THE EISE OF MAN BREASTED 413 



the other. We thus have on one side highly orgcanized groups of 

 natural scientists and on the other a large body of trained historians ; 

 but we ourselves have had no organization for the study of the Rise 

 of Man. In May, 1919, a few weeks after delivering the William 

 Ellery Hale lectures, I received from Mr. John D. Rockefeller, jr., 

 a very cordial letter agreeing to finance the nucleus of a staff to 

 begin organized investigation of the Rise of Man. Out of this begin- 

 ning of 13 years ago this new organization, which we call The Orien- 

 tal Institute, has rapidly grown from the conduct of a single expedi- 

 tion on the Nile to an organization which is not only maintaining a 

 group of trained investigators at the American headquarters at the 

 University of Chicago but also serves as the administrative and 

 scientific center operating a series of research expeditions at 12 

 different points in the ancient Near East, with a personnel of over a 

 hundred people. 



Genetically the work of the Oriental Institute, as I have already 

 indicated, falls between that of the paleontologists, on the one hand, 

 and of the historians, on the other. Geographically it includes the 

 vague region commonly called the Near East. If we lay out upon 

 a map of the eastern Mediterranean region a circle having a diameter 

 of something over 2,000 miles, we find that it includes the great cen- 

 ters where man began as a savage and eventually created the civiliza- 

 tion which we have inherited. The region stretches from the Black 

 Sea on the north to the cataracts of the Nile on the south, and from 

 the Aegean and the Greek Islands on the west to the Persian Plateau 

 on the east. For an individual scientist to undertake, single handed, 

 the recovery and the study of the vast body of evidence still sur- 

 viving in this extensive region would be pathetically futile. The 

 task must be attacked by a large organization subdivided into groups 

 or expeditions. The Oriental Institute therefore has now a group 

 of 12 research projects strategically distributed throughout the an- 

 cient lands of the Near East and stretching along a curving frontier 

 of over 2,500 miles, from the Black Sea on the north to the cataracts 

 of the Nile on the south. 



THE PREHISTOKIC SURVEY 



It is obvious that the study of earliest man must carry the investi- 

 gator back into the geological ages, and our researches in the Near 

 East, therefore, have been to no small extent concerned with the 

 problems of natural science, especially geology. We have, therefore, 

 organized a Prehistoric Survey, under the leadership of Dr. Kenneth 

 S. Sandford, an experienced geologist, as field director. This expe- 

 dition undertook first the investigation of the geological history of 

 the Nile Valley. The results have been notable. There are still 



