Part 2

Lane-Fox’s [Pitt Rivers’] memoir “on Early Modes of Navigation” (=21=) not only affords in itself an admirable summary of the definite evidence for the spread of culture; but is also doubly valuable to us, because incidentally it illustrates also the actual means by which the migrations of the culture-bearers took place. The survival into modern times, upon the Hooghly and other Indian rivers, of boats provided with the fantastic steering arrangement used by the Ancient Egyptians 2000 years B.C., is in itself a proof of ancient Egyptian influence in India; and the contemporary practice of representing eyes upon the bow of the ship enables us to demonstrate a still wider extension of that influence, for in modern times that custom has been recorded as far apart as Malta, India, China, Oceania and the North-West American coast.

But there is no difficulty about the question of the transmission of such customs. Most scholars who have mastered the early history of some particular area, in many cases those who most resolutely deny even the possibility of the wider spread of culture, frankly admit—because it would stultify their own localised researches to deny it—the intercourse of the particular people in which they are interested and its neighbours. Merely by using these links, forged by the reluctant hands of hostile witnesses, it is possible to construct the whole chain needed for such migrations as I postulate (see _Map II_.)

No one who reads the evidence collected by such writers as Ellis (=15=), de Quatrefages (=60=) and Percy Smith (=98=)[3] can doubt the fact of the extensive prehistoric migrations throughout the Pacific Ocean along definitely known routes. Even Joyce (whose otherwise excellent summaries of the facts relating to American archæology have been emasculated by his refusal to admit the influence of the Old World upon American culture) states that migrations from India extended to Indonesia (and Madagascar) and all the islands of the Pacific; and even that “it is likely that the coast of America was reached” (=61=, p. 119).[4]

There is no doubt as to the reality of the close maritime intercourse between the Persian Gulf and India from the eighth century B.C. (=13=; =14=; =51=; and =101=); and of course it is a historical fact that the Mediterranean littoral and Egypt had been in intimate connexion with Babylonia for some centuries before, and especially after, that time.

In the face of this overwhelming mass of definite evidence of the reality not only of the spread of culture and its carriers, but also of the ways and the means by which it travelled, it will naturally be asked how it has come to pass that there is even the shadow of a doubt as to the migrations which distributed this “heliolithic” culture-complex so widely in the world. It cannot be explained by lack of knowledge, for most of the facts that I have enumerated are taken bodily from the anthropological journals of forty or more years ago.

The explanation is to be found, I believe, in a curious psychological process incidental to the intensive study of an intricate problem. As knowledge increased and various scholars attempted to define the means by (and the time at) which the contacts of various peoples took place, difficulties were revealed which, though really trivial, were magnified into insuperable obstacles. All of these real difficulties were created by mistaken ideas of the relative chronology of the appearance of civilisation in various centres, and especially by the failure to realise that useful arts were often lost. For example, if on a certain mainland _A_ two practices, _a_ and _b_—one of them, _a_, a useful practice, say the making of pottery; the other, _b_, a useless custom, say the preservation of the corpse—were developed, and _a_ was at least as old, or preferably definitely older than _b_, it seemed altogether inconceivable to the ethnologist if an island _B_ was influenced by the culture of the mainland _A_, at some time after the practices _a_ and _b_ were in vogue, that it might, under any conceivable circumstances, fail to preserve the useful art _a_, even though it might allow the utterly useless practice _b_ to lapse. Therefore it was argued that, if the later inhabitants of _B_ mummified their dead, but did not make pottery, this was clear evidence that they could not have come under the influence of _A_.

But the whole of the formidable series of obstacles raised by this kind of argument has been entirely swept away by Dr. Rivers, who has demonstrated how often it has happened that a population has completely lost some useful art which it once had, and even more often clung to some useless practice (=65=).

The remarkable feature of the present state of the discussion is that, in spite of Rivers’ complete demolition of these difficulties (=65=), most ethnologists do not seem to realise that there is now a free scope for taking a clear and common-sense view of the truth, unhindered by any obstructions. It is characteristic of the history of scientific, no less than of theological argument, that the immediate effect of the destruction of the foundations of cherished beliefs is to make their more fanatical votaries shout their creed all the louder and more dogmatically, and hurl anathemas at those who dissent.

This is the only explanation I can offer of the remarkable presidential address delivered by Fewkes to the Anthropological Society of Washington in 1912 (=18=), Keane’s incoherent recklessness[5] (=41=, pp. 140, 218, 219, and 367 to 370), and the amazing criticisms which during the last four years I have had annually to meet. There is no attempt at argument, but mere dogmatic and often irrelevant assertions. The constant appeal to the meaningless phrase “the similarity of the working of the human mind”[6] (=18=), as though it were a magical incantation against logical induction, and harping on the so-called “psychological argument” (=41=), which is directly opposed to the teaching of psychology, are the only excuses one can obtain from the “orthodox” ethnologist for this obstinate refusal to face the issue. Of course it is a historical fact that the discussions of the theory of evolution inclined ethnologists during the last century the more readily to accept the _laisser faire_ attitude, and put an end to all their difficulties by the pretence that most cultures developed independently _in situ_. It is all the more surprising that Huxley took some small part in encouraging this lapse into superficiality and abuse of the evolution conception, when it is recalled that, as Sir Michael Foster tells us, the then President of the Ethnological Society “made himself felt in many ways, not the least by the severity with which he repressed the pretensions of shallow persons who, taking advantage of the glamour of the Darwinian doctrine, talked nonsense in the name of anthropological science” (“Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley,” Vol. I., p. 263).

It is a singular commentary on the attitude of the “orthodox” school of ethnologists that, when pressed to accept the obvious teaching of ethnological evidence, they should desert the strong intrenchments which the difficulties of full and adequate explanation have afforded them in the past, and take refuge behind the straw barricades of imaginary psychological and biological analogies, which they have hastily constructed for their own purposes, and in flagrant defiance of all that the psychologist understands by the phrase “working of the human mind,” if perchance he is ever driven to employ this expression, or the meaning attached by the biologist to “evolution.”

It is not sufficient proof of my thesis, however, merely to expose the hollowness of the pretensions of one’s opponents, nor even to show the identity of geographical distribution and the linking up of customs to form the “heliolithic” culture-complex. Many writers have dimly realised that some such spread of culture took place, but by misunderstanding the nature of the factors that came into play or the chronology of the movements they were discussing (see especially Macmillan Brown’s (=7=) and Enoch’s (=16=) books, to mention the latest, but by no means the worst offenders), have brought discredit upon the thesis I am endeavouring to demonstrate.

Another danger has arisen out of the revulsion against Bastian’s old idea of independent evolution by his fellow-countrymen Frobenius, Graebner, Ankermann, Foy and others, with the co-operation of the Austrian philologist, Schmidt, and the Swiss ethnologist, Montandon (who has summarised the views of the new school in the first part of the new journal, _Archives suisses d’Anthropologie générale_, May, 1914, p. 113); for they have rushed to the other extreme, and, relying mainly upon objects of “material culture,” have put forward a method of analysis and postulated a series of migrations for which the evidence is very doubtful. Rivers (=64=) has pointed out the unreliability of such inferences when unchecked by the consideration of elements of culture which are not so easily bartered or borrowed as bows and spears. He has insisted upon the fundamental importance of the study of social organisation as supplying the most stable and trustworthy data for the analysis of a culture-complex and an index of racial admixture. The study of such a practice as mummification, the influence of which is deep-rooted in the innermost beliefs of the people who resort to it, affords data almost as reliable as Rivers’ method; for the subsequent account will make it abundantly clear that the practice of embalming leaves its impress upon the burial customs of a people long ages after other methods of disposal of their dead have been adopted.

I have been led into this digression by attempting to make it clear that the mere demonstration of the identity of geographical distribution and the linking together of a series of cultural elements by no means represents the solution of the main problem.

What has still to be elucidated is the manner and the place in which the complex fabric of the “heliolithic” culture was woven, the precise epoch in which it began to be spread abroad and the identity of its carriers, the influences to which it was subjected on the way, and the additions, subtractions and modifications which it underwent as the result.

Although I have now collected many of the data for the elucidation of these points, the limited space at my disposal compels me to defer for the present the consideration of the most interesting aspect of the whole problem, the identity of the early mariners who were the distributors of so strange a cargo. It was this aspect of the question which first led me into the controversy; but I shall be able to deal with it more conveniently when the ethnological case has been stated. The enormous bulk of the data that have accumulated compels me to omit a large mass of corroborative evidence of an ethnological nature; but no doubt there will be many opportunities in the near future for using up this reserve of ammunition.

Before setting out for the meeting of the British Association in Australia last year I submitted the following abstract of a communication (=96=) to be made to the Section of Anthropology:—

“After dealing with the evidence from the resemblances in the physical characteristics of widely separated populations—such, for instance, as certain of the ancient inhabitants of Western Asia on the one hand, and certain Polynesians on the other—suggesting far-reaching prehistoric migrations, the distribution of certain peculiarly distinctive practices, such as mummification and the building of megalithic monuments, is made use of to confirm the reality of such wanderings of peoples.

“I have already (at the Portsmouth, Dundee, and Birmingham meetings) dealt with the problem as it affects the Mediterranean littoral and Western Europe. On the present occasion I propose to direct attention mainly to the question of the spread of culture from the centres of the ancient civilisations along the Southern Asiatic coast and from there out into the Pacific. From the examination of the evidence supplied by megalithic monuments and distinctive burial customs, studied in the light of the historical information relating to the influence exerted by Arabia and India in the Far East, one can argue by analogy as to the nature of migrations in the even more remote past to explain the distribution of the earliest peoples dwelling on the shores of the Pacific.

“Practices such as mummification and megalith-building present so many peculiar and distinctive features that no hypothesis of independent evolution can seriously be entertained in explanation of their geographical distribution. They must be regarded as evidence of the diffusion of information, and the migrations of bearers of it, from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Eastern Mediterranean, step by step out into Polynesia, and even perhaps beyond the Pacific to the American littoral.”

At that time it was my intention further to develop the arguments from megalithic monuments which I had laid before the Association at the three preceding meetings and elsewhere (=90=; =91=; =92=; =93=; and especially =94=); and endeavour to prove that the structure and the geographical distribution of these curious memorials pointed to the spread of a distinctive type of culture along the Southern Asiatic littoral, through Indonesia and Oceania to the American Continent. The geographical distribution of the practice of mummification was to have been used merely as a means of corroboration of what I then imagined to be the more complete megalithic record, and of emphasizing the fact that Egypt had played some part at least in originating these curiously linked customs.

But when I examined the mummy from Torres Straits in the Macleay Museum (University of Sydney), and studied the literature relating to the methods employed by the embalmers in that region (=1=; =19=; =25=; and =27=), I was convinced, from my knowledge of the technical details used in mummification in ancient Egypt (see especially =78=; =86= and =87=), that these Papuan mummies supplied us with the most positive demonstration of the Egyptian origin of the methods employed. Moreover, as they revealed a series of very curious procedures, such as were not invented in Egypt until the time of the New Empire, and some of them not until the XXIst Dynasty, it was evident that the cultural wave which carried the knowledge of these things to the Torres Straits could not have started on its long course from Egypt before the ninth century B.C., at the earliest.

The incision for eviscerating the body was made in the flank, right or left, or in the perineum (=19=; =25=)—the two sites selected for making the embalming incision in Egypt (=78=); the flank incision was made in the precise situation (between costal margin and iliac crest) which was distinctive of XXIst and XXIInd Dynasty methods in Egypt (=86=); and the wound was stitched up in accordance with the method employed in the case of the cheaper kinds of embalming at that period (=78=). When the flank incision was not employed an opening was made in the perineum, as was done in Egypt—the second method mentioned by Herodotus—in the case of less wealthy people (=56=, p. 46).

The viscera, after removal, were thrown into the sea, as, according to Porphyry and Plutarch, it was the practice in Egypt at one time (=56=, pp. 57 and 58) to cast them into the Nile.

The body was painted with a mixture containing red-ochre, the scalp was painted black, and artificial eyes were inserted. These procedures were first adopted (in their entirety) in Egypt during the XXIst Dynasty, although the experiments leading up to the adoption of these methods began in the XIXth.

But most remarkable of all, the curiously inexplicable Egyptian procedure for removing the brain, which in Egypt was not attempted until the XVIIIth Dynasty—_i.e._, until its embalmers had had seventeen centuries experience of their remarkable craft (=78=)—was also followed by the savages of the Torres Straits (=25=; =27=)!

Surely it is inconceivable that such people could have originated the idea or devised the means for practising an operation so devoid of meaning and so technically difficult as this! The interest of their technique is that the Torres Straits operators followed the method originally employed in Egypt (in the case of the mummy of the Pharaoh Ahmes I. [=86=, p. 16]), which is one requiring considerable skill and dexterity, and not the simpler operation through the nostrils which was devised later (=78=).

The Darnley Islanders also made a circular incision through the skin of each finger and toe, and having scraped off the epidermis from the rest of the body, they carefully peeled off these thimbles of skin, and presented them to the deceased’s widow (=25=; =27=).

This practice is peculiarly interesting as an illustration of the adoption of an ancient Egyptian custom in complete ignorance of the purpose it was intended to serve. The ancient Egyptian embalmers (and, again, those of the XXIst Dynasty) made similar circular incisions around fingers and toes, and also scraped off the rest of the epidermis: but the aim of this strange procedure was to prevent the general epidermis, as it was shed (which occurred when the body was steeped for weeks in the preservative brine bath), from carrying the finger- and toe-nails with it (=78=). A thimble of skin was left on each finger and toe to keep the nail _in situ_; and to make it doubly secure, it was tied on with string (=78=) or fixed with a ring of gold or a silver glove (=84=).

In the Torres Straits method of embalming the brine bath was not used; so the scraping off of the epidermis was wholly unnecessary. In addition, after following precisely the preliminary steps of this aimless proceeding, by deliberately and intentionally removing the skin-thimbles and nails they defeated the very objects which the Egyptians had in view when they invented this operation!

An elaborate technical operation such as this which serves no useful purpose and is wholly misunderstood by its practitioners cannot have been invented by them. It is another certain proof of the Egyptian origin of the practice.

There is another feature of these Papuan mummies which may or may not be explicable as the adoption of Egyptian practices put to a modified, if not a wholly different, use. Among the new methods introduced in Egypt in the XXIst Dynasty was a curious device for restoring to the mummy something of the fulness of form and outline it had lost during the process of preservation. Through various incisions (which incidentally no doubt allowed the liquid products of decomposition to escape) foreign materials were packed under the skin of the mummy (=78=; =87=). These incisions were made between the toes, sometimes at the knees, in the region of the shoulders, and sometimes in other situations (=78=). In the Papuan method of mummification “cuts were made on the knee-caps and between the fingers and toes; then holes were pierced in the cuts with an arrow so as to allow the liquids to drip from them” (Hamlyn-Harris, =27=, p. 3). In one of the mummies in the Brisbane museum there seem to be incisions also in the shoulders. The situation of these openings suggests the view that the idea of making them _may_ (and I do not wish to put it any more definitely) have been suggested by the Egyptian XXIst Dynastic practice. For, although the incisions were made, in the latter case, for the purpose of packing the limbs, incidentally they served for drainage purposes.

But it was not only the mere method of embalming, convincing and definite as it is, that establishes the derivation of the Papuan from the Egyptian procedure; but also all the other funerary practices, and the beliefs associated with them, that help to clinch the proof. The special treatment of the head, the use of masks, the making of stone idols, these and scores of other curious customs (which have been described in detail in Haddon’s and Myers’ admirable account [=25=]) might be cited.

When I called the attention of the Anthropological Section to these facts and my interpretation of them at the meeting of the British Association in Melbourne, Professor J. L. Myres opened the discussion by adopting a line of argument which, even after four years’ experience of controversies of the megalith-problem, utterly amazed me. “What more natural than that people should want to preserve their dead? Or that in doing so they should remove the more putrescible parts? Would not the flank be the natural place to choose for the purpose? Is it not a common practice for people to paint their dead with red-ochre?” It is difficult to believe that such questions were meant to be taken seriously. The claim that it is quite a natural thing on the death of a near relative for the survivors instinctively to remove his viscera, dry the corpse over a fire, scrape off his epidermis, remove his brain through a hole in the back of his neck, and then paint the corpse red is a sample of casuistry not unworthy of a mediæval theologian. Yet this is the gratuitous claim made at a scientific meeting! If Professor Myres had known anything of the history of Anatomy he would have realized that the problem of preserving the body was one of extreme difficulty which for long ages had exercised the most civilized peoples, not only in antiquity, but also in modern times. In Egypt, where the natural conditions favouring the successful issue of attempts to preserve the body were largely responsible for the possibility of such embalming, it took more than seventeen centuries of constant practice and experimentation to reach the stage and to acquire the methods exemplified in the Torres Straits mummies. In Egypt also a curious combination of natural circumstances and racial customs was responsible for the suggestion of the desirability and the possibility artificially to preserve the corpse. How did the people of the Torres Straits acquire the knowledge even of the possibility of such an attainment, not to mention the absence of any inherent suggestion of its desirability? For in the hot, damp atmosphere of such places as Darnley Island the corpse would never have been preserved by natural means, so that the suggestion which stimulated the Egyptians to embark upon their experimentation was lacking in the case of the Papuans. But even if for some mysterious reasons these people had been prompted to attempt to preserve their dead, during the experimental stage they would have had to combat these same unfavourable conditions. Is it at all probable or even possible to conceive that under such exceptionally difficult, not to say discouraging, circumstances they would have persisted for long periods in their gruesome experiments; or have attained a more rapid success than the more cultured peoples of Egypt and Europe, operating under more favourable climatic conditions, and with the help of a knowledge of chemistry and physics, were able to achieve? The suggestion is too preposterous to call for serious consideration.