a few thousand years express the
whole period of human life on the globe. This was supposed to be the
teaching of the Scriptures, but Infinite Wisdom left not only his word,
but he left an imperishable record of the past in rocky strata and
excavated valley, in dripping caves and mountain masses. When it
was seen that the claims of geology for a greatly extended past, one
transcending the powers of the human mind to conceive its length, could
no longer be successfully denied, then it was that earnest investigators
in the field of human antiquity could no longer shut their eyes to the
fact that if geological evidence were worth any thing, man must have
existed in the world for a far longer time than one covered by the brief
period hitherto relied on.

This truth is so patent and plain that it has received the unqualified
indorsement of the most learned scholars. Distinguished divines have
been amongst its able expounders, and instead of being in opposition to
the Bible, as already stated, the earnest reader finds in the periods of
the geologists unexpected confirmation of its truths. The evidence of
an extended past for man is not, however, wholly of a geological nature,
though these have been the ones principally relied on. The archaeologist
to-day summons to his aid the science of language, studies into the
origin of civilization and the comparison of the different races of
men, and derives from each and all of these concurrent testimony as to a
vast, shadowy, and profound antiquity for man, one stretching way beyond
the dawn of history, far into the very night of time.

As we have now spent some time in tracing out the culture of these early
ages, it may be well to see if there are any means at our command to
determine the absolute chronology of the various ages. At the very
outset of our inquiry, we shall perceive that we have no such class
of facts as guided our investigations into the age of the Paleolithic
remains. We have but to recall the situation in which the implements
of that age were found, always under such circumstances, that we see at
once that a great lapse of time has passed since they became imbedded
where found, and then the bones of the various extinct animals, found so
associated with the implements, that we are justified, even compelled,
to admit they occupied the same section of country, and then, from a
variety of causes, we are satisfied that they occupied Europe at the
close of the Glacial A