RITUAL BULLFIGHT—BISHOP 455 
The facts above enumerated would seem to make it clear that the 
custom of the ritual bullfight, in one or other of its two forms, 
spread, mainly in prehistoric times, throughout those portions of 
the Old World, both continental and oceanic, which are characterized 
by the cultivation of cereals with the aid of the plow, as opposed 
to the more primitive culture which employed the hoe alone. As has 
been pointed out, the custom possesses certain definite and somewhat 
complex features which distinguish it from superficially similar prac- 
tices elsewhere. Beyond doubt it is a form of the ancient and wide- 
spread custom of slaying periodically an incarnation of the group 
god for the good of his people, modified to suit the ideas and the 
needs of an archaic type of farming society. Furthermore, it affords 
a clear-cut and concrete example of the way in which culture elements 
were wont to travel, in the dim and unrecorded past, from end to 
end of the Eurasiatic continent, and even to the isles of the sea. 
Specifically, it provides us with one proof more, among the very 
many which have already been accumulated, that the early civiliza- 
tion of China did not rise independently, but that it is indissolubly 
linked to those of the older peoples at the opposite end of Asia.?* 
Viewed in this light, the practice seems not without significance in 
the working out of the problems of ethnic and cultural diffusion 
over the enormous area through which it is found to occur. 
2 Regarding this, see an extremely valuable paper by Dr. Berthold Laufer, ‘“ Some 
fundamental ideas of Chinese culture,” in The Journal of Race Development, Vol. V, 
1914-15, pp. 160-174. 
