Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel

other and very in

ent was mankind when the

g upon our hands and knees into the dark cavern of an abysmal past; we know not whether that which we encounter is a stone or a bo

ost important inventions and discoveries were known in the pre-glacial age. Among these were pottery, metallurgy, architecture, engraving, Carving, the use of money, the

.

face, the remainder of the world was peopled by races more rude, barbaro

m from consideration, for there would be a strong probability that later ages, in repeating the legends, would attribute to their remote ancestors the civilized advantages which they th

s to the

ed the stage of worshiping sticks and stones and idols, and had reached to a knowledge of the one true God; they were agriculturists; they raised flocks of sheep and camels; they built houses; they had tamed the ho

ily written at the time of, or even immediately after, that event. So gigantic and terrible a thing must have been the overwhelmi

.

ter the events to which it refers occurred; and the writer may have clothed those events with the associations and conditions of the age of its co

rth, when the dread afflict

y recompense? This as the reward of my fertility and of my duty, in that I endure wounds from the crooked plow and harrows, and am harassed

invented the plow and the barrow; he had domesticated the cattle; he had discovered or developed some of the cereals; and he possessed a religion in w

ta, the wife of Rama, the sun; and that her name indicates that she represented "the furrowed ea

the Scandinavian

.

ved that pre-glacial man was civilized. The Asas, the god

ind before the great catastrophe occurred, the world, we are to

will fight

e each ot

rs' c

ib shal

s the

sins g

axe-ages,

re cleft

are wi

er-a

orld fall

llar-horn, Odin rides to Mimer's well, Odin puts on his gol

s. And after the great storm was over, and the remnant of mankind crept out of the caves, and came back to reoccupy the houses of the slain millions, we read of the delight with which they found

la's Prophe

.

hat Loke, the evil genius, car

erican legends, similar st

drums and other musical instruments; we learn from the Aztecs that while the darkness yet prevailed, the people built a sumptuous palace,

golden spade. In the Tahoe legend, we read that the superior race compelled the inferior to build a great temple

cording to the legend, possessed of water-jars, and we have r

ple who were destroyed were great architects, metallurgists, agricul

nces of man's condition, which have be

o Simon relates that some miners, run

Native Races," v

.

e great mass of the hill, and did not agree

d a boat thirteen or fourteen feet under ground; it is thirty-six feet long and four and a half broad, all

ns of man thirty to forty feet

t the pre-glacial race was acquainted wit

the Drift ice during the glacial epoch. Beneath an immense accumulation of osars, with shells and sand, there was discovered in the deepest layer of subsoil, at a depth of

Petite Anse Island, remarkable

rocks, and underneath what Dr. Foster believes to be the equivalent of the Drift in Europe, "associated with t

"Early Manki

f Antiquity of Man," p

ehistoric Races

.

nches thick"; in many cases the bones of the mastodon were found above t

by man prior to the Drift Age, and that the human family had progres

ed from reindeer-horn, such as needles, arrow-heads, daggers, and hooks. Besides these, there were ornaments made of shells, pieces of slate with engraved figures, mathematical lines, remains of very coarse pottery, hearthstones, ashes, charcoal, and last, but not least, thirty tho

#

ND IN THE CAVE OF

"Antiquity o

.

thing which they sewed with needles; that they used the bow and arrow; that they caught fish with hooks; that they ornamented themselves; that they cooke

shmen or Americans might be found side by side with the rude skulls of the savage populations of the country. The possession of a piece of pottery, or carving, by an African tribe would not prove that the Africans possessed the arts of engraving or manufacturing pottery, but it would prove that somewhere on the earth's surface a race had advanced far enough, at that time, to be capable of such works of art. And so, in the remains of the pre-glacial age of Europe, w

.

#

AN'S PICTURE

.

n found engraved upon a piece of mammoth-tusk. The engrav

d, as the mammoth did not survive the Drift, that man must have lived

ell-mounds, or the Stone-Age lake-villages. Even on objects of the Bronze Age they are so

ing spirited drawing was found,

#

MAN'S PICTUR

r were fastened together by lines or r

toric Times

.

m to have become entangled in their li

o-called Arctic animals must have lived during the mild climate of the Tertiary Age; and those only survived after the

d, engraved on a piece of the pal

#

AN'S PICTURE

--a very natural position if the horse was dom

been found accompanying thes

a cut rib from the Pliocenes of Tuscany, preserved in the museum at Flor

was not limited to the drawing of a

Early Man in Br

.

ing engraving represents a pon

#

OF PRE-GLAC

n Lubbo

ies of the case. The horns are thrown back on the neck, the fore-legs are doub

sed. domesticated animals, and were able to engrave and carve images of living objects. It is difficult to belie

e plummet found thirty feet below the surface, in a well, in the San

skill than has yet been furnished by t

storic Tim

oric Races of the Un

.

unty, Ohio, by some workmen, while digging a well, at a depth of twelve feet below the surface. The ground above it had never been disturbe

#

AGE FOUN

Portsmouth, Ohio,

on. The piece was about four feet long and four inches in diameter at the thickest part. It was nearly all lost, having, cr

akes from other vaults, some o

end, and at the other end was a gap, the same as an axeman's kerf. Shell-banks b

a depth of twenty-two feet, a relic

tiquarian," Apri

.

vilized man who wielded

have, in repeated instances, been exhu

rper's Monthly Magazine," (September, 1882, p. 609,) entitled "The Mississ

at we call the days of old. Yet it must have been only yesterday that the mound-builders wrought in the valley, for in the few centuries that have elapsed since then the surface of the ground has risen o

ection with Rome, but simply that they resemble Roman bricks. These remains, I learn, were discovered

ift,) a comparatively short period of time, and that his works were then covered by the Drift-débris, than to believe that a race of human beings, far enough advanced in

.

covered their works to t

t singular and marvel

hell, in an interesting

de coin, which was taken from an artesian boring at the depth of one

me, in a letter dated December 4, 1871, the follo

o

fe

low

7

e c

4

getable

urplis

8

t gre

led

8

o

h of

1

low

and

rising

and three inches for the remainder of the depth. But before one hundred feet had been reached the four-inch portion was 'so plaster

he same instant, and each claims it

a Geologist's H

.

It was approximately round, and seemed to have been cut. Its two faces bore marks as shown

#

UNDRED AND FOURTEEN FEET

is was furnished with long tufts like mule's ears. Around the border was another circle of hieroglyphics. On this side also was a rude outline of a quadruped. I exhibited this relic to the Geological Section of the American Association, at its meeting at Buffalo in 1876. The general impression seemed to be that its origin could not date from the epoch of the stratum in which it is represented to have been found. One person thought he could det

.

aid, 'I can not regard this Illinois piece as ancient nor old (observing the usual distinction), nor yet recent; because the tooth of time is plainly visible.' He could suggest nothing to clear up the mystery. Professor J. P. Lesley thought it might be an astrological amulet. He detected upon it the signs of Pisces and Leo. He read the date 1572. He said, 'The piece was placed there as a practic

ainly possible that in such a region deep alluvial deposits may have formed since the visits of the French in the latter part of the seventeenth century. But it is not easy to admit an accumulation of one hundred and fourteen or one hundred and twenty-feet, since such a depth extends too much below the surface of the river. In Whiteside County, fift

.

ed and twenty feet must be explained as I have suggested in reference to the 'coi

lphabetical or hieroglyphical signs, which, when placed under the microscope, in the hands of a skeptical invest

really the coin of some pre-Columbian people. The Indians possessed no currency or alphabet, so that it dates back of the red-men.

than eighty feet in glacial clay,

o any civilized nation on earth, within the ran

ization, the makers, at the same time they borrowed the round, metallic form of the coin, would have borrowed als

our civilization and this, but it is a relationship in

.

derived from it, but without the

at depths in the same clay implemen

all this

h civilization:--it implies an alphabet, a literature, a government, commercial relations, organized society, regulated agriculture, which could alone sustain all these; and some implement like a plow, without which extensive agriculture is not possible; and this in turn implies domestica

ot of Egypt, Assyria, or the Roman Empire, things of yesterday, but belonging to an inconceivable antiquity; to pre-glacial times; to a per

sand years; and at the farther end of his tether he found the perfect civilization of early

.

irst time an alphabet, a government, commerce, and coinage. And, lo! from the bottom of well-holes in Illinois, one hundred and fourteen feet deep, the buckets of the artesian-well auger bring up copper

ent of man's powers, "the sword-ages, the axe-ages, the murder-ages of the Goths,"

little rolls of parchment under their arms, containing their lists of English, Roman, Eg

ece--Job, Ovid, Rama, Ragnarok, Genesis, the Aztec legends; the engraved ivory tablets of the caves, the pottery, the carved figures of pre-glacial Europe; the po

do they

rophe was indeed

what a

misery; from plo

.

ials of the Drift Age; the rains, the cold, the snow, the ice, the incessant tempests, th

s a fal

a meaning. The very fables of the world's c

the summer land of fruits, the serpent, the fire from heaven, the expulsion, the waving sword, the "fal

knowledge and the apples of paradise probably represent likewise

ome favored geographical center they recovered the arts of

s originally bestowed on mankind by God. They

traditions of this ancient civilization, tradi

y the Great Hare, Ma

eat mule-tufts, (referred to by Professor Winchel

.

ndians tell of

fire and repeating the story of Manibozho or Michabo, the Great Hare. With entire unanimity their various branches, the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenni-Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the Ottawas of the far Nor

ather and guardian of their nation, the ruler of the winds, even the maker and preserver of the world and creator of the sun and moon. From a grain of sand brought from the bottom of the primeval ocean, he fashioned the habitable land, and set it floating on the waters till it grew to such a size that a

who established religion, invented nets, and, as the other legends con

vision of the people into several cla

f the New Wo

.

among the American tribes; and in some cases they are accompanied by mental and physical traits which may be supposed to indicate that they originated in primal race differences. This is the

reat Hare, this demi-god, this man or race, who taught them all the arts of life with which they are acquainted. Then there

] that the Arabs are divided up in the s

and others.' Tha'laba, she-fox; 'a name of tribes.' Garad, locusts; 'a sub-tribe of the Azol.' Thawr, bull; 'a sub-tri

r who bore the tribal or gentile name. Thus the Kalb or dog-tribe consists of the Beni-Kalb-

Early History

n, "Fortnightly Revi

.

on of Saba', the Sheba of Scripture. A single me

tribes reach through Edom, Midian, a

ashon, to which David belonged; and there is no doub

of the race-identity of the peoples o

se this chapter

to make a thorough examination of some part of the deep clay deposits of

gold-mine, he would have no difficulty in obtaining means enough to dig a shaft and excav

ered in the narrow holes bored or dug for wells. How small is the area laid bare by such punctures in the earth compared with the whole area of the country in which they

ound we might rea

an, "Fortnightly Rev

.

in the metals and using a currency,--such as cities, houses, temples, etc. Of course, such things might ex

.