ABSTRACT
THE study of every civilization must begin with an examination of the potentialities of its natural environment, since these form, as it were, the basis of its development. It is precisely in this respect that recent research on the so-called Urzeit, or earliest period of German history, 1 has produced revolutionary results, by proving the bases on which the old theory was built up to be untenable. It was an hypothesis essential to this theory that at the time when Germans and Romans came into closer contact with one another, Germany was covered with marshes and dense primeval forests. 2 Irrefutable evidence of this was found in the accounts of Cæsar and Pliny, from which scholars chose to draw their pictures of conditions at this time. But, in opposition to this view, students of prehistoric archaeology, geography, and philology have now come to unanimous conclusions which give us a safe starting-point for critical examination.
