proceedings: anthropological society 339 



At the 473d regular meeting of the Society, held March 17, at the 

 National Museum, Dr. J. Walter Fewkes delivered an address, illus- 

 trated with lantern slides, on his Egyptian experiences. He considered 

 especially the significance of certain parallelisms in cultural objects of 

 the Stone Age of Egj^pt and the Gila Valley, Arizona. These resem- 

 blances he ascribed in part to the influence of an artificial system of 

 irrigation in the evolution of an agricultural stage in development. 



Dr. Fewkes began with an accomit of the unique shape and cultural 

 isolation of the Nile Valley in Neolithic times and showed how man was 

 isolated by deserts which protected him from outside marauders. His 

 social advancement at the dawn of history, mainly due to the influx of 

 foreign ideas from the East, can be traced to the cooperation between 

 clusters of villages or nomes, this union having been effected in order to 

 irrigate more effectually the narrow valley of the Nile. The cooperation 

 of the rulers of Neolithic Egypt led to a ruler over all, a Great House, or 

 Pharaoh, who later became King of Upper and Lower Egypt. To this 

 cooperation in constructing irrigation ditches may be traced a system of 

 enforced labor or corvee in which the Pharaoh not only acquired all 

 cultivated land, and the water which alone made agriculture possible, 

 but also controlled all labor of the inhabitants. To these rights acquired 

 from the rulers of the nomes in very early times may be traced the 

 powers exercised in constructing the magnificent monuments that 

 are the world's wonders. 



In Neolithic Egypt, there was a succession of villages strung along the 

 river, each independent of the other, like a cluster of pueblos in Arizona. 

 The remains of architectural constructions at this early epoch still remain 

 and are sometimes, as at El Kab, well preserved. They are rectangular, 

 massive, walled forts with an encircling wall of clay not unlike the com- 

 pounds at Casa Grande and the Great Houses elsewhere on the Gila. 

 Within these enclosures in Egypt and Arizona were mud or clay built 

 temples, public buildings, and houses of priests, while around them were 

 clusters of rude hovels in which lived the people like the present 

 Egv'ptians. 



The dead were buried in neighboring mounds, placed with the knees 

 drawn to the chin and surrounded by mortuary offerings. These graves 

 were rude excavations with floor of straw and roof of mud and boughs. 

 ]\Iany resemblances between archaeological objects from the Stone Age 

 in Egypt and the Gila Valley were pointed out. Among these are wea- 

 pons, stone implements, pottery and its symbolic decorations, flat basket 

 trays, bone and other specimens. 



Certain common conditions of environment and the necessity for 

 artificial irrigation had led the Stone Age people of different races without 

 connections, to develop a parallel culture. 



At a special meeting of the Society held March 24 at the National 

 Museum, Dr. Albert Hale, of the Pan-American Union, addressed 

 the Society on Modern Argentina, illustrating his remarks with lantern 

 slides. 



