Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/408



Up to the middle of the 19th century, myths and traditions were the only materials available for the study of pre-historic man. So various attempts were made to systematise these myths and explain them rationally. But the mythologists carried on their researches at a time when man was believed to be post-glacial and when the physical and geographical surroundings of the ancient man were assumed not to have been materially different from those of the present day. But about the middle of the 19th century, from hundreds of stone and bronze implements found buried in various places in Europe, the archaeologists established the chronological sequence of the Iron, the Bronze and the Stone age in times preceding the historic period and discovered evidence to prove the existence of the Glacial period at the close of the Quarternary era and the high antiquity of man who was shown to have lived not only throughout the Quarternary but also in the Tertiary era when the climatic conditions of the globe were quite different from those in the present or Post-Glacial period. It, therefore, became evident that the results previously arrived at by philologists and mythologists must be revised in the light of new scientific discoveries. It also became necessary to study the ancient sacred books of the Aryans in the light of modern