The "mound-builders" have been busy all over the world. There is no flat country on any part of the earth where these strange monuments have not been found, singly or in groups, and it taxes at times a sharp eye to know them from the natural grass-grown knolls or hillocks on a so-called rolling plain, for which, indeed, they were taken until some accident made known what they really were.
Let us look at the interior of one of the most royal among these palaces of death—or, rather, in the builders' minds, vestibules of a renewed life.
In the middle—or toward one end—of a large, rather low chamber, flagged and cased with stone masonry, lies the chieftain's skeleton, with golden armlets and necklet, possibly a golden band encircling the skull, and some choice weapons by his side, within reach of the hand. Not infrequently tatters of some tissue show where the mantle was folded around the form; but that falls to dust at the lightest touch, and, indeed, at a longer contact with air, as do sometimes the bones themselves. A smaller skeleton—a woman's—likewise adorned, shares the honors of the gloomy abode. It is the wife, or perchance the favorite wife, polygamy (the custom of having many wives) having long been universal. In a circle around the two principal figures, but at a respectful distance, indicating their subordinate station, are disposed other skeletons, unclothed and unadorned, evidently slaves, probably favorite attendants. Not infrequently a horse is found in a corner—the chief's own charger; and even sometimes a dog at the master's feet. Every skull, of man, woman, or animal, shows the heavy single blow which severed life. Not without due state and seemly retinue shall the hero enter on the new life which awaits him; his own best-loved companion shall minister to him; his own tried servants shall follow him as of yore; the steed which bore him safely out of many a battle, the hound which shared with him the joys of many a glorious chase, shall bear him into the fray with new and unknown foes, shall hunt down with him the game that roams the forests of the Unknown Land. As the way thither may be very long, the travellers shall not go unprovided. So around the wall are ranged dishes, platters, bowls—each containing dried-up food, various kinds of grains; also jars and tall vessels with handles, which evidently had held liquids. It is easy to see that the choicest pieces of fine and artistically ornamented pottery have been selected from the household stores. In mounds of the later periods some of the dishes and bowls are of bronze, even of gold and silver, and show considerable beauty of form and workmanship; but the jars are invariably of earthenware, as water and wine keep better in such than in metal.
We must not forget that, among the countless mounds which have been opened, only a very few are like that we just looked into. The general run are much plainer, and the majority contain only one silent inmate. It was not every one could afford the luxury of a wholesale slaughter in his household. The chambers, too, are very different in size and construction, and the furnishings vary quite as much in richness and beauty.
Putting away the dead in mound-graves, besides being a universal custom, was one which endured through a long series of centuries, since their contents illustrate for us the Age of Bronze through all its gradations and a goodly portion of the Age of Iron—i.e., the beginnings of the age in which we live ourselves.
To decide which mound belongs to a later and which to an earlier period is easy, from the variety and quality of the articles, which bear witness to the degree of culture of the builders, though it is of course difficult even to give a guess in figures at just how long ago, at least, the earlier mounds were built.
These are all times which knew not of writing. Therefore we have no history of them; for history is made up of two elements: things that happen, and writers who record them. So when we speak of "historic times," we mean the times since writing came into general use. All that went before we class as "prehistoric" times, i.e., times of which we can have no history. It is clear, then, that if, of two countries, one knows writing and uses it to register what happens to it, while the other does not, the former will be living in historic, the latter in prehistoric times.
More than that: there are plenty of peoples now living in—for them—prehistoric times. Take all the savage tribes still scattered over land and sea in many parts of the world. Just as there are enough South Sea Islanders for whom the Age of Stone is not over yet, since they still use flint, bone, and fishbone for their tools and weapons, and what metal they have comes to them through barter from Europeans or Americans. Captain Cook—or some other noted voyager and discoverer—received as a present from a South Sea chieftain a flint axe, beautifully shaped and polished like a mirror. The chief told his white friend it had taken fifty years to produce that polish, his grandfather, his father, and himself having worked on it at odd moments of leisure!
And yet, when we speak of "historic" and "prehistoric" times, we never think of all these races; they do not count among the so-called "culture-races," because they have produced no civilization of their own, have done nothing to advance the work of the world, added nothing to its treasury; in short, they have not helped to make history.
Just one word more about these prehistoric ages and the memorials they have left of themselves. No matter how various the stages of human culture which these latter betray, one feature is common to all, back to the most primitive feasting-places of the cave-dwellers; it is—the knowledge and use of fire. Yet there most certainly was a time when men had not yet learned to produce and to handle this marvellous force of nature, their most helpful friend and most destructive foe. Can we picture to ourselves how miserable and degraded, how distressingly like that of other forest animals must have then been the condition of those who yet were the fathers of the coming human race? Hardly. Our imagination itself stands still, helpless and puzzled, before a state of things so remote, so utterly beyond our power to realize and compare.