But while the evolutionary theory of human institutions may be appealed to for satisfying our curiosity when no possible answer can be given by history, there are things often to be observed which it does not well account for, and then recourse to it is the reverse of scientific. An illustration taken from the arts may help to clear our minds on this point. It may be assumed that all men everywhere may be expected to hit upon the device of burning clay vessels until they obtain some rude form of pottery and then develop the potter’s art to some extent. We may call this evolution. Not only can the making of pots and pans be adduced from all parts of the globe, but truly astonishing resemblances can be discovered between pottery from districts so remote that we cannot believe there can ever have been communication between them. Here an independent evolution has produced the same results in unconnected areas. If that were all, the modern science of pottery evidence would be impossible. We cannot afford time or space even to sketch here the chief results of the intensive comparative study of pottery, which has become so powerful a weapon in the hands of the modern archaeologist. Not only the age of the stratum on which it was found, but even the nationality of the maker, can frequently be asserted beyond reasonable question. Every one must be familiar with such statements as that Mycenaean pottery has been found on some site or other recently examined in Greece, Asia Minor, or Palestine. We are led to suppose that there is something distinctive about it which fixes its origin and age quite unmistakably. Now this is not its special fitness for meeting a want which could be met no other way, so that every people everywhere must have produced Mycenaean pottery once they reached the compelling stage of civilization which demanded it. It is some non-essential feature which marks its distinction from all other than deliberate imitations of it. It must be something that appeals to a taste which could only arise after the thing itself had arisen. The admiration felt for Mycenaean pottery would lead to a demand for it, and that might lead to imitation of it, but no conceivable set of circumstances could have led men to achieve it independently. If this could be conceded, the whole science built on modern study of pottery comes to an end. The presence of such pottery in Palestine does not indeed prove that any Mycenaean potter ever visited the country, but that his wares were brought there, were valued and in request. Further, the pottery came within fairly definite limits of time.