596 THE METHODS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL EESEARCH. 



sui:)ported by tlie shapes and contours of tlie skulls vrLicli Lave been 

 found in the earliest graves, and which show not merely sporadic vari- 

 ation, but variation atfecting" great classes. All this assuredlj^ requires 

 us to postulate a long period during which fresh changes were incubat- 

 ing and were being carried forward. We have no menus of knowing 

 how long this was, We can only very naturally con(;lude that since so 

 little change has taken place during the last four thousand years in 

 the languages, the customs, and i)hysical features of so many di (Cerent 

 races, we must go back a long way if we are to explain the dift'ereiices 

 as they exist. 



We have no chronology of any kind for these misty regions. Dates 

 entirely fail us. In Egyj)t and in IJabylonia anything like positive 

 chronological data fail about 2500 B. C, while, as you know, the Bible 

 dates are, before a certain period, not only based upon those of Baby- 

 lonia, but they have been preserved in an entirely different shape in 

 the Masoretic, the Samaritan, and the Septuagint versions, and there 

 is no means of rectifying them. All we can say is that the Masoretic 

 numbers, upon which Archbishop Ussher's chronology was based, and 

 which was the basis of the calculation in the margins of our Bibles, 

 are the least trustworthy of all, and can be shown to be sophisticated 

 and altered. If I may be pardoned for referring to a Avork of my own 

 in this behalf, namely, that which I have entitled The ]Mammoth and 

 the Flood, 1 claim to have shown that all the evidences we possess — 

 geological, x>aleontological, and archjieological — converges with singu- 

 lar force upon one conclusion, namely, that at the verge of human 

 history there was a great and widespread catastroplie, which over- 

 whelmed a large part of the temperate regions of the earth and which 

 caused great destruction of men and animals. This widespread 

 catastrophe has left its mark upon the traditions of many and widely 

 scattered peoples. It possibly accounts for the isolation of many races 

 in our own day, notably in districts without great natural frontiers, 

 which isolation is due, in all i)robability, to the destruction of all inter- 

 vening links between the various human colonies which survived. It 

 is a remarkable proof of this catastrophe that whereas man is the 

 most elastic of creatures in his capacity for facing and overcoming 

 difficulties, there is, nevertheless, an absolute gap in his history in 

 large areas in Europe unbridged by any remains or by any evidence. 

 How are we to explain this'? Once man has occupied the ground he is 

 not likely to abandon it entirely and suddenly. Wherever we lind 

 one set of men driving out and superseding another, we have evidence 

 of gi'adual change (of overlapping). In the hill forts of Dorset we 

 liave Boman remains mixed with those of Britons. In the Kentish 

 cemeteries we have Boman remains mixed with Saxon. In the case 

 before us, however, it is not only human art which shows a gap, but a 

 whole fauna snddenlychanges. Not a single mammoth or a rhinoceros 

 has ever occurred with the remains of a domesticated animal. Since 



