Page:The influence of commerce on civilization (IA influenceofcomme00ellerich).pdf/11

5 adoption, to cater for the requirements of the world. The keen competition which enters into the case is the cause of the still keener efforts to supplant the successful ones, in turn giving way to some power or combination which is able to supply the demand on some newer and cheaper principle; and thus the world goes on, and the "survival of the fittest" doctrine in every case holds good: the newest acquisition of science and the latest discoveries in art and manufacture, all combining and being turned to account in the struggle for existence.

From the earliest known records of ancient times, as far back as even the records disclosed by the most recent excavations of the sites of ancient cities have proceeded (and, let me say, these researches into the ancient and buried world are only in their infancy) we have still ever-recurring recorded evidences of even more remote systems of commerce and civilization. The most ancient of these discoveries has proved the existence of immense commercial organizations and subsequent highly-graded systems of civilization, which have disappeared for ages, now to be exhumed, as to their remains, by the energy and "sinews of war" provided by commerce. The period when the first man began to barter or to trade, we shall never know. A learned professor, a member of the same school, and of the same University as myself, traces by means of their monuments the migrations of the Megalithic peoples from Mauritania, through Britain, Southern Europe and Asia, and through Northern Asia across Behring Straits to British Columbia, and down to Yucatan, and again separately, through Siberia, Corea, and Japan, down to Tonga and Samoa, and thence to New Zealand, as having been about 150,000 years ago. Whether this theory be right or wrong, I cannot say. Anyhow, the monuments remain, and it is a singular fact that to the present day, the trade and commerce routes, from the East in Asia to the West in Europe, follow very closely the routes of these Megalithic peoples. What their commerce and civilizations were we have no means of knowing but the remains are still existent that such interchange of peoples took place. The