It will thus be noted that recent excavation and research have furnished the archaeologist with material by means of which he may trace back the history of culture to the Neolithic period, both in the region of the Mediterranean and along the valley of the Nile. That the same achievement cannot be placed to the credit of the excavator of Babylonian sites is not entirely due to defects in the scope or method of his work, but may largely be traced to the character of the country in which the excavations have been carried out. Babylonia is an alluvial country, subject to constant inundation, and the remains and settlements of the Neolithic period were doubtless in many places swept away, and all trace of them destroyed by natural causes. With the advent of the Sumerians began the practice of building cities upon artificial mounds, which preserved the structure of the buildings against flood, and rendered them easier of defence against a foe. It is through excavation in these mounds that the earliest remains of the Sumerians have been recovered; but the still earlier traces of Neolithic times, which at some period may have existed on those very sites, must often have been removed by flood before the mounds were built. The Neolithic and pre-historic remains discovered during the French excavations in the graves of Mussian and at Susa, and by the Pumpelly expedition in the two Kurgans near Anau, do not find their equivalents in the mounds of Babylonia so far as these have yet been examined. In this respect the climate and soil of Babylonia present a striking contrast to those of ancient Egypt. In the latter country the shallow graves of Neolithic man, covered by but a few inches of soil, have remained intact and undisturbed at the foot of the desert hills; while in the upper plateaus along the Nile valley the flints of Palaeolithic man have lain upon the surface of the sand from Palaeolithic times until the present day. But what has happened in so rainless a country as Egypt could never have taken place in Mesopotamia. It is true that a few palaeoliths have been found on the surface of the Syrian desert, but in the alluvial plains of Southern Chaldaea, as in the Egyptian Delta itself, few certain traces of prehistoric man have been forthcoming. Even in the early mat-burials and sarcophagi at Fâra numerous copper objects[1] and some cylinder-seals have been found, while other cylinders, sealings, and even inscribed tablets, discovered in the same and neighbouring strata, prove that their owners were of the same race as the Sumerians of history, though probably of a rather earlier date.