H.— ANTHROPOLOGY 159 



that of our own time, the new thing that is so striking is its sudden co- 

 ordination. Even in the last years of the past century we were working 

 departmentally. Magnificent explorations were being made, but they 

 were in separate and apparently disconnected regions. Here and there 

 an audacious prophet might hint at a trade route or a far-reaching con- 

 nection, but the material was as yet insufficient to prove it. 



Now suddenly the ancient world appears as a connected whole^ — it is 

 a change like the shrinkage of the habitable globe due to steamship, 

 railway, and aeroplane. We propose to connect Europe and the Mediter- 

 ranean with the uttermost parts of Africa ; we speak freely of intercourse 

 between the Sahara and the Russian steppes ; we do not hesitate to 

 associate Mesopotamia not merely with Egypt but with India, and even 

 perhaps with China. And within a less wide area countless links have 

 been forged which unite one country with another, until the continents of 

 Europe and Asia seem to be furrowed by numerous trade routes from the 

 earliest times, and the Mediterranean is partitioned into well-defined 

 spheres of commerce and empire. 



Time has shrunk no less than space. Sir Arthur Keith, Prof. Elliot 

 Smith and others have made fossil man a familiar pet, almost as close to 

 us as the animals in the Zoo or Felix the cat. As for the Bronze Age, 

 we move in it with as much security as the historian moves in the reign 

 of Queen Elizabeth. 



Now in constructing this type of synthesis the general writer is often 

 carried far beyond the possibilities of strictly logical proof. This does 

 not mean that his methods are to be condemned. I fully realise the 

 wisdom of a colleague who said to me many years ago, when we were 

 discussing first principles on the banks of the Nile, ' You must not break 

 archaeology on the syllogism.' It would be pedantry to ignore how much 

 we owe to the poetic and far-seeing imagination of many a great archaeo- 

 logist, from Schliemann down to several of our own contemporaries. 

 The picturesque prophecy of to-day may well be the scientific fact of 

 to-morrow. So long as the author keeps his fancies and his facts distinct, 

 he can remain perfectly scientific. But it is his duty to show clearly the 

 grounds of his reasoning ; and this leads me to consider somewhat 

 tentatively what are the types of logical reasoning which may be regarded 

 as conditionally or unconditionally valid. 



From such a vast and intricate subject I will select for discussion only 

 two of the principal problems of archaeology — namely, the application of 

 a time-scale and the proof of the dissemination of a culture. First, then, 

 as to the time-scale. A philosopher may attach little value to the mere 

 arithmetical count of years, and a student will often work more freely if 

 he thinks in culture periods rather than in centuries. But there is no doubt 

 that the ordinary man demands not only ' facts,' but ' figures,' and it is 

 a great temptation to supply the figures at any cost. A series of culture 

 periods has been well established, so that there is a reliable system of 

 what is called ' relative chronology ' from the earliest Stone Age down to 

 the time of full documentary history. But it is a very different matter 

 when we attempt to translate these culture periods into centuries and 

 thousands of years. The estimates given by various geologists and 



