THE CONTEMPORARY PAST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 13, 16 January 1936, Page 2

THE CONTEMPORARY PAST

I Why should the twentieth century concern itself with uncivilized antiquity f Many people ask themselves that question as they contemplate the lever-increasing interest Britain is tak- ' ing in archeological investigation, says (the Christian Science Monitor. This ' last year excavations have proceeded all over the country, but notably, perhaps, .in Essex and in Wessex. And the ready 'sale of the publications of the Ordnance Survey maps and pamphlets dealing with archeological discovery shows that there is an eager public for the resuits of these excavations. Probably the most remarkable j achievement of the Ordnance Survey, a unique institution, is its recent publication of the first .authoritative map of early Anglo Saxon England, heretofore an almost indecipherable book. After immense labours, and careful examination of casual passages in Bede ’s Ecclesiastical History, the Annals of Wales, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and other I ancient works, amplified and confirmed 1 In- archeological investigation, a map i has at last been compiled which shows [how England was* topographically and socially organised at that period. j What precisely at this juncture of time is the significance of work like this? It is at least a consequence of I one of men’s most admirable characteristics —the disinterested love of knowledge for its own sake. And it is impossible to tell when it may not become of great practical importance. Before the French .Revolution, legends of ancient Rome wielded a tremendous influence upon the development of political thought; and certain conceptions about Nordic prehistory are said to be not without influence in Germany today. One can never be sure that ideas about the long-vanished past may not I spring suddenly into a key position; •such work as that represented by the ' n ap of Anglo-Saxon England helps to ensure that these ideas shall at least be I r.r eura t e.