Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1900 / Vol. 56, Nov. 1899 to April, 1900

Transcriber’s note: Table of Contents added by Transcriber.
Established by Edward L. Youmans
EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LVI NOVEMBER, 1899, TO APRIL, 1900
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900
Copyright, 1900, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

April, 1900.
Familiar as we are with the methods of science—exact observation and record, comparison, and the strict weeding out of hypotheses—yet such methods have only gradually been applied to various branches of learning.
Geometry became a science long ago, zoölogy much later, medicine only a generation or two ago, and the history of man is but just being developed into a science. What was done for other sciences by the pioneers of the past is now being done in the present day for archæology. We now have to devise methods, to form a notation for recording facts, and to begin to lay out our groundwork of knowledge. With very few exceptions, it may be said of Egypt that there is no publication of monuments before this century that is of the least use, no record or dating of objects before 1860, and no comparison or study of the history of classes of products before 1890. Thus, the work of recent years in Egyptology is really the history of the formation of a science.
The great stride that has been made in the last six years is the opening up of prehistoric Egypt, leading us back some two thousand years before the time of the pyramid builders. Till recently, nothing was known before the age of the finest art and the greatest buildings, and it was a familiar puzzle how such a grand civilization could have left no traces of its rise. This was only a case of blindness on the part of explorers. Upper Egypt teems with prehistoric remains, but, as most of what appears is dug up by plunderers for the market, until there is a demand for a class of objects, very little is seen of them. Now that the prehistoric has become fashionable, it is everywhere to be seen. The earlier diggers were dazzled by the polished colossi, the massive buildings, the brilliant sculptures of the well-known historic times, and they had no eyes for small graves, containing only a few jars or, at best, a flint knife.