THE BUILDERS 



suggested. Some see in it a natural posture of 

 repose, some an attempt to crowd the body into 

 as small a space as possible. Some have suggested 

 that the corpse was tightly bound up with cords 

 in order that the spirit might not escape and do 

 harm to the living. Perhaps the most widely 

 approved theory is that which considers this 

 position to be embryonic, i.e. the position of the 

 embryo previous to birth. None of these explana- 

 tions is entirely convincing, but no better one has 

 been put forward up to the present. 



This custom, it must be noted, was not limited 

 to the megalithic peoples. It was the invariable 

 practice of the pre-dynastic Egyptians and has 

 been found further east in Persia. It occurs in the 

 neolithic period in Crete and the iEgean, in Italy, 

 Switzerland, Germany, and other parts of Europe, 

 and it is one of the facts which go to show that the 

 builders of the megaliths were ethnologically con- 

 nected, however remotely, with their predecessors 

 in Europe. 



At Halsaflieni, in Malta, we have perhaps ex- 

 amples of the curious custom of secondary inter- 

 ment ; the body is buried temporarily in some 

 suitable place, and after the flesh has left the bones 

 the latter are collected and thrown together into 

 a common ossuary. That the bones at Halsaflieni 

 were placed there when free from flesh is probable 

 from the closeness with which they were packed 

 together (see p. in ). There are also possible ex- 



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