(1) The New Stone Age in Northern Europe (2) Man and His Past

Abstract

WE gladly extend a welcome to these two books as real signs of a publishing revival as well as of the widespread interest in the far past due to the diffusion of the idea that, when some day we find the right clues, prehistoric Western Europe will become almost as fascinating as the prehistoric Ægean has become through the great advances of knowledge in the last generation. Both writers have in view the general public, but their aims are very different. Prof. Tyler has striven to interpret the results of research up to about 1912 so as to give the reader a fairly connected story, but in spite of cautious reserve, here and there he unfortunately obscures many difficulties, and suggests that knowledge exists where the careful worker knows only the depths of ignorance. Mr. Crawford, like Prof. Tyler, has also an annoying habit of discursive remarks on things in general, and these irrelevancies make his book larger than it need have been; but his valuable purpose is evidently to stimu late the local archaeologist and to enlighten him as to methods in those provinces of study which he can legitimately occupy.

(1) The New Stone Age in Northern Europe.

By Prof. J. M. Tyler. Pp. xviii + 310. (London: G. Bell and Sons., Ltd., 1921.) 15s. net.

(2) Man and His Past.

By O. G. S. Crawford. Pp. xv + 227. (London: Oxford University Press, 1921.) 10s. 6d. net.