In 1887 Professor Ridgeway proceeded to apply the comparative method to Greek coins and weights in a paper called the “Homeric Talent: Its Origin and Affinities.”[84] He there tried to show that the origin of coined money among the Lydians, and its evolution by the Greeks and Italians, entirely accorded with the evolution of primitive money from the use of objects such as axes, ornaments, cattle, and so forth. Footnote 84: _Hellenic Journal_, VIII., p. 133; see also _The Origin of Metallic Currency_, 1892. One of the relations of Ethnology to other branches of the Humanities which hitherto has received scant acknowledgment is its influence on the course of Political Science. Professor J. L. Myres recently gave a brilliant address on this subject at Winnipeg, in which he points out how Bodin (1530-1596), Edward Grimstone (1615), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Montesquieu (1689-1755), Rousseau (1712-1778), Voltaire (1694-1778), Herder (1744-1803), and others, referred to or utilised the accounts of natives by travellers to illustrate their theories of statecraft. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII. THE HISTORY OF ARCHÆOLOGICAL DISCOVERY [Sidenote: =Prehistoric Man.=] DR. JOHNSON was not in advance of his time in anthropological matters. While he was gibing at Lord Monboddo for his belief in man’s simian affinities, he was also making a pronouncement on the subject of prehistoric archæology that later discoveries were soon to disprove. Up to his time history was content to start from the earliest written documents, supplemented, now and then, by the evidence of coins and inscriptions; and Dr. Johnson summed up contemporary opinion in his statement, “All that is really known of the ancient state of Britain is contained in a few pages. We can know no more than what old writers have told us.” But it was not long before it was recognised that there was other evidence besides that of the “old writers,” evidence the nature of which has been well described by Sir W. R. Wilde:— We possess what cannot be falsified by the scribe, and, although styled prehistoric, they are far more truthfully historical than the writing that no doubt was largely interfered with, and which, if old, now requires a gloss to interpret it. The grassy mound or circle, the stones erected into a cromleach, the great sepulchral mound, the cinerary urn, the stone weapon or tool, the grain-rubber for triturating cereal food, the harpoon for spearing fish, the copper and bronze tools and weapons, and the gold ornaments of the most early tribes—all are now, in their way, far more truthful than anything that could have been committed to writing, even if there were letters in that day. They are litanies in stone, dogmata in metal, and sermons preaching from the grassy mound.[85] Footnote 85: