The English long barrows have for long been a fertile source of discussion, and since Thurnam’s paper of 1868~th ere has been much speculation as to the precise Continental affinities of these tombs. It seemed clear from the outset that they were members of the complex family of megalithic tombs distributed from Iberia to Orkney, while Thurnam himself compared more detailed features such as the chamber at West Kennet with such Breton examples as Mané Lud. Subsequent writers, notably Forde have seen in the Breton many-chambered passage-graves of the type of Keriaval the probable source of such long barrow chambers as Stoney Littleton, Parc Cwm or Wayland’s Smithy; but it was difficult to provide convincing Continental parallels for the whole specialized English long barrow type. While certain elements (notably details of passage, antechamber and chamber) could be paralleled again and again in the megalithic series, the persistent and carefully constructed trapezoidal mound eluded search outside Britain. Furthermore, a study of the grave-goods, particularly in the light of a number of recent excavations of barrows in southern England, showed that the long barrows of Wessex, mainly non-megalithic and supposedly derived from the megalithic barrows in the Cotswolds or further west, wele apparently contemporary with and an integral part of the earliest Neolithic culture of Britain (Neolithic A) and a similar cultural identity seemed probable in Sussex.

‘Observation not guided by ideas, even hypothetical ideas’, says Professor Wolf, ‘is blind ; just as ideas not tested by observation are empty’. The student of megalithic monuments has as constantly to regret that early antiquaries were not more aware of the necessity of making accurate plans and of recording morphological and constructional details of the monuments—many alas, now ruined or vanished—which they visited, as he has to deplore their delight in formulating theories which they never tested by fieldsurvey ; but he has also to cope with evils more dangerous even than these, namely observation so dominated by false or imprudent hypotheses that it results in a distorted vision worse by far than mere blind observation or empty ideas. Some of these hypotheses—like the Druids, the Ancient Egyptians, the metal-working Prospectors, the megalithic race, solstitial and clock-star alignments,—to mention only a few, have been disproved by research and flourish today only among perverse and illogical archaeologists. Others—such as the concept of the Montelius dolmen here examined in its relation to southern Britains—while just as inadequate and inaccurate, are the comrnonplaces of modem text-books.

Some important archaeological finds have been made in the course of recent excavations in Thrace, throwing a completely new light on its relations with Greece. Among the most important are the tholos-tombs or bee-hive tombs (Kuppelgräber) of Mezek.

Mezek is a village in southern Bulgaria, quite near the Greek frontier ; it lies at the foot of the easternmost outlier of the Rhodope range, about 6 km. southwest of the railway station of Svilengrad, from which it can easily be reached in a car. Several tumuli can be seen near the village, chief among them being the hill called Mal-Tepe (the ‘ hill of the treasure ’), 14 m. high and about 90 m. in diameter. As far back as 1903, when Mezek was still in Turkish hands, the bronze statue of a boar was discovered near the hill, and four years later was placed in the museum at C~nstantinople. This find led the museum authorities to make excavations there, but with no result of any note, and it was not until 1931 that some of the local residents were able to penetrate to the burial-place beneath the hill. All their finds are carefully preserved in the national museum at Sofia. At the same time, the Bulgarian Archaeological Institute has undertaken a complete investigation on the actual site, with the result that a number of important details have been ascertained.

The discovery of the cave art of France and Spain did more than anything else to make the ordinary man aware of the immense significance of the discoveries made in the field of pleistocene man during the nineteenth century. In many ways the superior of the conventionally accepted ‘art’ of the day, the paintings and engravings captured the imagination of people to whom flints and bones meant little. They made real the existence of man in the ice age, and through them men could look into a primitive world, situated not in the distant places of the earth, but close to the centres of modern civilization.

The first historical account of the JUEGO DE LOS VOLADORES of the Mexican Indians is to be found in Fr. Juan de Torquemada's De la Monarquía Indiana. The relevant passage, which internal evidence shows to have been written in 1612, is to be found in book 10 chapter 38. Preserving the complexities and angularities of the style it may be translated as follows:-

Among other forms of diversion, which these Western Indians had and with which they increased the solemnity of their festivals and gave pleasure to those present, was a manner of flying which they had, describing circles through the air, fastened by cords which hung from a stout, tall mast; and for the greater solace of the reader I will describe in words how it was done.

It is forty years since Alfred Foucher carried out his archaeological mission in Gandhara and, while it cannot with justice be said that the area has been archaeologically neglected ever since, there are points connected with material culture, art and religion that cry out for attention. When Foucher conducted his investigations he based these on the itinerary of Hiuan-tsang and he was searching for Buddhist relics. Unfortunately he saw stupas and monasteries in every mound, and in fact stated that ‘chaitya’ (sanctuary) and ‘dheri’ (mound) were synonymous, this largely because Hiuan-tsang had said that there were about a thousand monasteries between Peshawar and the Indus.

Four kilometres within the boundary dividing the British Mandated Territory of Transjordan from Syria, 1000 metres above sea level, and on the northern limit of the plain south of the Jabal Druze (Hauran), lie the ruins of Umm el-Jamal. The city is twenty kilometres from Mafrak, where the pipe-line and road from Iraq cut the Hijaz railway on their way to Haifa on the Mediterranean. The Druze Mountain dominates the plain from the north and this monument lies at the foot, the most westerly of a series of ruined basalt-built towns and the most interesting.

The surrounding plain is not a desert of sand. Its ancient fertility is shown by the old field boundary stones, now wasted by wind-erosion and neglect, leaving a dry exhausted soil thinly sprinkled with desert plants and strewn in parts with basalt boulders grey with lichen. Nowadays the rainfall in these parts is negligible and an attempt some years ago to restart cultivation around Mafrak failed; for the soil was just dust, carried off by the wind in great clouds when ploughing was attempted. Mafrak is now inhabited, water having been found some hundreds of metres down by boring; and it was the outpost from which men and materials went forward to build the road and pipe-line now stretching down the corridor between Syria and Saudi Arabia to Iraq. Ancient trade routes converged in this neighbourhood and the name ‘Mafrak ’ signifies the ‘Junction’. It was in antiquity a strongly fortified site and later a station on the Haj route.

Periodical reference to the ‘Mysterious Ruined Cities of Somaliland’, citing them as an ‘unsolved riddle of Africa’, have appeared in books and articles from time to time. The majority of these ruined towns lie in the west of British Somaliland, within the present administrative district of Borama, or across the frontier in the adjacent areas of Ethiopia, roughly half way between the ancient port of Zeila and the walled town of Harar. The Somalis of today can throw no light on their history.

A series of investigations were carried out by Captain R. H. R. Taylor and myself during the week-ends available in 1934. The sites of ten ruined towns were already more or less vaguely known, while eleven new sites, off the beaten track and overgrown with bush, in both Ethiopia and British Somaliland, were one by one traced and visited as leave permitted. Circumstances did not permit of excavation beyond the clearing out of two houses and the sinking of a trial trench across a refuse heap, but notes were made and a careful record kept of all surface finds. The representative collection of relics brought home and presented to the Department of Ethnology of the British Museum amounted to several thousand items, mostly fragmentary. The numerous types of objects were classified and made it possible to assign the period of occupation of the towns to the 15th and 16th centuries.

Archaeology emphatically has its lighter side, though this is not always recognized by the lay public. The antiquary of the past was looked upon as a musty old bore—the reverse of entertaining company, while the modern archaeologist is apt to be depicted in the humorous press as an immature individual of either sex, dull, myopic and dowdy.

‘Constantinople is a precious key, worth a whole kingdom; its possessor will be master of the world’. Napoleon’s prophecy might equally have been made by Constantine himself, the founder of the city. For the chequered history of the Byzantine Empire shows that more than once the mere possession of Constantinople stood between it and destruction. Yet the city’s impregnability did not depend solely on its Roman heritage and its peerless geographical and political position, but owed as great a debt to the genius of the younger Theodosius in constructing an enceinte which, apart from St. Sophia, is today the most impressive monument of the vanished Byzantine power.

TIl-BArsib. Par F. Thureau-Dangin et Maurice Dunand avec le concours de Lucien Cavro et Georges Dossin. Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1936. pp. 166 with Album of 53 plates and 5 plans. 200 francs.

This volume is a most important contribution to the archaeology of Syria. Tell-’Ahmar, which lies on the left bank of the Euphrates, 20 kilometres below Carchemish, marks the site of the ancient city of Til-Barsib. As long ago as 1908 the late Dr Hogarth had suggested the identification of this mound with Barsib, and in 1911 Dr Campbell Thompson proved the correctness of Hogarth’s surmise by copying and translating an Assyrian inscription which lay on the mound. After making preliminary soundings in 1927 a French Expedition under the auspices of the MusCe du Louvre set to work in 1929 and the excavations, involving a total of seven months’ work in all, were concluded in 1931. This volume, lavishly illustrated, describes in detail the remarkable results.

Long ago one of our oldest French prehistorians, Gustave Chauvet, called attention to the probable existence of a wooden framework over the structures beneath tumuli. At a Congress of the A.F.A.S. held at Nantes in 1875 he described the digging of seven tumuli at La Boixe (Charente) containing burials of the polished Stone Age. Two of them covered true dolmens; others simple rectangular or circular cellae enclosed within small dry-stone walls.