448 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1135 



brighter than ever before, because the 

 warnings and appeals of men of science 

 have at last, and after many years, begun 

 to bear fruit, or perhaps it would be more 

 correct to say the lessons of the war have 

 begun to make an impression on the powers 

 that be. Within the last few weeks it has 

 been intimated that the government, giving 

 ear to what has been uttered, incessantly 

 and almost ad nauseam, with regard to 

 British neglect of science, proposes to ap- 

 point a committee to inquire into the posi- 

 tion of science in our national system of 

 education, especially in universities and sec- 

 ondary schools. The duty of the committee 

 will be to advise the authorities how to 

 promote the advancement of pure science, 

 and also the interests of trade, industries 

 and professions dependent on the applica- 

 tion of science, bearing in mind the needs 

 of what is described as a liberal education. 

 It is stated that the committee will include 

 scientific men in whom the country will 

 have confidence, some of those who appre- 

 ciate the application of science to commerce 

 and industry, and some who are able from 

 general experience to correlate scientific 

 teaching with education as a whole. I am 

 sure that we may look forward with confi- 

 dence to the recommendations of such a 

 committee, and we shall hope, for the sake 

 of our country, that their recommendations 

 will be adopted and put in force with the 

 least possible delay. 



G. G. Henderson 



NEW ARCHEOLOGICAL LIGHTS ON 



THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION 



IN EUROPE. II 



It is a commonplace of archeology that 

 the culture of the Neolithic peoples through- 

 out a large part of central, northern and 

 western Europe — like the newly domesti- 

 cated species possessed by them— is Eu- 

 rasiatic in type. So, too, in southern 



Greece and the iEgean world we meet 

 with a form of Neolithic culture which 

 must be essentially regarded as a prolonga- 

 tion of that of Asia Minor. 



It is clear that it is on this Neolithic 

 foundation that our later civilization im- 

 mediately stands. But in the constant 

 chain of actions and reactions by which the 

 history of mankind is bound together — 

 short of the extinction of all concerned, a 

 hypothesis in this case excluded — it is 

 equally certain that no great human 

 achievement is without its continuous ef- 

 fect. The more we realize the substantial 

 amount of progress of the men of the Late 

 Quaternary Age in arts and crafts and 

 ideas, the more difficult it is to avoid the 

 conclusion that somewhere "at the back of 

 behind" — it may be by more than one 

 route and on more than one continent, in 

 Asia as well as Africa — actual links of 

 connection may eventually come to light. 



Of the origins of our complex European 

 culture this much at least can be confi- 

 dently stated : the earliest extraneous 

 sources on which it drew lay respectively 

 in two directions — in the valley of the Nile, 

 on one side, and in that of the Euphrates, 

 on the other. 



Of the high early culture in the lower 

 Euphrates valley our first real knowledge 

 has been due to the excavations of De 

 Sarzec in the mounds of Tello, the ancient 

 Lagash. It is now seen that the civiliza- 

 tion that we call Babylonian, and which 

 was hitherto known under its Semitic 

 guise, was really in its main features an 

 inheritance from the earlier Sumerian 

 race — culture in this case once more domi- 

 nating nationality. Even the laws which 

 Hammurabi traditionally received from 

 the Babylonian Sun God were largely mod- 

 elled on the reforms enacted a thousand 

 years earlier by his predecessor, Uruka- 

 gina, and ascribed by him to the inspira- 



