EVOLUTION 



2110 EXCAVATIONS IN ANCIENT LANDS 



fashioning of the world, instead of performing 

 a series of distinct, more or less unrelated, 

 acts of creation. Not even the most enthu- 

 siastic supporter of the doctrine of evolution 

 believes that the whole story is told in such 

 terms as "adaptation," "natural selection," or 

 "survival of the fittest." There is a phase of 

 the question which science has been unable 

 to grasp, a controlling or modifying cause 

 which has never been discovered; and the 

 theory in its entirety no more denies the ex- 

 istence of a Deity than does the strictest 

 form of revealed religion. A.MCC. 



Consult Darwin's The Origin of Species; also 

 Descent of Man, by the same author ; Spencer's 

 Principles of Biology; Crampton's The Doctrine 

 of Evolution. 



EVOLUTION , meaning literally, unfolding or 

 unrolling, is. a term applied in mathematics to 

 the process of finding the roots of numbers. 



A root of a number is one of its equal factors. 

 Evolution is the reverse of involution, which 

 is the process of raising a number to any 

 required power (see INVOLUTION). To illus- 

 trate, by the process of involution 4 can be 

 raised to the third power by using it three 

 times as a factor; (4) 3 =4X4X4=64. By the 

 process of evolution the cube root of 64 is 

 found to be 4. That is, 4 is one of three equal 

 factors of 64. To indicate the extraction of a 

 root the radical sign (V ) is used. A small 

 number, written in the angle of the radical 

 sign, indicates what root of the number is 

 required. This number is called the index of- 

 the root. When no index appears' square root 

 is understood. Thus, v/64 means the cube root 

 of 64; ^64, the fourth root of 64; and so on. 

 The processes of finding the square root and 

 cube root of numbers are explained fully under 

 the headings SQUARE ROOT and CUBE ROOT. 



rXCAVATIONS IN ANCIENT LANDS. 

 Throughout the ages, since the very beginning 

 of time, the surface of the earth and the 

 peoples thereon have been changing. Floods, 

 earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other nat- 

 ural agencies have destroyed and buried places 

 which were once astir with as much life as is 

 seen in villages, towns and cities to-day. Of 

 some of these places we read in Biblical and 

 ancient history, the stories having been written 

 before they ceased to exist; yet the discov- 

 eries made through excavations round out those 

 stories more fully. Scientific investigations 

 have revealed, too, that there were prehistoric 

 people also, and Mother Earth holds their 

 story deep within her bosom. But chapter by 

 chapter the interesting story of life is being 

 read backward to the beginning, through exca- 

 vations in ancient lands. 



Little by little the habits, language, religion, 

 culture and arts of ancient civilizations are 

 being revealed. The pick and the shovel bring 

 to light a tablet here, utensils there, in some 

 places well-preserved entire homes, and even 

 cities. Such fragments, pieced together, have 



brought to common knowledge something 

 of the life of the early inhabitants of the 

 United States the Mound Builders. Excava- 

 tions have brought to light the existence of 

 prehistoric people in Mexico, Yucatan and 

 Peru. They have told us the story of early 

 Danes and Norsemen, and many others. The 

 countries around the Mediterranean Sea, how- 

 ever, are now yielding and have, since the 

 Middle Ages, yielded the greatest fund of 

 knowledge and some of the most wonderful 

 artistic treasures. 



Greece. In the middle of the eighteenth 

 century excavations in Greece disclosed the 

 famous Venus de Milo, the Zeus temple at 

 Olympia and the Athene temple at Aegina. 

 Systematic diggings begun about a hundred 

 years later, in 1869, brought to light the site 

 of ancient Troy, built above the ruins of sev- 

 eral other Troys. Work then conducted at 

 Mycenae and Tiryns uncovered the old Greek 

 civilization known as the Mycenaean. Exca- 

 vations made since then at such historic places 

 as Athens, Delphi, Sparta and Corinth have re- 

 vealed further interesting facts about a people 



