E— GEOGRAPHY 



119 



modern in origin. The present writer tliinks that these objections are not 

 very relevant. Our own alphabet is said to originate from not very similar 

 signs used by miners in Sinai, though all the links are not yet clear. 

 The question surely is to determine the origins of the remarkable Easter 

 script — and to my mind, the Mohenjo theory is plausible and indeed 

 probable. Moreover it offers a good illustration of clues which may be 

 furnished by an ecological approach. 



Let us consider some of the major culture changes in the Indus region. 

 Gordon Childe (1934) gives data as to the races which have been discovered 

 at Mohenjo. Australoids, Mediterranean, Armenoids and Mongoloids 

 were all present. There can be little doubt that the first settlers (before 

 3000 B.C.) were the aboriginal ' Australoids ' who spoke a Munda language. 

 Many members of this zone of peoples are now found ' pushed to the 

 margin ' in the East Indies and in Australia. It is represented by 



EASTER IS. 



M«ffi «ll 



it i^fwo 



aooo f^- 



V e.RS.TER\k 



c 







N 



t 



IAIN CRADLE OF CULTURE 



Fig. II. — The spread of cultures from India eastward ; showing the Munda, 

 Australoid culture at the bottom, covered by Dravidian, Polynesian, Aryan- 

 Buddhist and Moslem ' strata.' In the Inset are compared some signs from 

 the Mohenjo and Easter Island scripts. All much generalised. 



Stratum i in Fig. 11. The general belief is that the Mohenjo culture 

 was due to the later ' Mediterranean ' races who spoke Dravidian lan- 

 guages. This constitutes Stratum 2, and in the writer's opinion is to be 

 linked with Dixon's ' Caspian Race ' in the Polynesian area (Dixon 1923). 

 We have little knowledge of the period from 2500 B.C. to 1500 B.C. in 

 India, when the great Aryan migrations overwhelmed North India. But 

 it is significant that the earliest stone monuments in India, which are 

 found at Rajagrha (Rajgir) near Patna,^ are of a cyclopean character quite 

 unlike the work of the later Aryan builders, and rather resemble the 

 mysterious early stone monuments of the Pacific (Fergusson and Burgess 

 1880). I have suggested that this culture-complex spread out as Stratum 3. 

 The Aryan-Sanskrit complex (Stratum 4) never reached Polynesia, but 

 was carried to Java and dominated that region for several centuries after 

 200 B.C. In North India Buddhism (Stratum 5) flourished after 500 B.C. 



' The Jarasandha monument (of unknown date) is a square truncated pyramid 

 85 ft. wide and 28 ft. high. It is built of large uncemented blocks of stone 5 or 

 6 ft. across. It resembles the truncated pyramids and Marae of Polynesia. 



