Neither of these opinions was received without earnest opposition. But as each year added to the number of such discoveries, and as their conditions became more and more satisfactory to the stringent demands of exact science, doubt slowly disappeared, and the fact of the extraor dinary antiquity of many of these deposits became generally recognized. Distinguished geologists, as Sir Charles Lyell in England and Edouard Lartet in France, turned their attention to ascertaining the age of such deposits containing human remains, and pronounced their venerable antiq uity beyond question. Later on, skilled antiquaries, as John Evans and W. Boyd Dawkins in England, and the brothers De Mortillet in France, devoted years of patient research to accumulating and sifting facts; socie ties for the purpose were formed in the principal continental states of Europe; journals were published concerned only with this specialty; and finally an International Congress was organized which has held repeated sessions, and thus enabled the workers in this field to bring the proceeds of their investigations promptly into comparison with those of others.
In the Western Hemisphere these labors and their results for a long time attracted little attention. It was a received canon in the faith of most men of science that the American continent was peopled at a con siderably later date than the Eastern Hemisphere, and any remains of man or his handiwork dating from a really very remote epoch were not anticipated or looked for. At length, however, a series of discoveries in both the northern and southern areas of the continent dispelled this delu sion, and have almost convinced the most sceptical that there is scarcely an appreciable difference in the antiquity of man in the two hemispheres. The course of these American discoveries is given on pages 6o sq.
Object and Scope of Prehistoric main object which this science has in view is to restore the history of the race during those periods for which we have no written records. It may be said to go beyond this, however, as it also seeks to throw new light on the relations which the species of man bears to other animals lower in the scale of zoological life, and to illustrate the laws of his evolution, both physical and mental. By seeking to ascertain and depict the very beginnings of the arts of life and of the social and domestic relations and the religions of mankind, it pursues the only trustworthy means to an explanation of what was the origin of these institutions as they now exist. The earliest migrations of nations and the primitive distribution of the species share its attention, and it concerns itself with all that can explain the rise of those broad distinctions which to-day separate the species into so many varieties or sub-species. These and many similar inquiries must be answered by this science of Prehigtoric Archmolog,y if they shall ever receive answers.
As in its survey it takes in the whole species as a unit of investiga tion, so in its scope it includes all portions of the globe which have been inhabited by man. The main land and the isles of the sea are alike its
domains. Wherever the painstaking observer can find evidence that man has lived and worked in some unknown and forgotten past, there Archae ology takes the field. In its view, nothing that betrays the touch of human fingers or yields the evidence of human life is humble or mean; and it has vindicated the potency of such seemingly insignificant aids by overturning with their testimony canons of belief which the world had accepted without question for thousands of years.
illethods and Princ6hles of the reaching its conclusions Archeology by no means confines itself to the works of man. These must be studied with constant reference to their surroundings. Their position in the scheme of geology must be most attentively considered, so as to locate them in time. This requires the identification of the remains of the flora and fauna which are associated with them; an understanding of the physical geography, especially the land-distribution and climate of those remote epochs; and a careful discrimination between what was originally deposited with the strata and what is owing to later, so-called intrusive, inhumation.
A well-established principle of the science is that there is a certain cor relation between all the arts in the various periods of human development, by the study of which we are enabled from a very limited number of remains to frame a correct estimate of the whole social condition of the tribe to whom we owe them; much in the same way as from a few scales of a fish Agassiz was able to describe with accuracy its whole anatomy, or as the palxontologist from a single tooth will recognize the class and genus of the animal to which it belonged.
Classes of Objects to be from the geologic surround ings, Archwology occupies itself especially with two classes of objects, both pertaining directly to man. One of these is his osseous remains, the other the products of his industry. The consideration of the former will not occupy us in this volume, as that topic has already received attention in the section on ANTHROPOLOGY, in Volume I. (p. 38) of this work. We shall therefore confine ourselves to an examination of art-products and allied objects which testify to man's existence and labors. Of the latter character are the ashes of his fires, bones of animals broken in a manner peculiar to man, the footprints he has left on the ancient sands—some of which have long survived all other traces of the existence of tribes—stones split in his fires, and the cast-away shells and other refuse from his repasts. At a later date we have in addition to these the remains of his structures, signs of the cultivation of the soil, tombs of various kinds, and the results of his efforts to body forth his ideals of beauty and sentiments of religion. These are, in genera], the classes of objects which we shall have to consider.