The truth of this general position may be illustrated by the condition of the American aborigines at the epoch of their discovery. They commenced their career on the American continent in savagery; and, although possessed of inferior mental endowments, the body of them had emerged from savagery and attained to the Lower Status of barbarism; whilst a portion of them, the Village Indians of North and South America, had risen to the Middle Status. They had domesticated the llama, the only quadruped native to the continent which promised usefulness in the domesticated state, and had produced bronze by alloying copper with tin. They needed but one invention, and that the greatest, the art of smelting iron ore, to advance themselves into the Upper Status. Considering the absence of all connection with the most advanced portion of the human family in the Eastern hemisphere, their progress in unaided self-development from the savage state must be accounted remarkable. While the Asiatic and European were waiting patiently for the boon of iron tools, the American Indian was drawing near to the possession of bronze, which stands next to iron in the order of time. During this period of arrested progress in the Eastern hemisphere, the American aborigines advanced themselves, not to the status in which they were found, but sufficiently near to reach it while the former were passing through the last period of barbarism, and the first four thousand years of civilization. It gives us a measure of the length of time they had fallen behind the Aryan family in the race of progress: namely the duration of the Later Period of barbarism, to which the years of civilization must be added. The Aryan and Ganowánian families together exemplify the entire experience of man in five ethnical periods, with the exception of the first portion of the Later Period of savagery.
Savagery was the formative period of the human race. Commencing at zero in knowledge and experience, without fire, without articulate speech and without arts, our savage progenitors fought the great battle, first for existence, and then for progress, until they secured safety from ferocious animals, and permanent subsistence. Out of these efforts there came gradually a developed speech, and the occupation of the entire surface of the earth. But society from its rudeness was still incapable of organization in numbers. When the most advanced portion of mankind had emerged from savagery, and entered the Lower Status of barbarism, the entire population of the earth must have been small in numbers. The earliest inventions were the most difficult to accomplish because of the feebleness of the power of abstract reasoning. Each substantial item of knowledge gained would form a basis for further advancement; but this must have been nearly imperceptible for ages upon ages, the obstacles to progress nearly balancing the energies arrayed against them. The achievements of savagery are not particularly remarkable in character, but they represent an amazing amount of persistent labor with feeble means continued through long periods of time before reaching a fair degree of completeness. The bow and arrow afford an illustration.