Страница 7

 

Письмо №46 стр. 7

NOTE: phrases in bold are underlined in blue ink.

to which your wise men of the West seem to have arrived briefly stated are the following. The theories even approximately correct I venture to underline with blue. [These passages appear in bold type. — ED.]

(1) The earliest traces of man they can find disappear beyond the close of a period of which the rock-fossils furnish the only clue they possess.

(2) Starting thence they find four races of men who have successively inhabited Europe (a) The race of the river Drift — mighty hunters (perchance Nimrod?) who dwelt in the then sub-tropical climate of Western Europe, who used chipped stone implements of the most primitive kind and were contemporary with the rhinoceros and the mammoth; (b) the so-called cave-men, a race developed during the glacial period (the Esquimaux being now, they say, its only type) and which possessed finer weapons and tools of chipped stone since they made with wondrous accuracy pictures of various animals they were familiar with, simply with the aid of sharp pointed flints on the antlers of reindeer and on bones and stones; (c) the third race — the men of the Neolithic age are found already grinding their stone implements, building houses and boats and making pottery, in short — the lake dwellers of Switzerland; and finally (d) appears the fourth race, coming from Central Asia. These are the fair complexioned


Notes: 

Nimrod was, according to the Bible, the king of Shinar. The great-grandson of Noah, he is described as "a mighty one on the earth" and "a mighty hunter before God". In the First Book of Chronicles the "Land of Nimrod" is used as a synonym for Assyria.

Esquimaux is an alternate spelling of Eskimos; Inuit or Yupik indigenous peoples.