1. The high antiquity claimed for man is fitly the first question in order. Here the evidence comes and of necessity must come
(1.) From traces of man upon the crust of the earth, i. e. in the rock-strata, the drift-deposits, or in caves and lake-dwellings, or in monuments of human labor and skill:
And (2.) from the traditions of the most ancient nations and the high antiquity of their existence, civilization, and monuments.
Under the first head the traces are either
(A.) Remains of the human skeleton; or
(B.) Remains of man’s work and of his tools.
(A.) As to the remains of the human skeleton.
By universal admission these remains are not found in the rocks that bear in abundance the fossil vegetables of the third great epoch of creation; nor in those yet higher strata that contain the oldest forms of animal life whose home is in the waters; nor is man found with the reptiles, say of the fifth day of creation; nor indeed until we come to deposits of the most recent date, of a kind at least similar to those which are known to be forming within the historic age of man.
From these admitted facts I make this special point, viz. that if man had lived on the earth contemporary with the oldest animal species, we ought to find not merely one skeleton or half a skeleton buried along-side of myriads of fossil sea-shells and fishes, but a fair show of specimens, so many at least as to leave no question as to his being a joint occupant with them of the earth as it then was. One or two, or even a dozen skeletons, gathered from every explored portion of the earth’s surface, are too few for the base of a theory like this because such scattered cases, in number so meager, are always subject, more or less, to abatement from the following possibilities:
(a.) The human family in all ages have buried their dead, and often, during the earlier ages, in rock-hewn sepulchers or in natural caves;