THE METHODS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH. 601 



that of its neighbors. To us this art is supremely interesting, because 

 we can trace its progress stej) by step tbrougii mauifbld vicissitudes 

 for four thousand years. 



Let us now return again to our own country. The long-headed 

 people here were displaced very largely by a race with round heads, 

 who burned their dead and i)ut tlieir ashes in beautifnlly constructed 

 urns, and then deposited them in stone cists or boxes in round or 

 saucer-shaped mounds and not in long barrows. As we have said, 

 there was considerable overlapping between them and their predeces- 

 sors, who adopted in some cases their customs, inckiding that of bury- 

 ing in round mounds or barrows. The shape of the skulls of these new 

 men shows us what a profound racial difference there must have been 

 between them and their predecessors. They apparently came from 

 another direction, and with different surroundings. So far as we 

 know, they were the first wave of that migration of tribes from the 

 east which have successively followed each other in Enrt^pe, and are 

 represented by the earlier Celts in central and southern France, and 

 large parts of Spain, and by the Irish and Scottish Gaels, just as 

 their art remains proved the round-headed folk to have mingled with 

 their lu'edecessors, the Basques. If we follow our maps eastward, and 

 track the steps of those races who burned their dead, we shall find them 

 linked step by step — if iiot by race by a certain relationship in tlieir 

 arts — to the early dwellers in Mesopotamia. Tliere a similar develop- 

 ment to that we all know so well in the Nile Valley, and likewise in 

 the Stone age of culture, took place in the valleys of the Eu])hrates 

 and the Tigris. Here, however, we seem to have evidence that the 

 culture was not homegrown, but there are reasons for believing that 

 the men ■ who founded the earliest known communications with 

 Chaldea brought with them the arts by which we know them from tlie 

 Elamitish Mountains to the east, whence they seem to have sent colo- 

 nies westward into Mesopotamia and eastward into China. This 

 curious and most interesting induction is one of the most important 

 discoveries of recent years. It enables us to link the culture of the 

 furthest east to that of the west, and it also enables us to conclude 

 that the arts are not the iieculiar heritage of any one race, for here we 

 seem to be compelled to admit that the foundation of that culture 

 which we call Aryan or Indo-European is really to be traced to the 

 now despised Turks and Finnish races. It was a race very nearly akin 

 to the Turks and Finns which certainly invented the cuneiform writ- 

 ing, and apparently developed the earliest religious system in Chaldea. 

 From this race it was directly learned by the Semitic races, whose origi- 

 nal home was Arabia, and whose enterprise and vigor distributed them 

 far and wide. One thing we must remember, that so far as our present 

 evidence goes, the arts of Babylonia were as different from those of the 

 Nile Valley as were the language, mythology, and the appearance of 

 the people. 



