X. On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of the Practice of Mummification.—A Study of the Migrations of Peoples and the Spread of certain Customs and Beliefs. (continued 3)

Later on in the same work Prescott, relying again on the somewhat, questionable authority of Garcilasso’s works, makes a statement which in some respects may seem to be at variance with what I have just quoted:—

“It was this belief in the resurrection of the body which led them to preserve the body with so much solicitude—by a simple process, however, that unlike the elaborate embalming of the Egyptians, consisted in exposing it to the action of the cold, exceedingly dry and highly rarified atmosphere of the mountains. [Note.—Such indeed seems to be the opinion of Garcilasso, though some writers speak of resinous and other applications for embalming the body. The appearance of the royal mummies found at Cuzco, as reported both by Ondegardo and Garcilasso, makes it probable that no foreign substance was employed for their preservation.] As they believed that the occupations in the future world would have great resemblance to those of the present, they buried with the deceased noble some of his apparel, his utensils, and frequently his treasures; and completed the gloomy ceremony by sacrificing his wives and favourite domestics to bear him company and do him service in the happy regions beyond the clouds. Vast mounds of an irregular or more frequently oblong shape, penetrated by galleries running at right angles to each other were raised over the dead, whose dried bodies or mummies have been found in considerable numbers, sometimes erect, but more often in the sitting posture common to the Indian tribes of both continents” (p. 54).

In the light of the information concerning the practices in other parts of the world, which I have collected in the present memoir, there can be no doubt of the substantial accuracy of these reports, and that they refer to real embalming and not to mere natural desiccation.

Hrdlička has adduced positive evidence of the adoption of embalming procedures (37).

In his report, “Culture of the Ancient Pueblos of the Upper Gila River Region, New Mexico and Arizona,” Walter Hough (36) publishes excellent photographs of two mummies of babies, but he gives no information as to the method of preservation.

There are four Peruvian mummies in the Anatomical Museum in the University of Manchester, three of which are adults, and one of them a baby. In only one of them is there any positive evidence of artificial measures having been adopted for the preservation of the body, and in this case the condition of the mummy was a most amazing one. The body was clad in woollen garments in the usual way, and was wearing a woollen peaked cap, the apex of which was furnished with a bunch of feathers. The body was placed in a sitting position, and a large wound extending across the trunk had been covered with cloth strongly impregnated with resinous material. The legs were sharply flexed upon the body and the arms were bound up in front. But to my intense amazement I found the shoulder blades on the front of the chest, and on examination found that the thorax was turned back to front. As the head was already separate there was nothing to show what position it originally occupied; and it seemed impossible to explain how it had been possible to twist the vertebral column in the lumbar region as to bring the thorax back to front. In order to solve this mystery I removed the resin-impregnated cloth, which was firmly fixed to the abdominal wound, and found that the body had been cut right across the abdomen and packed with wool after the viscera had been removed. Then the abdomen and thorax had been stuck together by means of the broad strip of cloth with resinous paste as an adhesive. But for some reason which is not very apparent, or probably through mere carelessness, the thorax had been placed the wrong way round, and it had become necessary, in order to restore some semblance of life-like appearance to the monstrosity, forcibly to twist the arms at the shoulder joints in order to get them into the position above described. [Since this was written I have learned that in certain American tribes it is the custom to dress the corpse with a coat turned back to front. This seems to suggest that the curious procedure just described may have been dictated by the same underlying idea, whatever it may be.] In the cranium of this case the remains of the desiccated brain were still present, and although there was a quantity of brownish powder along with it, the evidence was not sufficiently definite to say whether or not any foreign material had been introduced into the cranial cavity. In the case of the other three bodies, as I have already mentioned, there was no evidence, apart from the excellent state of preservation, to suggest what measures had been taken to hinder the process of decomposition.

In his account of the obsequies of the Aztec kings, Bancroft (3, Vol. II., p. 603) tells us that “the body was washed with aromatic water, extracted chiefly from trefoil, and occasionally a process of embalming was resorted to. The bowels were taken out and replaced by aromatic substances.” “The art was an ancient one, however, dating from the Toltecs as usual, yet generally known and practised throughout the whole country” (p. 604). He then proceeds to describe “a curious mode of preserving bodies used by the lord of Chalco,” which consisted of desiccation; and adds a singularly interesting reference to libations, not only curiously reminiscent of the ancient Egyptian practice, but also described in language which might be regarded as a paraphrase of the Pyramid text expounded by Blackman (5). “Water was then poured upon its [the mummy’s] head with these words: ‘this is the water which thou usedst in this world’—Brasseur de Bourbourg uses the expression ‘C’est cette eau que tu as reçue en venant au monde’” (Bancroft, 3, Vol. II., p. 604).

It is altogether inconceivable that such a curious practice, embodying so remarkable an idea, could by chance have been invented independently in Egypt and in America. This can be no mere coincidence, but proof of the most definite kind of the derivation of these Toltec and Aztec ideas from Egypt.

Bancroft further describes (3, p. 604 et seq.) a whole series of other ritual observances, many of which find close parallels in the scenes depicted in the royal Egyptian tombs of the New Empire.

I have already referred to Tylor’s case (102) of the adoption in toto by the Aztecs of the Japanese Buddhist’s story of the soul’s wanderings in the spirit-land. In the case recorded by Bancroft almost the same story is reproduced, but with the characteristic Egyptian additions relating to parts of the way guarded by a gigantic snake and an alligator respectively [in the Egyptian ritual it is of course the Crocodile; see Budge, “The Egyptian Heaven and Hell,” Vol. 1, p. 159]. This is a most remarkable example of syncretism between the Egyptian ritual of the New Empire with Buddhist practices on the distant shores of America.

As the connecting link between the Old and New World, it may be noted that in Oceania “everywhere is the belief that the soul after death must undertake a journey, beset with various perils, to the abode of departed spirits, which is usually represented as lying towards the west” (61, p. 138).

Reutter (63) gives a summary of information relating to the practice of embalming in the New World and particularly amongst the Incas. The custom of preserving the body was not general in every case, for amongst certain peoples only the bodies of kings and chiefs were embalmed. The Indian tribes of Virginia, of North Carolina, the Congarees of South Carolina, the Indians of the North-West Coast, of Central America and those of Florida practised this custom as well as the Incas. In Florida the body was dried before a big fire, then it was clothed in rich materials and afterwards it was placed in a special niche in a cave where the relatives and friends used to come on special days and converse with the deceased. According to Beverley (1722) the tribes of Virginia practised embalming in the following way:—The skin was incised from the head to the feet and the viscera as well as the soft parts of the body were removed. To prevent the skin from drying up and becoming brittle oil and other fatty materials were applied to it. In Kentucky when the body had been dried and filled with fine sand it was wrapped in skins or in matting and buried either in a cave or in a hut. In Colombia the inhabitants of Darien used to remove the viscera and fill the body cavity with resin, afterwards they smoked the body and preserved it in their houses reposing either in a hammock or in a wooden coffin. The Muiscas, the Aleutians, the inhabitants of Yucatan and Chiapa also embalmed the bodies of their kings, of their chiefs, and of their priests by methods similar to those just described, with modifications varying from tribe to tribe. Reutter acknowledges as the source of most of his information the memoirs of Bauwenns, entitled “Inhumation et Cremation,” and Parcelly, “Étude Historique et Critique des Embaumements”; but most of it has clearly been obtained from Yarrow’s great monograph (106). Alone amongst the people of the New World who practised embalming the Incas employed it not only for their kings, chiefs and priests, but also for the population in general. These people were not confined to Peru, but dwelt also in Bolivia, in Equador, as well as in a part of Chili and of the Argentine. Mummified bodies were placed in monuments called Chullpas. According to De Morcoy these Chullpas were constructed of unbaked brick and were sometimes built in the form of a truncated pyramid, twenty to thirty feet high, in other cases simple mausolea of a simple monolith. The burial chamber inside them was square and as many as a dozen mummies might be buried in a single one. The bodies were sharply flexed and were placed in a sitting position. An interesting and curious fact about these mummies, or at any rate those from Upper Peru, was that all of them presented on the forehead or on the occiput a circle composed of small holes through the wall of the cranium, which had probably been used for evacuating the brain and for the introduction of preservative substances.

Yarrow (106) refers to the fact that the Indians of the North-West coast and the Aleutian Islands also embalm their dead. This, like the practice of tattooing (Buckland, 10), serves to map out the possible alternative northern route taken by the spread of culture from Asia to America (vide supra the account of Aino embalming; also Map II.).

In his account of the Araucanos of Southern Chile (Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst., Vol. 39, 1909, p. 364) Latcham describes how, when a person of importance dies of disease, these people believe that some one must have poisoned him. They “open the side of the deceased” and extract the gall-bladder, so as to obtain from the bile contained in it some clue as to the guilty person. “The corpse is then hung in a wicker frame and under it a fire is kept smouldering till such time as the perpetrator be found and punished.”

This confused jumble of practices suggestive of a blending of the influences of Egyptian embalming and Babylonian hepatoscopy is also obviously linked to the customs of Oceania and Indonesia.

Scattered in certain protected localities along the whole extent of the great “heliolithic” track the ancient Egyptian [also Chaldean and Indian] practice of burial in large urns or jars occurs. In America also it is found; but, according to Yarrow, it is restricted to certain people of New Mexico and California, although similar urns have been found in Nicaragua.

After the coming of the first great “heliolithic” wave, Asiatic civilization did not cease to influence America.

There are innumerable signs of the later effects of both Western and Eastern Asiatic developments. For instance, there is the coming of the practice of cremation. The fact that such burial customs are spread sporadically in the islands of the Pacific suggests that the custom may have been carried to America by the same route as the main stream of the “heliolithic” cult; but against this is the evidence that cremation was practised especially on the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains, and in Mexico rather than in Peru. It seems more probable that the main stream of the later wave of culture, of which cremation is the most distinctive practice, took the northern route skirting the eastern Asiatic littoral and then following the line of the Aleutian Islands.

In the account of the method of mummification adopted by the Virginian Indians (supra) it was seen that the whole skin was removed and afterwards fitted on to the skeleton again. Great care and skill had to be used to prevent the skin shrinking. Apparently the difficulties of this procedure led certain Indian tribes to give up the attempt to prevent the skin shrinking. Thus the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador, as well as certain tribes in the western Amazon area, make a practice of preserving the head only, and, after removing the skull, allowing the softer tissues to shrink to a size not much bigger than a cricket ball (44; 52, p. 252, and 61, p. 288).

According to Page (52), who has described one of the two Jivaro specimens now in the Manchester Museum, desiccation by heat was the method of preservation. He adds, “‘Momea’ and ‘Chancha’ are the names commonly given to such specimens by the natives.” Surely the former must be a Spanish importation!

A comparison of this variety in the methods of preserving the body in America with the series of similar practices which I have been following from the African shore, makes it abundantly plain that there can be no doubt as to the source of the American inspiration to do such extraordinary things. The remarkable burial ritual and all the associated procedures afford strong corroborative evidence.

But the proof of the influence of the civilizations of the Old World on pre-Columbian America does not depend upon the evidence of one set of practices, however complex, bizarre and distinctive they may be.

The positive demonstration that I have endeavoured to build up in this communication depends upon the fact that the whole of the complex structure of the “heliolithic” culture, which was slowly built up in Egypt during the course of the thirty centuries before 900 B.C., spread to the east, acquiring on its way accretions from the civilizations of the Mediterranean, Western Asia, Eastern Africa, India, Eastern Asia and Indonesia and Oceania, until it reached America. Like a potent ferment it gradually began to leaven the vast and widespread aboriginal culture of the Americas.

The rude megalithic architecture of America bears obvious evidences of the same inspiration which prompted that of the Old World; and so far as the more sumptuous edifices are concerned the primary stimulus of Egyptian ideas, profoundly modified by Babylonian, and to a less extent Indian and Eastern Asiatic, influences is indubitable. Comparison of the truncated pyramids of America, of the Pacific, Eastern Asia and Indonesia with those of ancient Chaldea, affords quite definite corroboration of these views. It would be idle to pretend that so complex a design and so strange a symbolism as the combination of the sun’s disc with the serpent and the greatly expanded wings of a hawk, carved upon the lintel of the door of a temple of the sun, could possibly have developed independently in Ancient Egypt and in Mexico (see especially Bancroft, 3, Vol. IV., p. 351).

But it is not merely the designs of the buildings and their association with the practice of mummification (and later, in Mexico, with cremation), but the nature of the cult of the temples and all the traditions associated with them that add further corroboration. Thus, for example, Wake (103, p. 383), describing the geographical distribution of serpent-worship (the intimate bond of which with sun-worship and in fact the whole “heliolithic” cult was forged in Egypt, as I have already explained), writes:—“Quetzalcoatl, the divine benefactor of the Mexicans, was an incarnation of the serpent-sun Tonacatlcoatl, who thus became the great father, as the female serpent Cihuacoatl was the great mother, of the human race.” “The solar character of the serpent-god appears to be placed beyond all doubt.... The kings and priests of ancient peoples claimed this divine origin, and ‘children of the sun’ was the title of the members of the sacred caste. When the actual ancestral character of the deity is hidden he is regarded as ‘the father of his people’ and their divine benefactor. He is the introducer of agriculture, the inventor of arts and sciences, and the civilizer of mankind.”

Writing of the Maya empire, Bancroft (3, Vol. V., p. 233) says:—“The Plumed Serpent, known in different tongues as Quetzalcoatl, Gucumatz, and Cukulcan, was the being who traditionally founded the new order of things.”

Even the most trivial features of the “heliolithic” culture-complex make their appearance in America. Thus, for example, Harrison tells us that:—

“The artificial enlargement of the lobe [of the ear] appears originally to have been adopted in India for the purpose of receiving a solar disc” (29, p. 193).

“The early Spanish historian mentioned that an elaborate religious ceremony took place in the temple of the Sun at Cuzco, on the occasion of boring the ears of the young Peruvian nobles” (p. 196).

“The practice of enlarging the ear lobes was connected with Sun-worship” (p. 198).

So also in the case of circumcision, tattooing, and almost every one of the curious customs I have enumerated in the foregoing account. Then, again, all the characteristic stories of the creation, the deluge, the petrifaction of human beings and of spirits dwelling in rocks, and of the origin of the chosen people from an incestuous union make their appearance in Mexico, Peru and elsewhere.

The peculiar Swastika symbol, associated with the “heliolithic” cult by pure chance in the place of its origin, which the people of Timor, in Indonesia, regard as the ancient emblem of fire, the Son of the Sun, also appears in America.

Even so bizarre a practice as the artificial deformation of the head (48, pp. 515 to 519), which seems to have originated in Armenia, became added to the repertoire of the fantastic collection of tricks of the “heliolithic” wanderers, and was adopted sporadically by numerous isolated groups of people along the great migration route. For some reason this strange idea “caught on” in America to a greater extent than elsewhere and spread far and wide throughout the greater part of the continent.

Many other curious customs might be cited as straws that indicate clearly which way the stream of culture has flowed. For instance Keane (42, p. 264) states that “like the Burmese the Nicobarese place a piece of money in the mouth of a corpse before burial to help it in the other world”; and Hutchinson (38, p. 448) supplies the link across the Pacific:—“Men, women and children [in ancient Peru] had frequently a bit of copper between the teeth, like the obolus which the pagan Romans used to place in the mouth to pay ferry to the boatman Charon for passage across the Styx.”

This reference to Charon reminds us also of the widespread custom, apparently originating in Egypt and spread far and wide, right out into the Pacific and America, of the association of a boat with the funerary ritual, to ferry the mummy to the west.

Certain distinctive aspects of phallism in America might also be mentioned as evidence of the influence of Old World practices.

In the appendix (part 1) to his “Conquest of Mexico,” Prescott (59) summarises fully and fairly the large and highly suggestive mass of evidence available at the time when he wrote in favour of the view that the pre-Columbian civilization of Mexico and Peru had been inspired from Asia. In view of the apparent conclusiveness of his statement of the evidence it becomes a matter of some interest and importance to enquire into the reasons which, in the face of the apparently overwhelming testimony of the facts he has summarised, restrained him from adopting the obvious conclusion to which his whole argument points.

Referring to the numerous islands of the Pacific as one means of access of population to America, Prescott quotes Cook’s voyages to illustrate how easily the Polynesians travelled from island to island hundreds of miles apart, and adds, “it would be strange if these wandering barks should not sometimes have been intercepted by the great continent, which stretches across the globe, in unbroken continuity, almost from pole to pole.

“Whence did the refinement of these more polished races [of America] come? Was it only a higher development of the same Indian character, which we see, in the more northern latitudes, defying every attempt at permanent civilization? Was it engrafted on a race of higher order in the scale originally, but self-instructed, working its way upward by its own powers? Was it, in short, an indigenous civilization? or was it borrowed, in some degree, from the nations of the Eastern world? If indigenous, how are we to explain the singular coincidence with the East in institutions and opinions? If Oriental, how shall we account for the great dissimilarity in language, and for the ignorance of some of the most simple and useful arts, which, once known, it would seem scarcely possible should have been forgotten? This is the riddle of the Sphinx, which no Œdipus has yet had the ingenuity to solve.”

In the light of the facts brought together in the present memoir, it requires no Œdipus to answer the riddle. For the only two objections which Prescott raises in opposition to the great mass of evidence he cites in favour of the derivation of American civilization from the Old World can easily be disposed of. Rivers has completely disposed of one by his demonstration of the fact that people—moreover those on the direct route across the Pacific to America—do actually “forget simple and useful arts” (65). The other objection is equally easily disposed of, when it is remembered that it requires only a few people of higher culture to leaven a large mass of lower culture with the elements of a higher civilization (see also on this point, Rivers, 68). Moreover, if language is made a test, the affinities of the various American tribes one with the other would have to be denied. Thus, the language difficulty cuts both ways. But when we have disposed of his objections, the whole of his admirable summary then becomes valid as an argument in favour of the derivation of American culture from Asia across the Pacific.

Since then it has become the fashion on the part of most ethnologists either contemptuously to put aside the probability or even the possibility of the derivation of American civilization from the Old World (characteristic examples of this attitude will be found in Fewkes’ address, 18, and Keane’s text-book, 41). On the other side the discussion has been seriously compromised from time to time by a wholly uncritical and often recklessly inexact use of the evidence in support of the reality of the contact, which has to some extent prejudiced the serious discussion of the problem. Perhaps the least objectionable of such unfortunate attempts are Macmillan Brown’s (7) and Enoch’s books (16). The former has been led astray by grotesque errors in chronology and the failure to realize that useful arts can be lost. Enoch, on the other hand, has collected a large series of interesting but incompatible statements, and has made no serious attempt to sift or assimilate them.

But from time to time serious students, proceeding with the caution befitting the discussion of so difficult a problem, have definitely expressed their adherence to the view that elements of culture did spread across, or around, the Pacific from Asia to America (8; 9; 10; 15; 20; 21; 29; 30; 38; 48; 49; 50; 51; 60; 73; 102; 103 and 105). Among modern demonstrations I would especially call attention to the evidence collected by Dall (73, p. 395), Cyrus Thomas (73, p. 396), Tylor (102) and Zelia Nuttall (49 and 50), and of the older literature the remarkable statement of Ellis (15, p. 117). [In Mrs. Nuttall’s monograph (49) there is a great deal, especially in the introductory part, to which serious objection must be taken: but in spite of the strong bias in favour of “psychological explanation” with which she started, eventually she was compelled to admit the force of the evidence for the spread of culture.]

For detailed statements concerning the discussions of this problem in the past the reader is referred to Bancroft’s excellent summary (3), which also supplies a wonderfully rich storehouse of facts and traditions wholly corroborative of the conclusions at which I have arrived in the present memoir.

I find it difficult to conceive how there could ever have been any doubt about the matter on the part of anyone who knows his “Bancroft.”

It will naturally be asked, if the case in proof of the actual diffusion of culture from Asia to America is so overwhelmingly convincing, on what grounds is assent refused? One school (of which the most characteristic utterance that I know of is Fewkes’ presidential address, 18) refuses to discuss the evidence: with pontifical solemnity it lays down the dogma of independent evolution as an infallible principle which it is almost sacrilege to question. I can best illustrate the methods of the other school of reactionaries by a sample of its dialectic.

No single incident in the discussion of the origin of American civilization has given rise to greater consternation in the ranks of the “orthodox” ethnologists than Tylor’s statement (102):—

“The conception of weighing in a spiritual balance in the judgment of the dead, which makes its earliest appearance in the Egyptian religion, was traced thence into a series of variants, serving to draw lines of intercourse through the Vedic and Zoroastrian religions, extending from Eastern Buddhism to Western Christendom. The associated doctrine of the Bridge of the Dead, which separates the good, who pass over, from the wicked, who fall into the abyss, appears first in ancient Persian religion, reaching in like manner to the extremities of Asia and Europe. By these mythical beliefs historical ties are practically constituted, connecting the great religions of the world, and serving as lines along which their interdependence is to be followed out. Evidence of the same kind was brought forward in support of the theory, not sufficiently recognised by writers on culture history, of the Asiatic influences under which the pre-Columbian culture of America took shape. In the religion of old Mexico four great scenes in the journey of the soul in the land of the dead are mentioned by early Spanish writers after the conquest, and are depicted in a group in the Aztec picture-writing known as the Vatican Codex. The four scenes are, first, the crossing of the river; second, the fearful passage of the soul between the two mountains which clash together; third, the soul’s climbing up the mountain set with sharp obsidian knives; fourth, the dangers of the wind carrying such knives on its blast. The Mexican pictures of these four scenes were compared with more or less closely corresponding pictures representing scenes from the Buddhist hells or purgatories as depicted on Japanese temple scrolls. Here, first, the river of death is shown, where the souls wade across; second, the souls have to pass between two huge iron mountains, which are pushed together by two demons; third, the guilty souls climb the mountain of knives, whose blades cut their hands and feet; fourth, fierce blasts of wind drive against their lacerated forms, the blades of knives flying through the air. It was argued that the appearance of analogues so close and complex of Buddhist ideas in Mexico constituted a correspondence of so high an order as to preclude any explanation except direct transmission from one religion to another. The writer, referring also to Humboldt’s argument from the calendars and mythic catastrophes in Mexico and Asia, and to the correspondence in Bronze Age work and in games in both regions, expressed the opinion that on these cumulative proofs anthropologists might well feel justified in treating the nations of America as having reached their level of culture under Asiatic influence.”

One might have imagined that such an instance, especially when backed with the authority[18] of our greatest anthropologist, who certainly has no bias in favour of the views I am promulgating, would have carried conviction to the mind of anyone willing to be convinced by precise evidence. But not to Mr. Keane! In endeavouring to whittle down the significance of this crucial case, he incidentally illustrates the lengths of unreason to which this school of ethnologists will push their argument, when driven to formulate a reductio ad absurdum without realizing the magnitude of the absurdity their blind devotion to a catch-word impels them to perpetrate.

In Keane’s “Ethnology” (41, pp. 217-219) the following passages are found:—

“It is further to be noticed that religious ideas, like social usages, are easily transmitted from tribe to tribe, from race to race. [Most of my critics base their opposition on a denial of these very assumptions!] Hence resemblances in this order, where they arise, must rank very low as ethnical tests. If not the product of a common cerebral structure, they can prove little beyond social contact in remote or later times. A case in point is [Tylor’s statement, which I have just quoted].

“The parallelism is complete; but the range of thought is extremely limited—nothing but mountains and knives, beside the river of death common to Egyptians, Greeks, and all peoples endowed with a little imagination.” “Hence Prof. E. B. Tylor, who calls attention to the points of resemblance, builds far too much on them when he adduces them as convincing evidence of pre-Columbian culture in America taking shape under Asiatic influences. In the same place he refers to Humboldt’s argument based on the similarity of calendars and of mythical catastrophes. But the ‘mythical catastrophes,’ floods and the like, have long been discounted, while the Mexican calendar, despite the authority of Humboldt’s name, presents no resemblance whatsoever to those of the ‘Tibetan and Tartar tribes,’ or to any other of the Asiatic calendars with which it has been compared. ‘There is absolutely no similarity between the Tibetan calendar and the primitive form of the American,’ which, ‘was not intended as a year-count, but as a ritual and formulary,’ and whose signs ‘had nothing to do with the signs of the zodiac, as had all those of the Tibetan and Tartar calendars’ (D. G. Brinton, ‘On various supposed Relations between the American and Asian races,’ from Memoirs of the International Congress of Anthropology, Chicago, p. 148). Regarding all such analogies as may exist ‘between the culture and customs of Mexico and those of China, Cambodia, Assyria, Chaldæa, and Asia Minor,’ Dr. Brinton asks pertinently, ‘Are we, therefore, to transport all these ancient peoples, or representatives of them, into Mexico?’ (ib. p, 147). So Lefevre, who regards as ‘quite chimerical’ the attempts made to trace such resemblances to the Old World. ‘If there are coincidences, they are fortuitous, or they result from evolution, which leads all the human group through the same stages and by the same steps’ (‘Race and Language,’ p. 185).

“Many far more inexplicable coincidencies than any of those here referred to occur in different regions, where not even contact can be suspected. Such is the strange custom of Couvade, which is found to prevail among peoples so widely separated as the Basques and Guiana Indians, who could never have either directly or indirectly in any way influenced each other” (34).

It is surely unnecessary to comment at length upon this quibbling, which is a fair sample of the kind of self-destructive criticism one meets in ethnological discussions nowadays. Talking of the “limitation of the range of thought” when out of the unlimited possibilities for its unhampered activities the human mind hit upon four episodes of such a fantastic nature, Keane taxes the credulity of his readers altogether too much when he solemnly tries to persuade them that such ideas are the most natural things in the world for mankind to imagine!

Surely it would have been better tactics frankly to admit the identity of origin, and then, following the example of Hough (35), minimize its importance by indicating the variety of possible ways by which Asiatic influence may have influenced America sporadically in comparatively recent times.

But instead of this, Keane insisted upon pushing his refusal to admit the most obvious inferences to the extreme limit and invoked the practice of Couvade as the coup de grâce to the views he was criticizing. But it was singularly unfortunate for his argument that he selected Couvade. His dogmatic assertion that the two peoples he selected are “so widely separated” that they could “never have either directly or indirectly in any way influenced one another” is entirely controverted by the fact that, although Couvade is, or was, a widespread custom, all the places where it occurred are either within the main route of the great “heliolithic culture-wave” or so near as easily to be within its sphere of influence. Thus it is recorded among the Basques,[19] in Africa, India, the Nicobar Islands, Borneo, China, Peru, Mexico, Central California, Brazil and Guiana. Instead of being a “knockout blow” to the view I am maintaining, the geographical distribution of this singularly ludicrous practice is a very welcome addition to the list of peculiar baggage which the “heliolithic” traveller carried with him in his wanderings, and a striking confirmation of the fact that in the spread from its centre of origin this custom must have travelled along the same route as the other practices we are examining.

After the artificialities of Keane and Fewkes, it is a satisfaction to turn back to the writings of the old ethnologists who lived in the days before the so-called “psychological” and “evolutionary explanations” were invented, and were content to accept the obvious interpretation of the known facts.

More than eighty years ago, Ellis (15, p. 117) with remarkable insight explained the relationships of the Polynesians and their wanderings, from Western Asia to America, with a lucidity and definiteness which must excite the enthusiastic admiration of those familiar with the fuller information now available. On p. 119 he cites an interesting series of racial factors, usages and beliefs in substantiation of the cultural link between the Pacific Islands and America.

Quite apart from the mere evidence provided by the arts, customs and beliefs in favour of the transmission of certain of the essential elements of American civilization from the Old World, there is a considerable amount of evidence of another kind, consisting no doubt to a large extent of mere scraps. For instance, there are not only the stories of Chinese and Japanese junks arriving on the American shore and of American traditions of the coming of pale-faced bearded men from the east,[20] but there is also a certain amount of evidence from the physical characters of the population themselves. It has been raised as an objection by many people that if there had been any considerable emigration of Polynesians into America they would have left a much more definite trace of their coming in the physical characters of the people of America than is supposed the case. But this argument does not necessarily carry very much weight, for the number of such Polynesians who reached America would have been a mere drop in the ocean of the vast aboriginal population of the Americas. Moreover, there is a certain amount of evidence of the presence of people with Polynesian traits in certain parts of the Pacific littoral. Von Humboldt stated the people of Mexico and Peru had much larger beards and moustaches than the rest of the Indians. But there is a more striking instance in substantiation of the reality of this mixture of Pacific people in America which raises the possibility that a certain number of Melanesians, whose physical characters, being more obtrusive by contrast than those of the Polynesians, were more easily detected. In Allen’s memoir (2, p. 47) the following statements are found:—

“Sir Arthur Helps tells us in his ‘History of Spanish Conquest in America’ that the Spaniards, when they first visited Darien under Vasco Nunez, found there a race of black men, whom they (gratuitously as it seems to me) supposed to be descended from a cargo of shipwrecked negroes; this race was living distinct from the other races and at enmity with them,”

and on page 48,

“Perhaps other black tribes may be discovered upon a more careful enquiry, and if the theory of Crawford be accepted, which represents the inhabitants of Polynesia in Ante-historic times as being a great semi-civilized nation who had made some progress in agriculture and understood the use of gold and iron, were clothed ‘with a fabric made of the fibrous bark of plants which they wove in the loom,’ and had several domesticated animals, a new and unexpected light may possibly be thrown upon the origin of primitive American culture. It is certain that massive ruins and remains of pyramidal structures and terraced buildings closely analogous to those of India, Java and Cambodia, as well as to those of Central America, Mexico and Peru, exist in many islands of Polynesia, such as the Ladrone Islands, Tahiti, Fiji, Easter Island and the Sandwich Islands, and the customs of the Polynesians are almost all of them found to exist also amongst the American races.”

“Perhaps here, then, we have the ‘missing link’ between the Old World civilizations and the mysterious civilizations of America.”