general name of Indians, are not even aboriginal, but intruders who found and exterminated a people of higher civilization; and that the latter left behind them a variety of traces and memorials which are enough to connect them also with the old world, from which they originally came. Their sculptures found beneath the roots of ancient forests, once thought primeval, have astonished the learned by patterns which prevailed even in the Europe of bye-gone days, by inscriptions containing Hebrew characters, and by carved representations of the human head, of a type dissimilar to those which now characterize the Indians, and at the same time corresponding with some of the old-world families.

Dr. Wilson also discerns sufficient links of connexion between the present Indians and some of the Asiatic nations, to justify his denying that there are any physical features which would render it improbable that the former emigrated from certain parts of Asia centuries ago, and were the forefathers of the present tribes. He adds, that the points of dissimilarity subsisting between certain of the old-world nations, are more numerous and strong than those which prevail between some of these and the Red Indians of the American continent.

He discusses, in a very interesting and instructive manner, the mutations which the human frame may undergo, under the various influences of climate, habits, and other conditions to which human life is subjected; noticing by the way the remarkable fact, observed also by many others, that the descendants of European settlers in the States assume, in a few generations, a peculiar and characteristic configuration and outline of face; that "the New Englander differs in many respects very

unmistakably from the Old Englander" (vol. ii. p. 124), and that it is easy for any one familiar with the New England physiognomy to point out the Yankee in the midst of any assemblage of Englishmen. It is probably, as yet, but imperfectly understood how much and how quickly even the structure of man and beast may be modified by changes of temperature, and other peculiarities of circumstance.

Dr. Wilson discusses the antecedent probability, and the causes, of such mutations; and observes, that they are likely to work out greater divergences in the progress of many generations. He sees no difficulty in deducing the negro race, and the European type of man, from a common origin. In the whole subject there is no more knotty question than this; for the ancient monuments of Egypt exhibit the negro as he now is, with all his distinctive features as fully developed as they are at the present day. For ourselves, we have to say, that if the change could have been brought about by any progressive natural process, then to such causes alone it may possibly be due. But were it otherwise, the curse pronounced upon Canaan, the son of Ham, would sufficiently account to us for such a variation in the skin, and in the contour of the human face and figure, as separates the black race from the white; it may have been the judgment of God inflicted as a punishment for sin.

The author gives the results of his investigations under the various heads of speech, instinct, fire, the canoe, tools, copper, alloys, earthworks, sepulchral sacrificial and symbolic mounds, native civilization, artistic imitation, superstition, architecture, pottery, letters (i. e. of the alphabet), colonization (before the days of Columbus), and the cranial type, till he comes to present his readers with a statement of his conclusions with respect to the age of man. This brief reference to the principal topics of this interesting book may serve in some measure to suggest what kind of information the reader will find if he turns to the volumes themselves. We are unable to follow the author through his important disquisitions on these several branches of his great subject; and must be content with culling a few things, here and there, from many which have struck us in the perusal of the work itself.

Dr. Wilson considers that the earliest traces of man, wherever found, show that his primitive condition was rude, as regards art; denying at the same time that mechanical ingenuity ought to be accepted as a conclusive test of intellectual development. He sees in some of these relics evidences of the wide dispersion of the human family long before the flood; and he observes that the brevity of the narrative, in the introductory chapters of Genesis, may cause the ordinary reader to forget what a length of time it embraces.

"Conflicting versions," he says (vol. i. p. 117), "lend additional

Vol. 63.-No. 314.

countenance to long-cherished doubts as to whether the received chronology, deduced from their genealogical data, does not greatly abridge the actual antediluvian human era. But even at the lowest computation, the interval between the creation of man and the deluge was not very much less than the whole Christian era; it was longer than the whole mediæval period marked by the rise of Mahometanism, Feudalism, and the Crusades; and the brief interval since the discovery of North America, during which our little insular Britain has proved the nursery of nations, is a little more than a third of the allotted years of one of the antediluvian patriarchs."

He regards the continuance of the whole human family, before the flood, around "its old eastern birth-land," as a wholly gratuitous assumption." He puts aside Hugh Miller's "eloquent ingenuity" in supposing the deluge to have been limited to a comparatively circumscribed area, as more fitted to please the imagination than to satisfy the reason; and says that

"Now that it seems almost certainly demonstrable, on archæological and also on geological grounds, that the human family was widely dispersed on the face of the earth at the earliest possible date at which we can reconcile chronologies of science and revelation, possibly some may be tempted to return to their old convictions, that when all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights, and the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered, it actually was so." (Vol. i. p. 118.)

In the chapter on the canoe, the leading idea is the possibility of peopling the American continent by means of migration from the Polynesian islands. The author observes (vol. i. p. 150) that

"It seems to some of our modern scientific theorists an easier thing to create a score of red, brown, white, and black Adams and Eves, wherewith to increase, multiply, and replenish each 'realm,' or province of the ancient world, than to believe that man was transferred to new regions, or affected by their physical influences, just as we see the horse, ox, and hog have been in our own day."

He says that throughout the Polynesian archipelago the languages of the islanders, though different, show that they were all people of the same race. Again, Malay and Polynesian words are found in the language of Madagascar. Reference to a map will show over how great a distance such migrations extended. A consideration of the course of the trade-wind will further prove that the importation of Malay words, and of the people who spoke them, into Madagascar, could not be due to commerce, since a return to their own land was impossible with the then existing means of navigation. It is

only to be accounted for by the arrival of tempest-driven praus, perhaps a piratical fleet overtaken by storms in one of its adventures, and borne to unknown shores. Similar may have been the circumstances under which canoes from other parts, as e.g. from the Polynesian groups, drifted to the South American shores. It is believed that an immense area in the Pacific has been gradually subsiding, and that many islands have been entirely submerged within the period of man's existence upon earth. These may have formed "the natural resting-places by means of which the fleets of Polynesia piloted their way to islands now separated by seemingly impassable barriers, and even found their way to southern America." (Vol.i. p. 167.)

The flint knives and arrow-heads, and other rude works of art, found in various parts of the world, are now engaging the attention of those who are studying the archæological traces of man's existence on the earth. We read of the ages of stone, of bronze, of iron, and they are often treated as if they succeeded each other in a regular chronological sequence. Our author holds what appears to us to be a far more rational theory, namely, that such relics "belong to one condition of man, in relation to the progress of civilization, though pertaining to many periods of the world's history, and the most widely separated areas of the globe." (Vol. i. p. 186.)

On this supposition, the age of stone, as it is called, in any one country, may have been later or earlier by centuries than the same age in another. And, indeed, we have the clearest proof of this; for in some parts of the world the age of stone has not even yet come to an end. "The stone axe of the South Sea Islander of the 18th century presents a close resemblance to that of the British or Gaulish fabricator of the first or earlier centuries; and the modern flint lance or arrow-head of the Red Indian can scarcely be distinguished from that found in the most ancient British graves." (Vol. i. p. 265.)

He admits that "no correspondence is traceable between the latter and the still older manufactured weapons in the underlying drift." But this only proves that there had been much progress made in such rude art in the interval between the two, an interval probably of considerable duration. It still denotes only a stage in the condition of those who made them, not a period or age of the history of our whole race.

We reluctantly abstain from submitting to our readers the evidence already collected of the existence and extinction, on the American continent, of a more civilized race than any now remaining upon it, and which seems to have perished by the irruption of barbarians. Their copper mines, their earthworks, their carvings, found beneath forests whose trees have stood over them for centuries, (some suggest twelve,) and other

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