Ethnology : in two parts, I. Fundamental ethnical problems. II. The primary ethnical groups / by A.H. Keane.
- Augustus Henry Keane
- Date:
- 1896
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Ethnology : in two parts, I. Fundamental ethnical problems. II. The primary ethnical groups / by A.H. Keane. Source: Wellcome Collection.
379/484 page 343
![were made from the soapstone found in that region by some persons who had learned how to give them ihe appearance of age....As a proof of the correctness of his statement Mr Emmert [of Washington] had the same parties who stated they had made some exhibits for Mr Valentine, make quite a number of similar articles for the Bureau'. A similar object-lesson is afforded by the famous Lenape Stone, to which Mr Mercer has devoted a special monograph, without convincing the scientific public that it is any- thing more than a clumsy copy of a genuine mammoth carving found in the cave of La Madeleine, Perigord, in 1864^. The monuments of North America and the associated objects were never observed with more intelligent eyes than those of the traveller, Bartram, whose conclusion was that none of them discover the least signs of the arts, sciences or architecture of the Europeans, or other inhabitants of the Old World; yet evidently betray every mark of the most distant antiquity^. In the second place, although later and more civilised peoples were undoubtedly better equipped for spreading abroad than were those of the Stone Ages, they lived under different conditions, by which the difficulties of migratory movements were immeasurably increased, and in some regions rendered practically impossible. ^Vhen man first became specialised, he ranged, like the surround- ing faunas and floras, slowly but steadily over the still unoccupied spaces. He drifted, so to say, unconsciously hither and thither, impelled or attracted now in one direction, now in another, by various causes, such as overpeopling, changed cHmatic relations, greater or less abundance of food and facilities for obtaining it. He thus gradually filled all the inhabitable parts of the earth, ^ Cyras Thomas, Twelfth A7intial Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1894, p. 347. Here also may be seen an exposure of the Davenport and other inscribed tablets written on some eclectic system in various Old World scripts, and from time to time extracted from the mounds where they had been deposited by the authors for the purpose of mystifying the credulous archaeologists of North America. A consideration of all the facts leads us, inevitably, to the conclusion that these relics are frauds, that is they are modem productions made to deceive (pp. 642—3). - H. C. Mercer, The Lenape Stone, or the Indian attd the Mamtnoth. New York, 1885. * Travels, 1791, p. 522.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21500666_0379.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
