552 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
further from the stone age, but to have attained a remarkable skill 
in working hard stones, ivory, and wood, not to speak of flint imple- 
ments, of which they have left us magnificent specimens. This 
culture lasted late in historical times, and may have ceased at very 
different epochs in the various places where it existed. 
I call this culture African. One of the distinct African features 
is the mode of burial which I mentioned before, the so-called em- 
bryonic posture. Herodotus, speaking of the African nation called 
the Nasamonians, says that “they bury their dead sitting, and are 
right careful, when the sick man is at the point of giving up the ghost, 
to make him sit and not let him die lying down.” 
Now, when Herodotus speaks of a man sitting, we must not fancy 
him resting on a chair. Seats do not belong to the furniture of a 
desert dwelling. He sits on his heels, and, in that posture, his chest 
leans against the knees, and his hands are at the height of his mouth. 
Hundreds of old Egyptian statues represent men in that position. 
Supposing that a man has died sitting and has fallen on his side; 
he has exactly the so-called embryonic position, which finds its expla- 
nation in that African custom. If afterwards vases with food and 
drink and some of his tools are put around him in his grave, his 
tomb will be the abridged image of the hut in which he sat in his 
lifetime; it will be his “ eternal house,” as the Memphite Egyptians 
called the tomb. 
As for secondary burials, I believe the explanation is to be found 
in a custom still prevailing among some South American Indians, 
and of which, I am told, some examples have been found in old 
burials in Switzerland. Ifa man dies at a great distance from the 
cemetery which is to be his grave, he is interred provisionally ; some- 
time afterwards his bones are gathered and carried in a skin bag 
to the place where he is to be finally buried. This would explain the 
disorder which is sometimes noticeable in the bones of a tomb, and the 
fact that the bones of several skeletons have been mixed together. 
These skeletons have been brought from another place, after the 
flesh has been destroyed, and carelessly put into their grave. 
These tombs give us interesting information as to the mode of life 
of the primitive Egyptian. We gather it chiefly from yellow vases, 
hand-made, and decorated with subjects in red painting. These 
drawings, being very rude, have received different interpretations. 
It seems to me evident that what they usually show us are not boats, 
but representations of dwellings. These dwellings were huts, placed 
on mounds, and probably made of wickerwork. They were surround- 
ed by inclosures made of poles, something lke what is called now a 
“ zeriba,” sheltering the inhabitants against wild beasts. ‘There are 
*T am indebted for that information to the kindness of my countryman, Mr. 
A. de Molin. 
