with treason he escaped and roused the Batavians, his countrymen, to rebellion. Pretending to espouse the cause of Vespasian against Vitellius, he raised a powerful army and inflicted severe defeats on the Romans. He routed an imposing force sent against him and shut them up in the military station, Vetera Castra, which after a long siege capitulated and all its defenders were slaughtered. Fortune at last

forsook him, and he had to negotiate with the Romans, the Batavians returning to their allegiance. His fate is unknown.

CIVILIZATION, History of. Pre-Christian. A sketch of the intellectual and material achievements of humankind in ancient times; of those productions of man's mind and skill, which have had a special influence upon the thought and life of the world. It is not assumed that civilization is or can be measured by material achievements, but without these accomplishments civilization would be impossible. approximate dates assigned by scientists, here in brief and simple form are presented the various elements and tools by which humankind has progressed toward civilized life.

With

Food-Getting, Hunting and Fishing.The first signs of man's development into a creature of more than animal intelligence and character appear in the roughly shaped Eolith flints, found in various parts of Asia and Europe, notably in France, Belgium and southern England, which are assigned to a date, ranging C. B.C. 500000 to B.C. 100000. During these early periods man hunted with the throwing-stone, or with the crudely pointed flint held in the hand. After B.C. 100000 all uncertainty about man as a tool-user and tool-maker disappears.

Among the remains of the Acheulean Age, C. B.C. 75000 to B.C. 50000, so named from discoveries at Saint Acheul on the Somme, lancepointed flints have been found; also small points seemingly designed to serve as darts or spearheads, and in the Gorge d'Enfer were discovered points of reindeer antler, "with split base perhaps to receive the shaft," indicating that man was hunting with greater skill and intelligence. By about B.C. 25000 he was probably fitting shafts of bone or wood to flint points and flinging them at his victims with a "dartthrower, his first really successful attempt to strike a crippling or deadly blow from a distance. Skill and intelligence were slowly supplanting brute force. On the walls of the cavern of Niaux an artist of early Magdalenian times, C. B.C. 16000, has pictured a large bison with spears and arrows showing on the flanks, and in the Perigord cave was found the vertebra of a young reindeer with an arrow point embedded in it. While there is good reason to suspect the Cro-Magnon race was familiar with the bow and arrow it is not until neolithic times that its use is established beyond question. With this weapon in his hand man was no longer under the necessity of defending himself and hunting his food in close hand to hand combat and striving as had been the way of all animals. It gave him an entirely new dominance over his world and lifted his food-getting enterprises and himself above the level of the brute as no other invention had done up to that time. This in increasingly improved form remained man's most effective weapon until the invention of the gun.

The invention of the harpoon, c. B.C. 16000, is perhaps the oldest device for catching fish. "This invention," says Mr. Osborn, "was destined to exert a very strong influence on the habits of the people. This new means

of obtaining an abundant food supply probably diverted the Cro-Magnons in part from the ardent and more dangerous pursuit of the larger kinds of game." Some 10,000 years later man invented the net which in some form he used for catching fish, thus refining still further his food-getting methods. With the introduction of metals the hook was added to man's fishingtackle.

Agriculture. When man ceased to live on what Nature provided without effort on his part, and attempted to produce his own food supply, he wrought a mighty revolution in his habits and character. He had to stay in a place long enough to plant and to reap and this acquired a sense of ownership.

The first hints of agriculture are met with in the rough axe-like flints presumably employed "for breaking clods, hoeing the ground and other simple agricultural operations, and finely wrought flint knives, curved somewhat at the point and likely used as sickles. The earliest sickles used in the Euphrates Valley, before B.C. 5000, were wooden models of a sheep's lower jaw set with flint points as a cutting edge. With the introduction of the plow, c. B.C. 5000, at first nothing better than a two-handled hoe and called "the scratching wood," drawn by a human being and later by oxen, agriculture became a definite part of life and made possible large and well organized communities. more important in the progress of civilization was the increased fertility of the soil and the extension of crop-growing in spots naturally unfavorable, wrought by the invention of schemes of irrigation. Ur-Nina, c. B.C. 3000, is among the first recorded as building irrigating canals who thus by increasing the fruitfulness of the Babylonian fields made possible the growth and prosperity of the great Euphratean cities and the consequent human development.

Even

Domestication of Animals.-The domestication of animals changed man's attitude toward the animal world and put a power other than his own at his service. About B.C. 10000, from evidences found at Oban in northwestern Scotland, the dog was the companion of man. At about the same time man domesticated to some extent the plateau horse and the forest horse and two varieties of cattle, the Celtic Shorthorn and the Longhorn. From Babylonian records we learn that prior to B.C. 3000, oxen were used in agricultural operations and donkeys pulled wheeled carts and chariots.

Fire. Without the use of fire, man could not have risen above the lowest depths of savagery and barbarism. Something of its importance may be judged from the fact that it early became an object of worship. To keep it burning was a religious duty and the fashioning of metals at the earliest forges was regarded as more than a human occupation.

The earliest evidences of the use of fire thus far discovered date c. B.C. 60000 and consist of "charred wood and bones frequently found in the industrial deposits of early Acheulean times." Osborn intimates that about B.C. 50000 the Neanderthal men first made real use of fire

by employing it as a weapon to drive the bears from the caves in the Neander valley.

In the grotto of La Mouthe a stone lamp, C. B.C. 16000, has been unearthed. This lamp, not unlike some used in Dordogne at the present day, is a piece of sandstone wrought into the shape of a shallow bowl, into which was placed, according to Berthelot, animal fat and a wick. About B.C. 10000 the flint miners of Norfolk had lamps of chalk with a much deeper bowl to carry a greater supply of fat, most likely that they might labor for a longer time in their underground workings. These lamps represent man's first attempt to put fire to domestic and industrial use. The life of man was profoundly affected by discovery of ways and means to cook his food. It meant better food and better health. When he took the fire and put it on a crude stone hearth just within the hut, it meant a better home and the gathering about the hearth marks the beginning of the family circle with all that that has meant.

It was another step out of savagery when man with the aid of fire felled trees and hollowed logs to serve as boats. Much more momentous for civilization was the day when he discovered that copper and iron could be smelted from the rocks, and that these metals could be fashioned into very useful tools. Just when or where this happened there is no telling, but it would seem that the people in the Nile and Euphrates valleys had made this discovery and were using metals before or by B.C. 3500. Bronze came into use in Egypt as early as 3700 and there are indications of the use of iron as early as B.C. 3300.

Not less important for the upward progress of man was the invention by which he was able to make fire at any time and place he chose. It is believed that certain flint "fabricators" belonging to the period B.C. 7000 "were used in conjunction with nodules of iron pyrites for producing fire," the oldest "flint and steel."

Mining.-"Picks" made of flint and "the antlers of the red deer" found in the Thames Valley and elsewhere point to an organized mining industry for obtaining flint, needed for toolmaking as early as B.C. 10000. One specimen of the picks made from deer antlers still retains "the impression of a miner's thumb on the chalky clay which adheres to the surface." There had been no change in the character of mining tools when man began to mine for copper, iron, tin, silver and gold, c. B.C. 4000. That he should be patient and persistent enough to wrest these metals from the earth with such difficulty bears witness to his determination to live more effectively.

Metal-Working. The discovery of metal, and that it could be wrought to any desired shape, put into human hands resources by which man speedily lifted himself above the level of the Stone Age. Tools and weapons of metal enormously increased man's skill and speed as a worker. Metal-working enabled human ingenuity to manifest itself in many farreaching inventions and improvements. To indicate all that it meant to man in his struggle to get out of the slough of savagery and barbarism, in which he had floundered for so many thousands of years, is impossible within the limits of this article. A hint may suffice. A hollowed tree trunk or a bitumen-lined rush contraption would have been the limit of water

navigation had the art of metal-working not been discovered. House building and city building would have been practically impossible nor would there have been carts and chariots.

Textiles. The growing of flax, first met with c. B.C. 7000, and the spinning-whorls, discs of pottery or stone used as balance wheels on primitive spindles, are good enough evidence that by this time man had invented the art of weaving. The first woven stuff must in the nature of things have been very coarse, but among predynastic Egyptians, earlier than B.C. 5000, weaving of a remarkably fine order, impossible without a loom it would seem, was already an accomplished fact. In China the silk industry attained a high degree of perfection B.C. 2500. It is recorded that B.C. 700 cotton was grown in the gardens of Sennacherib, that the people gathered and "carded it for garments." When man learned to weave "fine linen" for the covering of his nakedness he felt a new dignity and received an added impulse toward a conscious superiority.

Building and Architecture. The first step toward housing himself was taken when the Neanderthal man drove the wild beasts out of the caves and took possession for himself. Probably man never really lived in the cave. From "schematic drawings in lines and_dots" on the walls of the cavern of Font-de-Gaume it is assumed that c. B.C. 30000 to B.C. 25000 "huts and shelters built of logs and covered with hides" were grouped around "or within the entrances of the grottos and caverns." As late as the Danish Middens, c. B.C. 9000 and the lake-dwellers, the huts without chimneys and with walls of wattle and daub were sorry enough places. The invention, in the Euphrates Valley before B.C. 6000, of the brick, a piece of clay, sun-dried and later (about B.C. 5000 burnt, easily handled, was epoch-making. Cut-stone, used where clay is scarce, is brick only of larger size. This seemingly simple invention revolutionized man's whole mode of living. It no longer became necessary to rebuild after every storm or season. The durability of building material encouraged him to take a greater pride in the appearance and conditions of the home. It gave to the home a new and richer meaning.

There had always been a community life. Groups of huts resembling villages were built by the lake-dwellers and long before. Better houses, impressive temples and palaces inspired men to live a better sort of community life. Old manners and customs underwent a refinement that made them almost new. New political orders appeared. The cities and towns of increasing pretentiousness which sprang up in Egypt and Babylonia and elsewhere, the direct product of the invention of brick and the use of stone for building, became the cradle of real civilization.

The architect is largely responsible for the great strides toward civilization made between B.C. 4000 and B.C. 3000. The engineering, architectural and artistic skill lavished upon temples and tombs and public buildings during this period and the centuries immediately following gave to mankind a new scale of values. The architect represents a great passion to improve life and living conditions. The invention of the arch, before B.C. 3000, besides making lighter buildings pointed the way to the bridging of streams, making road building possible. The use

of heavy blocks of stone taught men how to work together as a unit, giving rise to a new sense of human solidarity.

Art. The birth of the artistic sense added another powerful influence to the process of civilization. As early as c. B.C. 25000 interesting examples of art are met with crude line drawings on reindeer horn, human statuettes sculptured in ivory and soapstone, like those found in the Grottes de Grimaldi. The men of Aurignacian and Magdalenian times covered the walls of the caves with black and colored line drawings and pictures done elaborately in colors. The earliest instance of the use of color is perhaps the crude outline of a mammoth in red ochre on the wall of the cavern of Pindal, and what seems to be the finest example is the picture of a bison on the ceiling of the cave of Altamira c. B.C. 16000. Whether this art arose out of man's desire to beautify the caves where he and his fellows congregated, or whether it had something of a religious or magical origin and purpose, or whether it was the desire of man to describe and record what he saw, there is perhaps no knowing. This prehistoric art would indicate that man was feeling his way toward something other than a purely material and selfish interest in life. The impressive basreliefs descriptive of military exploits, industrial activities, religious and domestic relations which with increasing beauty adorn the cities of the Euphrates from B.C. 6000 and on, must have widened man's conception of things, enlarged his thoughts and deepened his interest in human affairs. The wonderful sculpture which filled the Grecian world before and after B.C. 500 must have done much to awaken in the people a love of the beautiful and a distaste for whatsoever was ugly. Perhaps most important of all, this artistic impulse cradled the written word.

Music. Without art in its broadest sense man's divergence from the animal would have been less pronounced. In his contemplation of actual and possible beauty man is led to hate whatsoever is low and mean. Music helps to lift man to this level of higher appreciation and refinement of the feelings.

If a whistle may be classified as a musical instrument then music may be said to date from C. B.C. 20000. Whistles of that period which still give forth some sound, made from the phalanges of the reindeer, have been found in the caves of Perigord and elsewhere. M. Joly says that there have been found in the caves of the Pyrenees, of the same period, tubes made of the bones of birds, which may have formed part of a flute like that which tradition ascribes to the god Pan. On a terra-cotta plaque, found in the lower strata at Nippur, c. B.C. 4000, is pictured a shepherd playing a lute. A rock-cut sculpture found at Tel-lo, c. B.C. 3000, shows men with cymbals and pipes and one playing a harp of very primitive construction, and is suggestive of Egypt rather than Babylonia. What part this primitive music played in the life of the ancient peoples it is hardly possible to guess. At a quite early time it was used to celebrate notable events and entertain kings and princes. It also became an important part of religious ritual. In Greece, in the age of the Tyrants, music became a dominant feature, greatly influencing its literature and national and community life. It was one of the chief cultural

agencies and gave rise to institutions which have all through the centuries since played no small part in awakening and directing and shaping the thoughts and emotions of the people. The festival chorus, c. B.C. 500, so important in Grecian life, developed into the drama and the place where the chorus, dressed in goat skins and faces covered with masks, sang the songstories became the theatre.

Domestic and Social. For many thousands of years after his beginning_man ate like the animal, and had no speech. Back of B.C. 25000 he attempted to cover his nakedness with the pelts of animals. Whatever its immediate effect it led straight to a civilizing interest in appearances and the welfare of the body. With the invention of the needle, c. B.C. 25000, and its notable improvement, c. B.C. 16000, the clothing of the body not only became a habit but something of an art. Even though it originated, as some insist, as a sexual device, it became a mark of civilization. Fine clothes seemed to call forth finer manners. Personal adornment, other than clothing, such as the wearing of necklaces, c. B.C. 20000, as well as earrings, armlets and girdles may have originated in a desire to attract attention, or for religious or magical purposes, or as insignia of rank and accomplishment, but it led to a pride of person which must have urged the people ever further from animal-like habits. The shaving of the face and the cutting of the hair before B.C. 4000 in Egypt is evidence of a desire in man to fashion his life after his own ideas.

With the invention, c. B.C. 9000, of a vessel that would hold water and allow of heating the water either by putting in hot stones or placing the vessel over the fire it became for the first time possible for man to cook his food and, in the matter of food and eating, marks his definite departure from savagery. Cooked food meant a more varied and healthful diet. It moved him to think of how he should eat. Before B.C. 4500 man was eating a very coarse bread made of crushed wheat and barley and millet.

The use of the horns of cattle, as in two bas-reliefs beneath the overhanging cliff of Laussel, c. B.C. 20000, and cocoanut shells and other natural products as domestic utensils helped further to humanize the method of eating and drinking. Other and more practical utensils were fashioned soon as ever man learned the art of fashioning and hardening clay into pottery. The invention of the potter's wheel, c. B.C. 3500, and the kiln for firing, added greatly to the beauty and usefulness of design, and by increasing the output the refining influence of pottery upon the methods of eating food was more widespread and effective. The importance of table manners is recognized and insisted on in the sayings of Ptah-hotep, c. B.C. 3200.

With the rise of the art of wood- and metal-working, the homes of the wealthier class, and eventually of the poorer, were furnished with stools and chairs and couches and bedsteads (after B.C. 3000). By thus adding to the comfort of the home it became a more desirable place and naturally exerted an increasing influence upon the habits and character of the people.

No single fact has been more influential in the process of civilization than the rise of the

family. Respect, consideration for one another, chastity, obedience, honor, sacrificing love, virtues altogether fundamental to civilization, are its direct product. Judging from the precepts of Ptah-hotep, c. B.C. 3200, care and consideration for one another was the proper thing between man and wife. In Babylonia the importance of the family is recognized in the laws regulating marriage, divorce, rights of wives and children, c. B.C. 2700. The precepts of Khensu-hotep, B.C. 1500, counsel children not to forget the mother-love bestowed upon them, and in the Hebrew Decalogue somewhat later it is a religious obligation for children to honor father and mother. This creates an increasing interest on the part of the parents in the bringing up of the children. The author of the Hebrew Proverbs urges parents to "train up the child in the way he should go." Thus each new generation becomes trained a little more thoroughly in the ways of civilization.

Government. Forms of government do not imply civilization, yet without government there could not well be any departure from the savage state. Belonging to early Aurignacian times, B.C. 25000, and particularly in the later Magdalenian period, B.C. 12000, many horn implements have been discovered, conspicuous among them being the somewhat mysterious bâtons de commandment formed of an antler with one or more circular holes, supposed to have been, as Mr. Osborn says, "insignia of authority borne by the chieftain” of possible primitive tribal organizations. It is pretty certain, according to Mr. Budge, that as far back as C. B.C. 8000 the Sumerians or their immediate ancestors were politically organized with a king at the head of things. These primitive efforts at law and order forced our wilder ancestors to hold themselves in check, to be less wild, to think before they acted. The earliest hint that men were beginning to adjust their disputes by presenting them to another for judgment is C. B.C. 4000, though no doubt the custom was older. Urukagina, ruler of Lagash, c. B.C. 2700, is among the earliest known law-makers; the most noted is Hammurabi, c. B.C. 2200. These laws are attempts to compel a certain orderliness, and decency and honor in human activities and relationships. This growing custom of making a man face the wrong of his acts and inflicting a penalty therefor, compelled him to see the need of taking some thought as to the character and consequences of his deeds. Here and there a man, long before Hammurabi, made notable efforts to give a more civilized character to human relationships. The districts of Lagash and Umma were ready to fly at each other's throats over a boundary dispute whereupon Mesilim, king of Kish, c. B.C. 3000, intervened and the trouble was arbitrated. The introduction of slavery, whatever its later evils and the inhumanity of its beginnings, helped to transform man from the wanderer and loafer into a worker.

Before man can reach up to any worthy degree of civilization there must be justice and humanity as well as order and industry in human affairs. These important elements enter definitely into life with the Hebrew legislation of C. B.C. 800. Some 50 years later in Greece Hesiod, a farmer poet, raised a cry for social justice. In Palestine this cry grew into a religion in the time of Josiah; in Greece it re

sulted in the constitutional reforms of Solon, c. B.C. 590, and later in democratic institutions, and the rise of the spirit of democracy. In the time of Herodotus and Pericles, B.C. 450, the people of Greece took active part in political affairs. At the same period a further step forward in civilization was taken when the people of Rome demanded the right to share in the making of new laws. Socrates, c. B.C. 400, brought into being the idea that government should aim to make it possible to live the best sort of life. It was a small contribution perhaps to civilization when the kings of smaller states conceived and put into practice the idea of getting together to defeat some particularly powerful and ambitious neighbor. It was a step out of international disorder and savagery when Burnaburiash, king of Babylon B.C. 1400, thought to improve the relations between his kingdom and that of Egypt by marrying an Egyptian princess. Militarism was often the only weapon that could be used to protect the attainments of civilization from destruction by the barbarians who frequently made war upon the settled communities. The introduction of the horse, B.C. 1900, was a benefit conferred by militarism. The need of transporting large bodies of soldiers and equipment to distant parts led to the planning and actual building of roads so essential to civilized communities.

The doctrine of the divine right of kings also became a decisive factor in the progress of civilization. About B.C. 3500 the Egyptian kings adopted the title "Son of the Sun" and the Babylonian Priest-king Gudea, B.C. 2400, was deified and worshipped after his death. The doctrine of the king as the specially chosen of the deity grew from generation to generation, giving superhuman authority to his utterances and sanctity to his person.

Commerce. In remote prehistoric days it was found to be generally advantageous for the man who could make arrow-heads better than anyone else to keep to that job and trade his wares for the food which the hunter brought home and could spare.

With the growth of cities in the Euphratean and Nile valleys and elsewhere the city dwellers needed food and supplies of many sorts, the builders needed materials from far and near, and so commerce rapidly grew to large proportions, challenging the food growers to grow more food and others to exercise their ingenuity to devise means of transportation of this increasing commerce. Records of B.C. 2500 in Babylonia, and the same must have been true in Egypt, make mention of commercial agents, bookkeepers, grain measurers, boatmen, gardeners, capitalists, fishermen; houses and land and cattle and slaves were bought and sold; money was loaned at interest at the general rate of 20 per cent; contracts of all sorts were made and guaranteed. By B.C. 1000 the Phoenicians were altogether a commercial people establishing purely commercial towns westward beyond the Mediterannean and eastward and southward as well. These commercial cities were outposts and sources of civilization. From the very first, commerce contributed heavily to the process of civilization in that it gave rise to the spirit of fair-dealing, honesty and truthfulness.

Transportation.- Civilization can make but little headway so long as man is nothing better than a beast of burden. It is possible that in

prehistoric times he began to shift burden-carrying from his own back to the backs of animals. Rafts and hollowed logs as early as B.C. 10000 may have helped in the matter. With the establishment of cities in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates a considerable system of water transportation speedily developed. Rafts and basketlike contraptions woven of willow and rushes, lined within and covered without with bitumen, were likely the earliest type of water-carriers before B.C. 5000. Real boats did not lag far behind and the presence of a ship "with masts and decks and oars" in the Deluge legend would indicate that by c. B.C. 4000 water transportation had attained a high degree of development, and that somewhere near to this date over-sea ports were visited. Eannadu, c. B.C. 4000, one of the Euphratean kings, built brick-lined canals for transportation purposes, and the great Hammurabi c. B.C. 2200, complains that a navigable canal connecting Erech with the Euphrates was blocked so that the ships could not go up it. An exceedingly ambitious project was the canal dug by Pharaoh, c. B.C. 2000, connecting the Nile with the Red Sea. A 15th century B.C. painting at Karnak represents Queen Hatshepsut's fleet of five ships equipped with sails just returned from a voyage to the land of Punt. The seagoing vessels under the Phoenicians and the Greeks in no essential thing differ from these early boats and ships. With the establishment of harbors and docks and lighthouses (at Alexandria, B.C. 300) the mercantile marine which has had so great an influence upon the life of the world, became an important factor in the process of civilization.

Land transportation, except for the camel caravan, amounted to little because perhaps draft animals were too costly and wheeled vehicles, as seen in an 8th century inscription, impossibly cumbersome. The first real road to be planned was the highway which Alexander the Great proposed to build from Egypt to Carthage. The most notable feat of transportation was the hauling on sledges of immense blocks of stone from quarry to boat and boats to Pyramid and up to the level desired. The development of transportation made possible a thoroughly settled and organized life without which manners and customs were incapable of permanent improvement. Journeying from place to place and dealing with peoples near and far distant, men were compelled to think of the world and life in larger terms.

Science. At a remote date man became an observer of the overhead and of things about him. Peopling the overhead and every nook and cranny on earth with beings kindly or malicious was the sum total of his attempts to know the world he lived in. The desire to know how these kindly or malicious spirits wrought their will, resulted in the great complicated system of astrology and divination which possessed the world for so long a time and still has a large place in it. The elaborate observations necessary to the working out of astrological schemes led to the discovery or invention of time divisions, a matter of utmost importance to commercial and industrial life. As early as B.C. 4241 in Egypt a calendar divided into days and weeks and months very similar to our own and containing 365 days in the year was in use. Without such a time measurement contracts of any sort could not

be made, nor agreements entered into. The necessity of dividing time into small divisions to measure the length of time a man should work, led to the invention of the clock → a water or sand clock. What is known as the oldest clock in the world is the "shadow clock" bearing the name of Thutmose III, c. B.C. 1400. These primitive observations furnished the material out of which was eventually fashioned the science of astronomy which has done so much to rid man of the terrors of astral and meteorological spirits and make long distance navigation possible. Reasoning from what he learned from the ancient Babylonian astronomical lists, Thales told the people to expect an eclipse of the sun before the end of the year B.C. 585. Centuries before Babylonian astronomers had sometimes predicted eclipses, but the importance of the prediction of Thales is that it led him and others to realize for the first time that eclipses and other strange happenings in the sky were due not to the anger or whim of gods but to the operations of natural laws, the first real break with superstition. The understanding of the forces and operations of nature had begun and the way was open to the serviceable use of natural forces. Eratosthenes, B.C. 200, suggested that the earth was round, that India could be reached by sailing to the westward and with surprising accuracy he computed the size of the earth. Aristarchus, C. B.C. 150, demonstrated that the earth and planets revolve around the sun. All ideas that give man a greater mastery, boost civilization. Such is the idea suggested in the Jacob story, Gen. xxx, 37, c. B.C. 850, that the character of the offspring of cattle can be controlled; and the belief set forth in Jer. xxxi, 29 that the conduct of parents affects the unborn generations.

The three centuries preceding the Christian' era are notable for many important mechanical inventions or discoveries. Archimedes of Syracuse, B.C. 287 to 212, invented the pulley and lever. Screws and cranks and cogwheels and waterwheels and the endless chain came into use at this time. Euclid perfected his geometry.

Medicine. For long centuries the people on earth were few because human mortality was exceedingly high. From the first, man suffered grievously from disease and deformities. Such conditions were an almost insuperable obstacle to the advance of civilization. Little is known of prehistoric medicine. Whether the trepanned skulls found in prehistoric strata are instances of surgery or a religious ceremony is an open question. The amulet frequently worn by neolithic peoples, c. B.C. 9000, is the best clue we have to the character of prehistoric medicine. During most of the historic period back of the Christian era, sickness, being considered the result of demon possession or other supernatural influence, cures were to be had by exorcism, incantation and prayers. The library of Assurbanipal has furnished a mass of literature descriptive of the disease demons and the prescriptions supposed to possess the required potency to rout them. Similar prescriptions come from Egypt dating back to B.C. 3000. Other conceptions of disease and cures were in existence as witness the seal of a Babylonian physician, Ur-Lugal-Edina, which shows as symbols of his profession, scalpel,