Prehistoric Man: Researches into the Origin of Civilization in the Old and the New World

Book excerpt: "Prehistoric Man..." is an anthropological and archaeological work by scholar Sir Daniel Wilson. The book traces the civilization of man from his origins through different ages from Stone Age to the Metal Ages. Wilson examines the subject in regard to the various archeological discoveries made by the time of his writing the book in the mid-19th century. He explains his motives, "The subject primarily treated of in the following pages is the man of that new hemisphere which was revealed to Europe in 1492. There through all historic centuries he had lived apart, absolutely uninfluenced by any reflex of the civilisation of the Ancient World; and yet, as it appears, pursuing a course in many respects strikingly analogous to that by means of which the civilisation of Europe originated. The recognition of this is not only of value as an aid to the realisation of the necessary conditions through which man passed in reaching the stage at which he is found at the dawn of history; but it seems to point to the significant conclusion that civilisation is the development of capacities inherent in man..."