communities required peace and order for their progress and
prosperity. All great civilizations have evolved from the habits and
experiences of settled communities. Law and religion were closely
associated, and the evidence afforded by the remains of stone circles
and temples suggests that in the organization and division of labour
the influence of religious teachers was pre-eminent. Early rulers,
indeed, were priest-kings--incarnations of the deity who owned the
land and measured out the span of human life.

We need not assume that Neolithic man led an idyllic existence; his
triumphs were achieved by slow and gradual steps; his legal codes
were, no doubt, written in blood and his institutions welded in the
fires of adversity. But, disciplined by laws, which fostered
humanitarian ideals, Neolithic man, especially of the Mediterranean
race, had reached a comparatively high state of civilization long ages
before the earliest traces of his activities can be obtained. When
this type of mankind is portrayed in Ancient Sumeria, Ancient Egypt,
and Ancient Crete we find that the faces are refined and intellectual
and often quite modern in aspect. The skulls show that in the Late
Stone Age the human brain was fully developed and that the racial
types were fixed. In every country in Europe we still find the direct
descendants of the ancient Mediterranean race, as well as the
descendants of the less highly cultured conquerors who swept westward
out of Asia at the dawn of the Bronze Age; and everywhere there are
evidences of crossment of types in varying degrees. Even the influence
of Neolithic intellectual life still remains. The comparative study of
mythology and folk beliefs reveals that we have inherited certain
modes of thought from our remote ancestors, who were the congeners of
the Ancient Sumerians and the Ancient Egyptians. In this connection it
is of interest, therefore, to refer to the social ideals of the early