Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and GravelDonnelly, Ignatius
Science
Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Comets; Drift
[1. "Prehistoric Times," p. 333.]
{p. 351}
domesticated. In this picture they seem to have become entangled in
their lines, and some have fallen to the ground.
And it does not follow from the presence of the reindeer that the
climate was Lapland-like. The ancestors of all our so-called Arctic
animals must have lived during the mild climate of the Tertiary Age;
and those only survived after the Drift, in the north, that were
capable of accommodating themselves to the cold; the rest perished or
moved southwardly.
Another group of animals was found, engraved on a piece of the palm
of a reindeer's horn, as follows:
###
PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF THE HORSE.
Here the man stands alongside the horse's head--a very natural
position if the horse was domesticated, a very improbable one if he
was not.
Pieces of pottery have also been found accompanying these palæolithic
remains of man.
The oldest evidence of the existence of man is probably the fragment
of a cut rib from the Pliocenes of Tuscany, preserved in the museum
at Florence; it was associated with flint-flakes and _a piece of rude
pottery_.[1]
But the art-capacity of these people was not limited to the drawing
of animals; they also carved figures out
[1. Dawkins's "Early Man in Britain," p. 91.]
{p. 352}
of hard substances. The following engraving represents a poniard cut
from a reindeer's horn.
###
A SPECIMEN OF PRE-GLACIAL CARVING.
Sir John Lubbock says:
"The artist bas ingeniously adapted the position of the animal to the
necessities of the case. The horns are thrown back on the neck, the
fore-legs are doubled up under the belly, and the hind-legs are
stretched out along the blade."[1]
These things seem to indicate quite an advanced condition; the people
who made them manufactured pottery, possessed. domesticated animals,
and were able to engrave and carve images of living objects. It is
difficult to believe that they could have carved and engraved these
hard substances without metallic gravers or tools of some kind.
The reader will see, on page 130, _ante_, a representation of a
sienite plummet found _thirty feet below the surface_, in a well, in
the San Joaquin Valley, California, which Professor Foster pronounces
to be--
"A finer exhibition of the lapidary's skill than has yet been
furnished by the Stone Age of either continent. "[2]
[1. "Prehistoric Times," p. 335.
2. Foster's "Prehistoric Races of the United States," p. 56.]
{p. 353}
The following picture represents a curious image carved out of black
marble, about twice as large as the cut, found near Marlboro, Stark
County, Ohio, by some workmen, while digging a well, at a depth of
_twelve feet below the surface_. The ground above it had never been
disturbed. It was imbedded in _sand and gravel_. The black or
variegated marble out of which this image is carved has not been
found in place in Ohio.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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