THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST 
Vör. KAN August, 1896. 356 
THE OLDEST CIVILIZED MEN. 
By E. D. CoPE. 
Recent explorations in Babylonia have given us much in- 
formation as to the characters and customs of the oldest civil- 
ized people of whom we have any knowledge. The earlier ex- 
plorations were conducted by M. de Sarzec, French consul at 
Bagdad, and the report of his work was issued in a magnificent 
folio in joint authorship with the distinguished anthropologist 
of Paris, M. Leon Heuzey, beginning in 1889. A little later 
the department of Archeology and Paleontology of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania sent out Messrs. J. P. Peters and J. H. 
Haynes to make excava 
plain. They selected Nippur or Nufar as the point of research, 
and work has been continued there from 1888 to the present 
year. The climate of this place is very trying, and the char- 
acter of the people dangerous, but Mr. Haynes on whom much 
of the actual labor fell, obtained an amount of material which 
in quantity and quality equals that obtained by the museums 
of London and Paris. 
The Philadelphia m 
Herman Hilprecht, Professor of À 
Semitic Philology in the University 
43 
aterial has been investigated by Dr. 
ssyrian and comparative 
of Pennsylvania, and he 
