i6o SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



palaeontologists for everything behind the last stages of the Ice Age are 

 immensely divergent from one another. I should not venture — it would 

 be quite beyond my capacity — to criticise or discuss them. But when the 

 stage of universal hunting has passed, and mankind has settled down to 

 an agricultural and pastoral existence ; when the outlines of sea and land 

 have become fixed in approximately the same forms which we know to-day, 

 then we feel that pre-history is only a slight extension backward of what 

 is generally recognised as simple history. It is a sketch of the early chapters 

 in the story of empires, nations, and peoples, of whom several are known 

 to us in written history or tradition. We naturally desire to know in 

 terms of years and generations how far back we can trace the doings of 

 the men who are our own ancestors or collateral forbears. Now here 

 we must be clear-sighted enough to accept our inevitable limitations and 

 avoid all sophistries and all claims, however specious, to know the un- 

 knowable. We are wholly dependent for our absolute chronology upon 

 the dates recorded or obtained by immediate inference from ancient 

 writings or traditions. The fragmentary relics of Mesopotamian and 

 Egyptian official chronology furnish a time-scale, liable, as you know, to 

 much uncertainty in minor details, but trustworthy in all its main lines. 

 Whenever this time-scale can be applied, it is possible within quite narrow 

 limits of variation to give precise figures as well as facts. Thus we can 

 give a dating in years to all the products of Egyptian civilisation back to 

 the beginning of the First Dynasty. And by direct inference we can apply 

 this scale to many other parts of Europe an-d Asia, as Sir Arthur Evans 

 has so successfully applied it to the dating of Cretan civilisation. Indeed, 

 as archaeological discovery proceeds in the coming years we may reasonably 

 hope to arrive at a completely graduated scale of chronological dating in 

 actual years for every part of the ancient world after 3500 B.C. But if 

 it is asked what means we have for establishing a chronological as well 

 as a typological scheme behind 3500 or possibly 4000 B.C., I answer 

 unhesitatingly that we have none, and that unless earlier written records 

 or traditions come to light it is probable that we shall never have any. 



One very crude method of attempting to avoid this impasse is so 

 illogical that I need spend little time in discussing it. Below the strata 

 in which definitely dateable objects are found — whether at Knossos, 

 Ur, Susa,Mohendjidaro or any other very ancient site — there are generally 

 strata of a certain thickness in which other and obviously earlier forms 

 occur. Now it is sometimes suggested, even by skilled explorers in their 

 less discreet moments, that the mere thickness of these undated layers 

 may give an indication of the length of time which it took to form them. 

 And yet a very shght amount of reflection, not to speak of actual experience 

 in the field, will show that this reasoning is as childish as it is simple. 

 I have myself seen in Egypt deposits many feet deep which can neverthe- 

 less be proved by well-dated objects at the top and bottom to have been 

 formed within a single century ; and I have also seen a concentrated 

 stratum of not more than four feet which contained the products of many 

 centuries closely pressed together. There are innumerable reasons for 

 which the rate of deposit may vary almost indefinitely. To attempt 

 therefore to estimate the rate of deposit in the prehistoric stratum from 



