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In the nineteenth century we talked very glibly about geological periods, and flung millions of eons about in the most lordly manner in our reaction against Archbishop Ussher's chronology. We had a craze for big figures, and positively liked to believe that the progress made by the child in the womb in a month was represented in prehistoric time by ages and ages.
But it was only a flash. The courses succeeded one another solemnly, under the electric light, which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the principal ornament of the walls, a so-called 'Sea Piece by Turner, almost entirely composed of cordage and drowning men. Champagne was handed, and then a bottle of James' prehistoric port, but as by the chill hand of some skeleton.
The nomenclature is due to custom dating back to prehistoric times when the conversion of fibre to yarn was conducted by much simpler apparatus than it is at present; the established name to denote this conversion of fibre to yarn now refers only to one of a large number of important processes, each one of which is as important and necessary as the actual operation of spinning.
The peasants support life on as little as they can, they rest as much as possible and their carts and implements are prehistoric. They may believe in their gods, but fatalism is their true religion.
The earliest vestiges of prehistoric races and the remains of the remotest civilizations are witnesses of man's desire to imitate and record, and also of his pleasure in harmony of form. Certain caves in France, inhabited by man some thousands of years before history begins, have yielded up reindeer horns and bones, carved with reliefs and engraved with drawings of mammoths, reindeer, and fish.
It had been designed and executed somewhere in the Northwest, transported to the place where discovered, and buried, to be afterward dug up and reported as a prehistoric wonder. Only a few years ago the writer had an opportunity of seeing with what wonderful ease intelligent men can be imposed upon by these artificial antiquities.
When a visiting Indian joins a group he nearly always goes through the gentle ceremony with each person in turn. I do not know whether this was introduced by the Spaniards or comes down from prehistoric times. In any event, this handshaking in no way resembles the hearty clasp familiar to undergraduates at the beginning of the college year.
The next day our guides were able to point out in the woods a few piles of stones, the foundations of oval or circular huts which probably were built by some primitive savage tribe in prehistoric times. Nothing further could be found here of ruins, "important" or otherwise, although we spent three days at Ccllumayu. Such was our first disillusionment.
Here was the frame of a new boat about which some carpenters were pounding, and from a distance the skeleton of unpainted timber looked like the remains of some prehistoric saurian. Across the drain, some rope-walkers, hanks of hemp about their waists, were backing away from the lathe, letting the yellow strands revolve between their deft fingers.
But that is a problem we must reserve for the next lecture. In the first lecture we saw how, both in Babylonia and Egypt, recent discoveries had thrown light upon periods regarded as prehistoric, and how we had lately recovered traditions concerning very early rulers both in the Nile Valley and along the lower Euphrates.
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