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Excerpt from Archæologia Nova Cæsarea, 1909, Vol. 3 T ime applies to human history only, and when it is to be applied to what we know as ancient human history, the greatest caution is called for, as many have found to their sorrow, when the facts of the earth have calmly contradicted the vagaries of dreamers. Nature has never recognized what man knows as time. Always existent, but ever changing, her career extends backward throughout the eternity of the past, as it will continue throughout the eternity of the future. Man's career, as yet, is but as a eeting shadow on the surface of the sea, and only anapproximate date need concern the archaeologist who eu deavors to trace this career. To endeavor to date it as we do that which has happened within recorded human history, to speak of years, centuries, or even milleniums, is the bane of archaeological research Only the most indefinite phrases, as old anc very old, should be used. It is the business only of the archaeologist to trace the sequence of event, to arrange in proper order, if he can, the sadly mixed, dis jointed and exasperatingly confused facts and fragments thereof. And set thein forth again in orderly array. This is his proper work. No cherished theory, no adherence to long - settled convictions of one's days of ignorance should deter him from demonstrating, when opportunity affords, that this is older than that, and the invention of a simple form preceded the elaboration of a complex one. Who, standing in the shadow of a patriarchal oak, will attempt to Count its leaves, or trace the outlines of its tiniest twigs, or follow each sinuosity of its wrinkled bark? It is the tree as a whole that bids us pause, and there is ever enough to excite our wonder and call forth our admiration without asking the question, when was the first acorn evolved from some Quercian ancestor? Enough to know there are oaks, and for long have been; enough to know there are men, and for ages long have been, and, as. A fellow
Page Count:
100
Publication Date:
2018-03-09
Publisher:
Fb&c Limited
ISBN-10:
0666823855
ISBN-13:
9780666823854