Exploded Bubbles | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 27, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 33.

Exploded Bubbles.

ABOUT the close of the last century, when Napoleon and his army invaded Egypt, they found two temples, one at Denderah, and the other at Esneh, covered with hieroglyphics, images of deities, and views of the heavenly bodies of so curious a character that literary men not only copied them, but carried away large sections of the ceilings to Paris. Here they became at once subjects of great importance. Archæologists examined them, made astronomical calculations, and pronounced them to be at least 17,000 years old. Great excitement followed. The savans were agreed on the question of antiquity. The Bible was reviled and denounced as a system of falsehoods. But presently Champollion, having the inscriptions on the Rosetta stone for a key, deciphered the hieroglyphics, and found in the temple of Denderah the titles of Augustus Cæsar, and in that of Esneh the name of Antoninus, thus proving that the first was no older than the Christian era, and the other one hundred and forty years later. Thereupon the bubble suddenly burst, and nothing more has ever been heard of the remarkable temples.

Another case belongs to our own country and to the present generation. A standard and very strong proof of the "antiquity of man" was found in the case of certain human bones found in a coral formation in Florida. The case appeared in several of the best works on the subject. It obtained the weight of the name of the great Agassiz, who entered into an elaborate argument to show, by the known rate of the formation of coral, that ten thousand years, at least, must have elapsed since the bones were placed in the reef. This was strong evidence, and the most was made of it. It was hard to answer. But, unfortunately for the continuance of its strength, the original discoverer of the bones, Count L. F. Pourtales, came to know of the use made of his discovery, when there appeared in the American Naturalist the following statement from him:

"The human jaw and other bones found in Florida by myself in 1848, were not found in a coral formation, but in a fresh-water sandstone, on the shore of Lake Monroe, associated with fresh-water shells of species still living in the lake. No date can be assigned to the formation of that deposit, at least from present observation."

Thus ended, also, this great wonder.

It is not putting the case too strongly to say that there is not one clearly settled fact which shows, with any fair degree of conclusiveness, that man has been on the earth for a longer period than about six thousand years. There are some things which on their face have seemed to require great antiquity; but they have either broken down entirely on closer examination, or they are too weak to do more than raise a presumption. So the case stands at this time. —Pittsburgh Advocate.