were the Trojans of the Homeric poems, and the destruction of their city was probably in the first instance celebrated in their own native songs, which Homer at a date but little later[124] wove into his magnificent poem, and idealized and exaggerated. The Trojans worshipped an owl-headed goddess--the Athena of the Homeric poems; and from symbols found are believed also to have had the worship of a sacred tree, and of fire or of the Sun. All of these are widespread superstitions over both the Old and New World. But while Troy flourished there were barbarous nations not far off still in the stone age; and when the city had fallen, these, possibly in successive hordes, took possession of the fertile plain and used the old city as their stronghold, perhaps till the foundation of the Greek city about 650 B.C. I have sketched in some detail these interesting discoveries, as they so clearly illustrate an actual succession of ages, and so conclusively show the uncertainty of the classification into ages of stone and metal, except when taken in connection with the precise circumstances of each locality. I have referred above only to the question of historic or postdiluvian man. We have still to consider what remains exist of antediluvian man. These may be studied in connection with our third head of geological evidences of man's antiquity; for if the Mosaic narrative be true, the diluvial catastrophe must have constituted a physical separation between historic man and prehistoric; since, in so far as antediluvian ages are concerned, all are prehistoric or mythical everywhere except in the sacred history itself. Antediluvian men may thus in geology be Pleistocene as distinguished from modern, or Palaeocosmic as distinguished from Neocosmic.[125]