ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA.

     On the discovery of the Western World by Europeans, there was much speculation among the learned as to the origin of its inhabitants.  The native Americans were different not only in color, but in many peculiarities of appearance, language and habits from any of the then known races of the Old World.  Many interesting, and some wildly fanciful hypotheses were brought forward, and defended with great display of erudition.  By some the new found sons of the forest were declared to be the descendants of the "ten lost tribes of Israel."  Others referred to the "Lost Atlantis." which was supposed to have formerly existed as a sort of land connection between Northern Africa and South America, and to which an apparent but vague allusion may be found in Pliny.  "Such connection." says Dr. D. G. Brinton, in his scholarly work.  'The American Race,' there once undoubtedly was but far back in the Eocene period of the tertiary, long before Man appeared upon the scene.  The wide difference between the existing fauna and flora of Africa and South America proves that there has been no connection in the life-time of the present species."
     Other scholars have since maintained that the continent was peopled from Polynesia, or directly from China or Japan, but neither hypothesis will stand a careful examination in the light of known scientific facts.  Perhaps the favorite theory of the present day is that the first inhabitants came from northeastern Asia, either by way of the Aleutian islands or Behring strait.  There are a number of cogent facts which go far to destroy the plausibility of this theory, but which it is unnecessary 'to enter into here.  The reader will find them fully considered in the work above alluded to, and in die writings of other modern ethnographers.

ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA.

     That man was here at a very early period, there is abundant evidence to prove, in the roughly chipped stone weapons, and other paleolithic implements, that from time to time have been found in deposits of gravel and loess dating back to the Glacial Epoch.  In a bed of loess in the Missouri valley.  Prof. Aughey found a rudely chipped arrowhead beneath the vertebra of an elephant.  Again, a primitive hearth was discovered in digging a well along the old beach of Lake Ontario.  According to Prof. G. K. Gilbert, this dated from a period "when the northern shore of that body of water was the sheer wall of a mighty glacier, and the channel of the Niagara river had not yet begun to be furrowed out of the rock by the receding waters."  Some hundreds of stone

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implements of the true paleolithic type, together with some fragments of human skeletons, were discovered by Dr. C. C. Abbot in the gravels near Trenton, on the Delaware.  These evidences, with many others which we have not space to mention, prove clearly that tool-making, fire-using Man "was here long before either Northern Asia or the Polynesian islands were inhabited, as it is well known that those parts of the world were first peopled in neolithic times."

PROBABLE EUROPEAN ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN RACES.

     The modern geological discovery that at one time - about the middle and later glacial epoch - there occurred an uplift of the northern part of the continent, and also of the north Alantic basin, seems to answer the question, as to whence came the first inhabitants of the New World.  According to Prof. Geikie, and other competent scientists, this uplift amounted to a vertical elevation of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the present level, and resulted in establishing a continuous land connection between the higher latitudes of the two continents, which remained till the post glacial period.  This is confirmed by the character of the glacial scoriæ of the rocks of Shetland, the Faroe islands, Iceland and South Greenland, which give unmistakable indications of having been formed by land ice; and by a comparison of the fauna and flora of the two continents, both living and fossil.  This land bridge formed a barrier between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, so that the temperature of the higher latitudes was much higher than at present.  Says Dr. Brinton, after a thorough consideration of the subject.  "The evidence, therefore, is cumulative that at the close of the last glacial epoch, and for an in definite time previous, the comparatively shallow bed of the North Atlantic was above water and this was about the time that we find men in the same stage of culture living on both its chores."  It thus seems conclusive that the earliest inhabitants of the American continent, came, as did the Spanish, French and English discoverers untold centuries later, though in a very different manner, from the region of Western Europe.

THE MOUND BUILDERS.

     In this reference to the prehistoric inhabitants of the continent, it remains but to add a brief word in regard to the so-called mysterious race of Moundbuilders, whose works are found in parts of Ohio (though none in Mahoning county), and in some neighboring States.
     The mounds, fortifications, and other relics left by this race, have in recent years been thoroughly investigated by competent and pains-taking scientists.  They contain no evidence to prove that this people was in any essential respects different from the familiar red races whom the first white discoverers, found in possession of the soil.  Mr. Warren K. Moorehead, in his "Primitive Man on the Ohio," thus sums up the result of years of laborious exploration and careful investigation of these relics:
     "Nothing more than the upper status of savagery was attained by any race or tribe living within the limits of the present State of Ohio, all statements to the contrary being misrepresentations.  If we go by field testimony alone (not to omit the reports of early travelers among North American tribes) we can assign primitive high attainments in but few things, and these indicate neither civilization nor any approach to it.
     "First, he excelled in building earthern fortifications, and in the interment of his dead; second, he made surprisingly long journeys for mica, copper, lead, shells, and other foreign substances to be used as tools or ornaments; third, he was an adept in the chase and in war; fourth, he chipped flint and made carvings en bone, stone and slate exceedingly well, when we consider the primitive tools he employed; fifth, a few of the more skillful men of his tribe made fairly good representations of animals, birds and human figures in stone.  This sums up in brief all that he seemed capa-

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ble of, which we in our day consider remarkable.
     "On the other hand he failed to grasp the ideal of communication by written characters, the use of metal (except in the cold state), the cutting of stone or the making of brick for building purposes, and the construction of permanent homes.  Ideas of transportation, other than upon his own back or in frail canoes, or the use of coal, which was so abundant about him and which he frequently made into pendants and ornaments, and a thousand other things which civilized beings enjoy, where utterly beyond his comprehension.  Instead of living peacefully in villages, and improving a country unequalled in natural resources, of which he was the sole possessor, he spent his time in petty warfare, or in savage worship, and in the observance of the grossest superstitions.  He possessed no knowledge of surgery or the setting of bones, unless we accept as evidence two neatly knitted bones found at Foster's, which by some extra effort he may have accomplished.  But while admitting these two specimens to be actually and carefully set with splints, we have scores of femora, humeri and other bones from Forts Ancient and Oregonia, which are worn flat against unnatural sockets, formed after the bones had been displaced.  We have broken fibulæ and tibiæ which had never been reset.  They were bent like a bow, and nature alone had aided them in coming together.  It has been the mistake of many writers upon the antiquities of Ohio, to accept as evidences of the civilization of these peoples the mere fact that they could build circular and square embankments, and great fortifications.  Any school boy knows that he can form a perfect circle by taking hold of the hands of his comrades, placing one of the number at ten feet from the line, to observe that the rest keep properly stretched out.  The boy at one end acts as a pivot, the other swinging in a circle, while the boy at the end farthest from the pivot marks upon the ground with a stick as far out from the line as he can reach.  Four hundred men placed in lines of one hundred each can easily mark a square which will be but two or three feet out of geometrical proportions.
     "The impression usually conveyed by the term 'Mound Builders' will not stand the light of modern science.  While it may be more or less of a disappointment to many not to be able to place primitive man in Ohio on an equality with the status of Mexican or South American tribes, yet it is a gratification to know that the vexatious question concerning his movements and everyday life has been very nearly settled.  There is a fascination in studying him even as a savage, and investigating the numerous remains which attest his occupancy of this territory."

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