The Origin of the Faiyum Depression

IN a paper entitled Origin of the Faiyum Depression, published in the October number of this Journal, Miss E. W. Gardner has put forward what purports to be a Critical Commentary of a theory held by us. We wish to point out that this commentary is based on nothing more than two abstracts, in all some two columns in Nature and three pages in Man, in which we stated that the results of our season's work on the Faiyum problem would shortly be published in full by the Oriental Institute. The technical work of producing this publication is being carried out with all possible expedition by the Institute, and we hope that it will be ready, together with a detailed geological map of the area, before Christmas. As the matters dealt with by Miss Gardner are treated fully, in their proper place and sequence, in this embodiment of our geological work on the Eastern Faiyum, we need not republish the evidence here. We would point out, how? ever, that a short abstract, in anticipation of a full report, is not so written as to set forth adequate evidence for a detailed criticism. We venture therefore to attribute to the premature appearance of Miss Gardner's Commentary, rather than to our own oversight, the inadequacy of evidence of which she complains. Miss Gardner has applied synthetic methods to our abstracts, and has attempted to elaborate our theory from the bare outline of facts provided by us. Unfortunateiy, the resulting product differs vitally from the original. We must emphasize that the diagram published by Miss Gardner in the Journal opposite p. 416, and headed Depth of erosion, and climate according to K. S. Sandford and W. J. Arkell, does not represent our views. The same must be said of the table under our names on p. 372. In this diagram and table we are depicted as believing that the level of erosion fell steadily until near the beginning of Neo? lithic times, and that a lake came into being in the Faiyum at the 35-metre level and continued to fail with the falling surface of erosion as far as the 22-metre level. On this hypothesis the principal erosion of the Faiyum basin would have been taking place at the same time as the basin was occupied by a lake, and the depth of the lake, which may be read off from Miss Gardner's diagram, was always zero. It must have surprised her that we found a lake of no depth compatible with the formation of the high storm beaches of shingle which we described

Depression (economics · Economics · Geography · Keynesian economics · Aquatic Ecosystems and Biodiversity