514 ARCHEOLOGY 



No one can possibly deny the priceless services bestowed on 

 history by archeology. Primitive man had no other means of re- 

 cording his history than oral tradition. With the advance of time 

 this latter necessarily underwent a process of adulteration; and 

 legend then took its place, at first quite comprehensible, but later 

 on confused and unintelligible. Even the nations who were able 

 to form a system of writing, and left us a record of their acts, whether 

 in documents or in sculptural inscriptions, as they disappeared, 

 took with them the key to their history, leaving behind in the 

 memory of man but faint recollection of their former glory. The 

 study of their documents, heretofore incomprehensible, and of 

 their inscriptions, the fruit of endless toil, came to supply what 

 was lacking in their vague traditions: and in certain cases, such as 

 Egypt, to produce a true history. Archeological investigations 

 often succeeded in elucidating legends, leaving in their place his- 

 toric facts. The excavations in Crete are teaching us the Hellenic 

 origins; while the exploration that is being carried on at Abydos, 

 Troy, Babylon, Nineveh, and other famous places in the East, are 

 now shedding the first beams of light on the darkness of those past 

 ages. And so, thanks to archeology, humanity's real life is being 

 deciphered. Archeology should take its place in the front rank of 

 the most advantageous sciences, solely through this priceless service, 

 which satisfies man's zeal in his search after the knowledge of his 

 past, so that he should not feel that he had been born into the 

 world without antecedents, like the tree which springs up all alone 

 on the immense plain, or like the stone torn from the mountain 

 side as it rolls down in its solitary flight. 



No more fitting expression could be found for this all-important 

 object of archeology, than the words of M. Babelon, when speaking 

 on the monuments of Suse. "A new chapter in the history 'of hu- 

 manity," he has said, "has been opened and is about to be written, 

 as a consequence of the archeological discoveries in Persia." And 

 to this I add that archeology will eventually write every chapter 

 of that great book, the Bible, of the history of man all over the 

 world. 



So far as Mexico is concerned, the benefits derived from arche- 

 ology have been most advantageous. It affords me great pleasure 

 at this point, to express publicly our debt of gratitude to those 

 great scholars of different nationalities, who have by their studies 

 enriched our history, names like Putnam, Holmes, and Payne; the 

 Count of Charencey, Seler, and Forstemann; Cyrus Thomas, Mrs. 

 Nuttall, and Miss Fletcher; Maudsley, McGee, and Goodman; and 

 a countless host of others which it would take too long to enumerate. 



The ancient Mexicans and the other peoples, especially the former, 

 who prior to the conquest occupied the territory of Mexico as it is 



