Intellectual and Social Progress in the Ancient Near East.

The article presents information about papers "Intellectual and Social Progress in the Ancient Near East," by E.A. Speiser, and "Studies in the History of Culture," presented to Waldo G. Leland, 1942, summarized in the October-December 1942 issue of the periodical "The American Journal of Archaeology." Available evidence points to Mesopotamia as the oldest center of scientific observation permanently recorded, the author holds. This activity includes education and language study, jurisprudence, and the mathematical and natural sciences. These elements are interrelated and based on a concept of society restricting the powers of the State, and recognizing the rights of the individual. Owing to the authoritarian government of contemporary Egypt, science, though notable in several fields, lacked the breadth and balance shown in Lower Mesopotamia, the land of ancient Sumer, in the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.