570 



NA TURE 



[October 20, 1923 



climate, conditions of life, and movements of races. 

 Though the detail might be gleaned elsewhere, the 

 realisation of the manner in which each change con- 

 ditions others, the presentation of the continuity of 

 this pre-history, and the living sense of the realities of 

 existence, put plainly to the reader the complexities 

 of tracing the history of man. Such a mass of detail 

 cannot be at all a final statement ; the knowledge that 

 has been gleaned in the last fifty years is much too 

 fragmentary as yet. We can welcome this as a piece 

 of courageous charting, which will show where the 

 blank places lie, and make us realise the value of 

 scattered items which may be fitted into place. 



Above all, Prof. Myres has the historical sense which 

 is needed for success in interpreting the facts of an- 

 thropology and archaeology. His attitude about some 

 essential matters may be noted. He accepts fully the 

 production of skull form and features by conditions 

 of food and life, yet also accepts the racial character 

 of skulls. The waiting problem is that of the time re- 

 quired to alter racial types under different conditions ; 

 this is not touched on here, for the good reason 

 that there has been no general study of it as yet, 

 although it is at the basis of anthropology. He accepts 

 the unity of European and Mediterranean changes of 

 level in glacial times ; and he takes the longer scale 

 of human relation to glacial epochs, as according 

 better with evidences from the Nile. He regards the 

 Mousterian work, of the third glaciation, as having 

 been annihilated by the Aurignacian people arriving 

 from the S.W. The Solutreans he accepts as coming 

 from the N.E. steppe, perhaps derived directly from 

 Acheulean workers, and flowing across Europe, forming 

 the earliest people of Scandinavia, passing down into 

 Egypt, and also southward to Susa. Thus the unity 

 of culture in these regions is accepted. The^J^psian 

 was a ruder style, originating in North Africa and push- 

 ing up as far as Belgium, leaving kitchen middens, 

 which point to a communal habit. The Magdalenian 

 people are regarded as only an Atlantic branch of the 

 Solutrean in a harsher climate ; but the appearance 

 of that type of work in Egypt seems to show that it 

 was not so local, and would be due to a definite move- 

 ment of a people. 



Coming to later times, the Highland or Alpine people 

 are postulated as extending over all the mountainous 

 region from Armenia to France. When we look at 

 the various races already pushing about in the world, 

 it would be incredible that along two thousand miles 

 of unfavourable country one race should persist 

 without spreading down into better lands on both 

 sides. The type is here derived from the food con- 

 ditions of a forest people who lived mainly on fruits 

 and roots. The principle of skull type being conditioned 



NO. 2816, VOL. 112] 



by climate and food seems the only explanation <'t 

 the similarity of Alpine people, and we may talk u\ 

 an Alpine type, while by descent the people mijilu 

 belong to a dozen different races living in the neighbour- 

 ing plains. This mountain life appears to conftr 

 dominant qualities on the people, when mixed with 

 other races. The so-called Armenoid is supjKtscd v 

 have come from the Asia Minor plateau ; bui 

 type depends on mountain life, why should ii n • 

 equally have grown in the Lebanon or North Syria ? 



The supreme value of pottery as archaeologi(al 

 evidence is lovingly expounded in two pages, after 

 which there is a careful account of the Lake culturt-, 

 the Danube peoples, Anau and Susa, the Mediterranean 

 culture, the Beaker folk, the Bronze users, and the 

 Halstatt age, explained by several original maps. 

 This work has laid down the first stage of a sciencf, 

 by forming a continuous and consistent scheme ui 

 the whole, by which each fresh detail found will ha\c 

 its value as confirming or correcting this framework 

 of our conceptions. 



The other chapters which deal with the age of 

 artistic and written records are sound statements of 

 what is now known, and accessible in other works. 

 The most original parts are on the early Babylonian, 

 by Prof. Langdon, and on the early Aegean, by Mr. 

 Wace. In a volume so crowded with detail there 

 must be many differences of opinion, which it is im- 

 possible to note here. The treatment of historical 

 material in general does not freely sacrifice it to the 

 internal consciousness of the German school. We 

 may note in passing that glass was not an Egj-ptian 

 invention, but was very rarely introduced from some 

 outside source during thousands of years, before it 

 became suddenly ver)' common after the conquest of 

 Syria, 1500 B.C. Glaze was kno^^'n from the earliest 

 prehistoric age in Egypt, but it is not likely to have 

 been invented by that culture. The long priority of 

 Sumer and Elam before the civilisation of Eig^-pt is 

 well stated by Prof. Langdon. 



However much work the writers have put into this 

 book, they have been crippled by the editors not 

 allowing illustrations. The ideal of the publication 

 is far too literary. Even the age of Acts of Parliament 

 needs some material representations to understand it, 

 and to write of times in which the whole evidence is 

 material, without using any illustration, is dancing 

 in fetters. It would be as practicable to write of 

 palaeontology without a figure of a fossil, or of geometry 

 without a diagram. The salvation of this work would 

 be to issue an explanatory- volume of small figures of 

 ever)'thing named here, and in a second edition put 

 in numbered references to the figures. 



W. M. F. P. 



