ARCHEOLOGY, aeke-'61%-jI (uantiq uity-study”, the history of antique human progress as inferred from relics of man's in dustry or presence, apart from written records. It is thus identical with history where there are no such records, and supplementary mate rial for it when they exist. It is distinguished from anthropology as concerned chiefly with industrial and artistic rather than social and political progress. But its limit neither of date nor of subject. can be sharply fixed. The antiquities of a country are relative to its present and its records; 400 years in Mexico brings us to pure archeology, 2,000 in Greece and Rome is almost this side of it, all west Asian history belongs to it. Even written records, if inscriptions on stone or brick, or papyri, are archeological when pertaining to an extinct civilization; if classical, they are history, epigraphy, or paleography. Nor can we wholly dissociate the biological study of the bones found in a prehistoric camp, river drift or cave (paleontology), from that of the flints, worked bones, drawings, etc., found with them, as evidences of mechanical and intellectual progress (archeology), and the social organ ism implied by the camps, food, ruddle, etc. (anthropology). The genesis of the science restricted the name at first to remains of classical art and architecture, still often re garded as its most important section, through its illumination 'of classic literature; but gen eral archeology does not merely supplement a developed history; it reveals the very existence of empires, nations, races, cultures, stages of human progress, otherwise unsuspected, and carries our knowledge far into the geological past.
The classical branch, whose material was relatively accessible and its bearing obvious, naturally originated first in the 18th century; general archeology is the creation wholly of the 19th century and has two independent origins. On one side it springs from the de cipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, un veiling a remote history implying a still more remote one and making scholars realize for the first time how futile were the distorted scraps of classical tradition. This was fol lowed by excavations in Mesopotamia which uncovered the remains of the Assyrian cul ture, and by the decipherment of the cuneiform characters. Here it was first realized that archeology is the one branch of history, (for numismatics is a department of archeology) that absolutely settles historical questions. A written statement may be a falsehood or mis take, but an inscription is conclusive as to its date and writer. On the other side, archaeology springs from the of relics of an tique man in burial mounds, kitchen middens, lake dwellings, caverns and river drifts, show ing his coexistence with animals long extinct and in geologic ages long gone by. These two
streams have gradually resulted in a vast storehouse of verified knowledge, not only un suspected, but revolutionary of • assertions pre viously supposed axiomatic. Briefly, archeol ogy has shown that civilization is not a sudden mushroom growth of a few dozen centuries, from a single centre and a highly developed group, but a gradual evolution through enor mous ages in all parts of the world, from that intermediate condition between apehood and manhood which we know must have existed, but of which no positively demonstrable evi dence has been discovered. Savagery, as we know it, is a long step in advance.
In place of the convenient division into °civilized, half-civilized, and barbarous,° we have many stages of culture, based on the knowledge of ;Natural forces, the utilizing of natural products by art and the co-ordination of social groups, in combinations almost as endless as the notes of an the same tribe being almost civilized on one side and wholly savage on another. The classification of these grades is somewhat different in archeology and anthropology. The latter, in Lewis H. Mor gan's system (which needs much qualification) marks seven stages: The first prior to the use of fire; the second• marked by the discovery of fire (fire can hardly be. said to have been discovered by man, as it long preceded the dawn of humanity, and . its availability for warmth, and subsequently for cooking, would come about naturally, i. e., without any effort of intellectuality on man's part), and of catching fish; the third by the bow, and arrow (the significance of the bow and arrow in archeol ogy is not the same wherever this form of weapon was in use. It had an independent origin in each continental area, and whatever the starting point or prompting of the inventive faculty, the ultimate outcome would neces sarily be the same. If, as persistently claimed, North America received its quota of humanity from Asia, it is certain it was at a date so early that the bow had not anywhere been in vented) ; the fourth by pottery; the fifth by the domestication of animals, or the use of ir rigation, polished stone or bronze tools, and the occurrence of adobe or stone architecture; the sixth by the use of iron; the seventh, or true civilization, by phonetic alphabets and written records. Archeology, however, finds it con venient to classify man wholly according to the material and construction of his imple ments, these having in fact accompanied and determined with great accuracy a correspond ing set of changes in industrial arts and even social development. Accordingly it divicks hu man progress into the Eolithic (LStone-Dawn” the Paleolithic' or Old Stone, the Neolithic or New Stone, the Bronze and the Iron Ages; a portion of these being still further subdivided.