*Time scales have changed dramatically in the twentieth century. The biggest changes in our interpretation of the distant past have taken place within the last twenty years as new schemes of dating, new discoveries of material remains and new evaluations of evidence have come so fast that earlier surveys have been rapidly outdated. It is through our late-twentieth- century sense of time and space, so different from that of previous centuries in that it is governed by science, that we now step backwards and reach out to our most remote ancestors. This does not mean that we should ignore the journeys of past explorers of history when we make our own journey through time, for the social historian learns much about social history from out-of-date and discarded explanations. |