MOELOT — SOME GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHiEOLOGY. 47 



begin by physical geology. This supplies us with a thread of induc- 

 tion to guide us safely in our rambles through the past ages of our 

 earth, as Lyell has so admirably set forth ; for the laws which 

 govern organic creation and the inorganic world are as invariable as 

 the results of their combinations and permutations are infinitely 

 varied, science reveahng to us everywhere the perfect stability of 

 causes with the diversity of forms. 



So, to understand the past ages of our species, we must first begin 

 by examining its present state, following man wherever he has 

 crossed the waters and set his foot upon dry land. The difierent 

 nations which at present inhabit our earth must be studied with re- 

 spect to their industry, their habits, and their general mode of life. 

 We thus make ourselves acquainted with the difierent degrees of 

 civihzation, ranging from the highest summit of modern development 

 to the most abject state, hardly surpassing that of the brute. By that 

 means Ethnology supplies us with what may be called a contempo- 

 raneous scale of development, the stages of which are more or less 

 fixed and invariable ; whilst Archaeology traces a scale of successive 

 development, with one moveable stage passing gradually along the 

 whole line.* 



Ethnography is, consequently, to Archaeology what physical geo- 

 graphy is to geology, namely, a thread of induction in the labyrinth 

 of the past, and a starting point in those comparative researches of 

 which the end is the knowledge of mankind, and its development 

 through successive generations. 



In following out the principles above laid down, the Scandinavian 

 savants have succeeded in unravelling the leading features in the pro- 

 gress of pre-historical European civilization, and in distinguishing 

 three principal eras, which they have called the Stone-age, the 

 Bronze-age, and the Iron-age. f 



This great conquest in the realm of science is due chiefly to the 

 labours of Mr. Thomsen, director of the Ethnological and Archseolo- 



* Some naturalists see a correspondence of the same sort between embryology 

 and comparative anatomy, for they consider the human embryo as passing during 

 its development through the different stages of the scale of animal creation, or, at 

 least, as passing through the different states of the embryos of the different 

 stages of that scale. 



t The history of Danish Archasology has been sketched by T. Hindenberg. 

 See " Dansk Maanedskrift," I. 1859. 



