THE PROBLEMS OF ARCHEOLOGY 



BY GEORGE EDUARD SELER 



(Translated from the German by Dr. George Kriehn, New York) 



[George Eduard Seler, Professor of American Linguistics; American Ethnology 

 and Archeology, University of Berlin ; Director of Ethnological Museum. 

 b. Crossen an-der-Oder, December 5, 1849. University of Breslau, 1869-70; 

 University of Berlin, 1871-74. Professor of Natural Sciences, City of Berlin, 

 1876-79; Auxiliary Assistant, Royal Ethnological Museum, 1884-^; Assistant 

 Director, ibid. 1892-. Member of the Berlin Anthropological Society; Berlin 

 Geographical Society; and numerous scientific and learned societies. Author 

 of Mural Painting of Mitla; The Ancient Chacula Settlements; and a number 

 of noted works and memoirs on various topics.] 



IN this distinguished assembly, gathered in the place where 

 all the material labors of the world have contributed their results 

 to form a picture whose brilliancy can hardly be surpassed, and to 

 which chosen representatives of all the sciences have been bidden 

 in order to present in one harmonious whole the varied intellectual 

 achievements of all nations, I am asked to speak of what has been 

 accomplished of late years in my own department, that of arche- 

 ology, and to lay before you the significance for the other sciences 

 of these results. 



There is scarcely any science to which cooperation with the others 

 is so necessary as it is to archeology; yet there is scarcely one 

 which in so short a space of time has gained so much in substantive 

 importance, has entered so much into the work of the others, and 

 has so demonstrated its usefulness to their progress. This is equally 

 true of prehistoric European and classical archeology, and of the 

 study of the antiquities of America. To look first at merely external 

 facts, who would have thought it possible a hundred years ago that 

 to-day in all parts of Europe hundreds of museums would exist, 

 filled with the domestic utensils, weapons, vessels, and ornaments 

 of peoples from whom no historical knowledge of any kind has 

 come down to us some of whom, indeed, go back to a period 

 whose antiquity can only be computed by the calculations of geo- 

 logists, when the vine-clad hills bordering the Rhine and the Lake 

 of Constance were barren as the steppes and tundras of Siberia, 

 when the reindeer, the wild ass, and the mammoth served as ob- 

 jects of the chase and at the same time gave men the first impulse 

 towards the satisfaction of their artistic feelings? You will be told 

 by those whose province it is how classical studies have been en- 

 larged and reshaped by the results of the science of the spade 

 how the excavation of the ancient seats of civilization in Babylonia 

 and Egypt permit whole vanished worlds to rise anew before our 



