Human Progress; a review

Extract

No book quite like this has ever been written. That is partly because the scientific discoveries upon which it is based are themselves so new that some of them are still unpublished (the earliest pictograms, for instance). But even when the knowledge is less new it is, for the most part, the special preserve of a few students, of great powers but limited range and outlook. Professor Childe can meet them on their own ground, for he has studied the archaeology of the Near East and India (as well as of Europe) at first hand. Four of the nine chapters in this book ‘are based on first-hand study of the original objects, and reports’ (p. vii); and, indeed, so are the relevant parts of the first three—the last two being of a general nature. There is probably no man living with better qualifications for such a theme as the Making of Man; and that holds true, whether one agrees (as the reviewer does) with Professor Childe's thesis, or not. Most of it, of course, is not opinion but fact.