REVIEWS 703 



Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture. Ethnological 

 Series, No. 2. By J. Wilfred Jackson, F.G.S. [Pp. xxviii 4- 208.] 

 (Manchester: The University Press; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 

 1917. Price 6s. net.) 



Without doubt, the more we can discover of the mainsprings of the "behaviour" 

 of pre-historic peoples, the more readily shall we be able to estimate the factors 

 which have moulded the evolution of civilisation. For we are swayed, more than 

 we imagine, by the customs and beliefs of our forbears. 



A great stumbling-block to progress in this matter has been thrown in our way 

 by those who have seen, in widespread customs and beliefs, evidences of the 

 "similarity of the working of the human mind." The all too ready acceptance of 

 this quite unwarranted assumption has seriously distorted our mental vision, 

 thereby giving us a false standard of the factors of social evolution. Our customs, 

 beliefs, and organisations, like our bodies, have come down to us by genetic 

 descent : they have not come into being by " spontaneous generation," nor as the 

 sporadic outbursts of " intuition." This much Prof. Elliot Smith has been striving 

 to bring home to us for some years past ; and he has produced some extremely 

 convincing evidence in favour of his contentions by his studies on mummification, 

 and the heliolithic culture. It is idle to contend that the practice of mummifi- 

 cation in Torres Straits, and America, was in each case independently devised, 

 and not derived from Egypt. Prof. Elliot Smith has surely established his case in 

 this matter : and now further, and no less striking, testimony of the soundness of 

 his views has been furnished by one of his pupils — Mr. Wilfred Jackson — in regard 

 to the important part the search for shells has played, in the diffusion of the 

 elements of culture, and in the upbuilding of civilisation. 



The cult of the cowry must apparently be reckoned the oldest of these factors 

 in the evolution of civilisation, for cowry shells have been found interred with 

 Cro-Magnon man. Possibly to him, and certainly to very primitive peoples, we 

 must attribute the belief that the cowry-shell, in some way, imparted fertility to 

 women and help in parturition : a belief suggested, as we learn from ancient 

 writers who held it, by the likeness of the under-surface of the shell to the human 

 vulva. So profound was the belief in its life-giving powers that the dead were 

 interred with cowries to ensure their resurrection ; while as a charm against the 

 Evil Eye this shell was unfailing. Hence it came to be associated with good luck, 

 and used in games of chance. These shells came, indeed, to be regarded as 

 pearls of great price, to be parted with only in exchange for some coveted 

 possession ; and hence the place they came to hold among primitive peoples as 

 currency. 



Prof. Elliot Smith, in a preface to this book, suggests that the earliest con- 

 ceptions of a deity arose out of these beliefs connected with the cowry ; and that 

 the Red Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean constitute the original home of the 

 now world-wide cult of shells. The point of his argument is not that shells are 

 universally esteemed by primitive peoples, but that everywhere, both in the Old 

 and New World, the same forms of shells are associated with the same usages and 

 beliefs eastward from Crete, their supposed birth-place, to China, and from China 

 to Peru ; and westward to our own islands. It is hardly credible that such 

 associations of ideas should have developed spontaneously over areas so enormous. 



What is true of the cowry-shell is true also of the purple-dye industry and the 

 use of conch-shells for ceremonial purposes. Mr. Jackson, in the main body of 

 this book, has brought together a mass of evidence to show that wherever these 



