The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe to the Mycenean Age

Abstract

THE past twenty years have seen an astonishing development in a broad field of historical study of which natural scientists have often been more aware than the majority of historians. Even the bare outlines of human history in Europe for more than nine-tenths of the total period of human occupation could not be indicated in 1920. The fruits of intensive work in prehistoric archæology at a multitude of sites revealing cultures separated in time by hundreds of thousands of years may to-day be co-ordinated securely enough, not merely to establish the outstanding phases of the culture history of Europe down to Classical times, but also to point with confidence to many of the physical and sociological conditions involved in the series of technical revolutions, migrations and territorial consolidations which occurred. The natural scientists have become acquainted with these remarkable achievements because their cooperation has been successfully sought in attacking a multitude of technical problems on which thfc delineation of this complex field of culture history has depended. To the anatomists and physical anthropologists have been referred problems of racial evidence for connexion and migration; the palæobotanists and geologists have provided techniques for the construction of prehistoric time scales and have in their turn been aided by the archæologists, who have provided type fossils for their own problems of zoning. Mineralogists and chemists have made vital contributions to problems concerning the conditions and scenes of the decisive metallurgical and other technical advances of prehistoric times.

The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe to the Mycenean Age

By C. F. C. Hawkes. Pp. xiv + 414 + 12 plates. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1940.) 21s. net.