Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/367

Rh even less, is immaterial, and probably never can be absolutely determined. The chronological scale is too uncertain, with conditions varying according to locality and circumstances, to give ground for great hope of success. Still, who shall venture to set a limit to the triumphs of science? The methods of prehistoric archæology are scientific; its votaries are steadily increasing in numbers; its progress has been marvelously rapid, and we may with confidence await the result.

The most remote historical date thus far even approximately determined is that of the early dynasties of Egypt, although even on this point the authorities differ by as much as a thousand years. Taking, however, the lowest computation, we find, some four thousand years a flourishing civilization established in Egypt, with a condition of the arts, especially of statuary and of architecture, fully able to stand the test of comparison with those of the present day, but which afterward steadily degenerated under the iron rule of the priesthood. This date has been reached by the light of written inscriptions, so that the history of mankind has thus been carried back to a point of time as remote as that of his creation, according to the belief of our fathers. Now, a flourishing civilization with admirable arts, and especially a fixed literary language, presupposes ages of development and progress, so that we see the "prehistoric man" thrust thus at least one stage into "the dark backward and abysm of time." But only monuments inscribed by Nature's own hand are our helpers in the arduous task of attempting to measure by a scale of centuries the duration of the existence of "the fossil man." The slow excavation of certain river-beds during the present geological period, thus bringing to light in their banks relics of man, above which the soil has accumulated in depths varying according to known historical periods; the secular growth of peat-mosses and of films of stalagmite; the deposit of cones of detritus at the mouths of mountain-torrents; the leisurely filling up of lakes by the accumulation of soil washed down from neighboring mountains—such are the sole standards of measurement that have thus far been devised for the careful computations or the wild guesses of those who have hitherto essayed the difficult problem. Its final determination must properly be left to the geologists, some of whom regard the Quaternary period as more justly to be assigned to the present stage of the earth's history than as constituting a past geological epoch rightly so called. But the discovery of traces of early man in regions widely remote from each other, and especially in countries where the earliest civilizations have arisen, is a complete answer to the objections of those who would make of "the fossil man" only a savage race localized in western Europe in times not far removed from those of which history takes cognizance.

Among the many attempts that have been made to reach a solution of the problem, the most satisfactory, perhaps, have been the systematic explorations that have been carried on without interruption since