For even in
Europe and Asia, where no one supposes that different
races sprung from wholly separate beginnings, we find
languages isolated in the same way. The speech of the
Basques in the Pyrenees has nothing in common with the
European families of languages.
We may, however, regard the natives of America as an
aboriginal race, if any portion of mankind can be viewed
as such. So far as we know, they are not an offshoot, or
a migration, from any people of what is called the Old
World, although they are, like the people of the other
continents, the descendants of a primitive human stock.
We may turn to geology to find how long mankind has lived
on this continent. In a number of places in North and
South America are found traces of human beings and their
work so old that in comparison the beginning of the
world's written history becomes a thing of yesterday.
Perhaps there were men in Canada long before the shores
of its lakes had assumed their present form; long before
nature had begun to hollow out the great gorge of the
Niagara river or to lay down the outline of the present
Lake Ontario. Let us look at some of the notable evidence
in respect to the age of man in America.
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