FIFTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SCIENCE. 463 



FIFTY YEARS' PROGRESS IN SCIENCE. 



, BY SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



(^Extracts.') 



Few branches of science have made more rapid progress in the last half-cen- 

 tury than that which deals with the ancient condition of man. When our Asso- 

 ciation was founded it was generally considered that the human race suddenly 

 appeared on the scene, about 6,000 years ago, after the disappearance of the ex- 

 tinct mammalia and when Europe, both as regards physical conditions and the 

 other animals by which it was inhabited, was pretty much in the same condition 

 as in the period covered by Greek and Roman history. Since then the persever- 

 ing researches of Layard, Rawlinson, Botta and others have made known to us, 

 not only the statues and palaces of the ancient Assyrian monarch, but even their 

 libraries; the cuneiform characters have been deciphered, and we can not only 

 see, but read in the British Museum, the actual contemporary records, on burnt 

 clay cylinders, of the events recorded in the historical books of the Old Testa- 

 ment and in the pages of Herodotus. The researches in Egypt also seem to have 

 satisfactorily established the fact that the pyramids themselves are at least 6,000 

 years old, while it is obvious that the Assyrian and Egyptian monarchies cannot 

 suddenly have attained to the wealth and power, the state of social organization 

 and progress in the arts, of which we have before us, preserved by the sand of 

 the desert from the ravages of man, such wonderful proofs. 



In Europe, the writings of the earliest historians and poets indicated that, 

 before iron came into general use, there was a time when bronze was the ordinary 

 material of weapons, axes, and other cutting implements, and though it seemed 

 ^?/mr/ improbable that a compound of copper and tin should have preceded the 

 simple metal iron, nevertheless the researches of archaeologists have shown that 

 there really was in Europe a "Bronze Age," which at the dawn of history was 

 just giving way to that of "Iron." 



The contents of ancient graves, buried in many cases so that their owner 

 might carry some at least of his wealth with him to the world of spirits, have 

 proved very instructive. More especially the results obtained by Nilsson in 

 Scandinavia, by Hoare and Borlase, Bateman and Greenwell, in our own country, 

 and the contents of the rich cemetery at Hallstadt, left no room for doubt as to 

 the existence of a Bronze Age; but we get a completer idea of the condition of 

 Man at this period from the Swiss lake-villages, first made known to us by Keller, 

 and subsequently studied by Morlot, Troyon, Desor, Riitimeyer, Heer and 

 and other Swiss archaeologists. Along the shallow edges of the Swiss lakes there 

 flourished, once upon a time, many populous villages or towns, built on platforms 

 supported by piles, exactly as many Malayan villages are now. Under these 

 circumstances innumerable objects were one by one dropped into the water; 



