Modern Views on the Italian Terremare

Extract

There has been for a good many years an uneasy sense that all was not well with the theory of the Italian terremare as propounded by the original explorers. Writers of general works have continued to accept and to pass it on, in perfectly good faith, as if it were a coin of full value, worth the same now that it was thirty years ago. But those who had the best opportunities of knowing were aware that there had been a very serious depreciation. It was strongly suspected that, like the dollar, it had sunk to at least 59 per cent of its nominal value; but there seemed to be no one who was at once willing and able to state the exact degree of devaluation. Pigorini’s staunchest followers, of whom the last survivor died a few years ago, began to admit that there was a considerable percentage of loss; while more impartial outsiders wondered whether the terremare coin had not become totally valueless.