What Happened in History

Abstract

PROFESSOR V. GORDON GHILDE, who died in the Blue Mountains of his native Australia in 1957 soon after retiring from the Directorship of the London University Institute of Archaeology, was one of the great pre-historians of the world. More perhaps than any other man he showed how by using the data won by archaeologists and natural scientists it was possible to gain a new view of what constituted human history. Inevitably some of the books in which he summarized, with brilliant mastery of detail, the current situation in different fields of prehistoric archaeology have begun to lose something of their value for modern students. The general works in which he opened up new and often vast perspectives on the other hand are in many cases classics that repay constant re-reading and are likely to retain their value for a long time to come. Of these one of the most important is the present volume, originally published in 1941 and last revised in 1954.