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VIIIndications of Man's Extreme Antiquity Antiquity of Intellectual ManSculptures on Easter Island North American Earthworks TheGreat Pyramid Conclusion.MANY now living remember the time (forit is little more thantwenty years ago) when the antiquity of man, as now understood,was universally discredited. Not only theologians,but even geologists, then taught us that man belongedaltogether to the existing state of things ;that the extinctanimals of the Tertiary period had finally disappeared, andthat the earth's surface had assumed its present condition,before the human race first came into existence. So prepossessedwere even scientific men with this idea which yetrested on purely negative evidence, and could not be supportedby any arguments of scientific value that numerousfacts which had been presented at intervals for half a century,all tending to prove the existence of man at very remoteepochs, were silently ignored ; and, more than this, thedetailed statements of three distinct and careful observers,confirming each other, were rejected by a great scientificSociety as too improbable for publication, only because theyproved (if they were true) the coexistence of man with extinctanimals. 21 This formed part of the author's address to the Biological Section of theBritish Association at Glasgow in 1876.2 In 1854 (?) a communication from the Torquay Natural History Societyconfirming previous accounts by Mr. Godwin-Austen, Mr. Vivian, and theRev. Mr. M'Enery, that worked flints occurred in Kent's Hole with remains ofextinct species, was rejected as too improbable for publication. See Lubbock'sPrehistoric Times, 2d ed., p. 306.