When we are in possession of a few more local monographs⁠—then, and only then, by grouping their data, by minutely confronting and comparing them, we shall be able to reconsider the subject as a whole, and take a new and decisive step forward. To proceed otherwise, would be merely to start, armed with two or three rough and simple ideas, on a kind of rapid excursion. It would be, in most cases, to pass by everything that is particular, individual, irregular⁠—that is to say, everything, on the whole, that is most interesting.

Lucien Fèbvre: La Terre et L’Evolution Humaine