Contributions to the History of the Development of the Human Race

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ... vi. On the Primitive Home of the Indo-Europeans. The discovery of the primitive stock of the IndoEuropeans, which has been made-within the past sixty years, is a fact of incredible importance, and of incalculable influence on the conception of man's earliest past. The almost marvellous results which our century has obtained in the decipherment of the hieroglyphics and cuneiform inscriptions led to a direct knowledge, gained from the monuments themselves, of the life of peoples which one could not till then have hoped ever to see resuscitated from its millennial sleep. Historical details have been authenticated, dating from times which fancy had ever regarded as its indisputable domain and had populated with grotesque shapes. But the people of the pyramids and hieroglyphics is, notwithstanding, an historical, well-known, palpable people. It is certainly astounding that we should have learned to find some centuries before Moses--that earliest historian, as the last century was fond of calling him--the names of Palestinian cities--e.g., of the still existing Zephath--on Egyptian monuments. We are strangely moved and feel a thrill of awe running through us, as on entering a mysterious sanctuary, when we see before our eyes the veil lifted from the deeply-hidden and dark past. But such more especially are our emotions when we approach the primitive stock from which the head and flower of the whole human race was destined to proceed--the stock from which has sprung the present civilised Europe with its mighty colonies, and not less so a large portion of the population of Asia, as far as the boundaries of China. We have here, in this people in its primitive condition, a germ before us with an abundance of developments latent within it, as it...