by the distinguished
Swedish archaeologist, Prof. Oscar Montelius, of Upsala, whose previous
experience in dealing with the antiquities of Northern Europe, great as
it was, was hardly sufficient to enable him to pronounce with authority
on a point affecting far-away African Egypt. And when dealing with Greek
prehistoric antiquities Prof. Montelius's views have hardly met with
that ready agreement which all acknowledge to be his due when he is
giving us the results of his ripe knowledge of Northern antiquities. He
has, in fact, forgotten, as most "prehistoric" archaeologists do forget,
that the antiquities of Scandinavia, Greece, Egypt, the Semites,
the bronze-workers of Benin, the miners of Zimbabwe, and the Ohio
mound-builders are not to be treated all together as a whole, and that
hard and fast lines of development cannot be laid down for them, based
on the experience of Scandinavia.

We may perhaps trace this misleading habit of thought to the influence
of the professors of natural science over the students of Stone Age and
Bronze Age antiquities. Because nature moves by steady progression and
develops on even lines--_nihil facit per sal-tum_--it seems to have been
assumed that the works of man's hands have developed in the same way,
in a regular and even scheme all over the world. On this supposition it
would be impossible for the great discovery of the use of iron to have
been known in Egypt as early as 3500 B.C. for this knowledge to have
remained dormant there for two thousand years, and then to have
been suddenly communicated about 1000 B.C. to Greece, spreading with
lightning-like rapidity over Europe and displacing the use of bronze
everywhere. Yet, as a matter of fact, the work of man does develop
in exactly this haphazard way, by fits and starts and sudden leaps of
progress after millennia of stagnation. Throwsback to barbarism are just
as frequent. The analogy of natural evolution is completely inapplicable
and misleading.

Prof. Montelius, however, following the "evolutionary" line of thought,
believed that because iron was not known in Europe till about 1000 B.C.
it could not have been known in Egypt much earlier; and in an important
article which appeared in the Swedish ethnological journal _Ymer_ in
1883, entitled _Bronsaldrn i Egypten_ ("The Bronze Age in Egypt"), he
essayed to prove the contrary arguments of the Egyptologists wrong. His
main points were that the colour of the weapons in the frescoes