 After 1900, it was clear that Euclidean geometry had lost its pre-eminent position. This ancient system lost its certainty, and there were better formal, axiomatic systems, such as those proposed by Hilbert and some mathematicians in the school around Peano. There were rich systems that were more fundamental, in the sense of using fewer properties of the figures of traditional geometry such as the straight line (the many versions of projective geometry). And there was a profusion of metrical geometries with more natural starting points and deeper theories.