136 THE DESICCATION OF LATER GEOLOGICAL TIMES. 



go forthest back in point of .absolute time;* and when written records begin 

 to fail, architectural monuments, to some extent, supply the deficiency. So 

 extensive is the subject at present before us, that it is not possible to do more 

 than throw out a few hints as to conclusions reached, not without consider- 

 able examination of authorities on the part of the present writer ; so that, if 

 the body of evidence seems small, in comparison with the nuignitude of the 

 conclusions drawn, it is rather from want of space in which to dilate, than 

 from defect of material. 



That most of that which we recognize as forming the basis of our intel- 

 lectual culture, science, art, literature, and religion has come to us from 

 countries bordering on the Mediterranean, no one will deny. How far, ex- 

 actly, Egyptian, Greek, and Arabian authorities have been dependent on and 

 drawn from each other will perhaps never be accurately known ; nor is it 

 material that it should be, from the point of view of the present inquiry. We 

 know that, either successively or by turns, these nations at the east end of the 

 Mediterranean shone with a brilliant light on what to us seems to have been 

 the outer darkness of the rest of the world. We know that from the eastern 

 end of that great inland sea light, perhaps with sundry vibi-ations back and 

 forth, reached the central portion, and later the western end. Egypt, 

 Greece, Asia Minor, Arabia, Italy, the southern shore of the Mediterranean 

 west of Italy, and Spain, have each, in turn, ruled the world, either by intel- 

 lect or by force, or more often by the inevitable combination of the two. 

 That no one of these countries stands in any such relation to the rest of the 

 world, at the present time, will be readily admitted ; and more than this 

 may be affirmed with truth. As a rule, these nations have reached a stage 

 of decadence from which they can never rise to occupy again the position 

 which they have lost. The Egyptian fellah and the Arabian bedouin know 

 nothing of the glorious history of their predecessors on the soil they now 

 occupy, and from whom they are lineally descended. Modern civilization, 

 the direct outcome of that which their ancestors originated and handed over 

 to the comparatively barbaric races of the North and West, has gone utterly 

 beyond their ken, and is something to which they can never find their way 

 again. 



That the statement here made would be found to be strictly true in all its 



* Tliere may be an exception to this in the case of the historical records of the Chinese people; but the lan- 

 guage, style of thought, and general development of that nation are so foreign to our own, and have had so little 

 influence on us, that — for the present at least — that country can hardly be taken into consideration in connec- 

 tion with an inquiry of the kind suggested above. 



