254 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 10. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF MESOPOTAMIAN CULTURE. 



At a recent meeting of the Oriental Club 

 of Pliiladelpliia, Dr. J. P. Peters, whose re- 

 searches among the ruins of the valley of the 

 Euphrates are well known, mentioned his 

 observations on the deposition of alluvium 

 by the river as a clu'onometer for measuring 

 the antiquitj^ of some ruin-mounds. The 

 deposits from the known date of Alexander's 

 conquests display marked uniformity ; and 

 taking the depths of these as a standard, the 

 foundations of Ur (the ' Ur of the Chaldees ' 

 of Genesis, the modern Muchair) and of Eri- 

 chu (the modern Abu-Shahrein) must have 

 been laid about seven thousand years B. C. 



This venerable antiquitj', however, ap- 

 pears quite modern compared to that as- 

 signed the same culture in some calculations 

 laid before the Academie des Inscriptions 

 by M. Oppert last summer. They had refer- 

 ence to the established beginnings of the 

 Sothiac cycle and the Chaldean Saros, or 

 recurrent cj^cles of eclipses. His argument 

 was that the former dated from an observa- 

 tion of the cosmical rising of Sirius visible 

 to the naked eye. This could occur only at 

 an eclipse of the sun at its rising ; and this 

 he figured was upon a Thursdaj^, August 

 29, in the year 11,542 before Christ ! And 

 as it was visible only south of latitude 26°, 

 the locality of the observation he fixes for 

 various reasons at the island of Tylos, the 

 modern Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf. 

 Truly, this is a tov,r de maitre in archseology 

 which makes one dizzy! 



DIVISIONS OP THE STONE AGE. 



A USEFUL broadside, about twenty inches 

 square, presenting succinctly the subdi- 

 visions of the Stone Age, was published last 

 j^ear by M. Philippe Salmon in the Bulletin 

 de la Societe Dauphinoise d' Archceologie et 

 cV Ethnologie. The three periods it presents 

 nre the palaeolithic, the mesolithic and the 

 neolithic. These are subdivided into epochs, 

 six in all, each characterized by the products 



of definite stations, peculiar industries, 

 climate and fauna. As a synopsis of the 

 accepted data, fi-om the best French author- 

 ities, the scheme merits high praise. 



The position of the mesolithic division 

 takes the place of the ' hiatus,' which figures 

 in the works of Mortillet and others as an 

 unexplained time of transition befrw^een the 

 rough and polished stone ages. Salmon, 

 however, claims that no such gap exists. 

 He quotes, for instance, the station of 

 Campignj', near the lower Seine, and Spien- 

 nes, in Belgium, as proofs that the peoples 

 and the culture of the earlier and ruder 

 epochs progressed steadily, without import- 

 ant breaks, up to the full bloom of the 

 neolitliic generations. The importance of 

 such a generalization, if it could be estab- 

 lished, would be great ; for, working back 

 fi'om historic to pre-historic times, there is 

 no doubt but that the neolithic nations of 

 central and western Europe were of Aryan 

 speech, and Salmon's argument would carry 

 this mighty stock in lineal line to the pre- 

 glacial fishermen in the valley of the Somme. 



THE TEACHING OP ANTHROPOLOGY. 



In a little pamphlet which I published in 

 1892, entitled ' Anthropology as a Science 

 and as a Branch of University Education,' 

 a plan was suggested bj' which this science 

 could be introduced into our universities as 

 one of the optional branches for the doctor- 

 ate of j)hilosophy, and its importance as a 

 department of the higher education was 

 emphasized. 



The subject has been taken up lately in 

 Germany with gi-atifying interest. In the 

 ' Globus ' for October, 1894, Professor Fried- 

 rich Mliller, of Vienna, warmlj' advocates 

 that a chair representing anthropology 

 should be recognized as a j^roper addition 

 to the faculty of a great universitj' ; and 

 a few weeks later, in the same journal, 

 the question was discussed by Dr. Eudolf 

 Martin, of the University of Zurich. The 



