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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1128 



stirred by the new ideas; and civilizations 

 bearing the distinctive marks of the cul- 

 ture-complex which I have traced from 

 Egypt sprang up in Cochin-China, China, 

 Corea, Japan and eventually in all the is- 

 lands of the Pacific and the western coast 

 of America. The proof of the reality of 

 this great migration of culture is provided 

 not merely by the identical geographical 

 distribution of a very extensive series of 

 curiously distinctive, and often utterly 

 bizarre, customs and beliefs, the precise 

 dates and circumstances of the origin of 

 which are known in their parent countries ; 

 but the fact that these strange ingredients 

 are compounded in a definite and highly 

 complex manner to form an artificial cul- 

 tural structure, which no theory of inde- 

 pendent evolution can possibly explain, be- 

 cause chance played so large a part in 

 building it up in its original home. 



For instance, it is quite conceivable 

 (though I believe utterly opposed to the 

 evidence at our disposal) that different 

 people might, independently the one of the 

 other, have invented the practises of mum- 

 mification, building megalithic monuments, 

 circumcision, tattooing and terraced irriga- 

 tion ; evolved the stories of the petrification 

 of human beings, the strange adventures of 

 the dead in the underworld, and the divine 

 origin of kings; and adopted sun-worship. 



But why should the people of America 

 and Egypt who built megalithic monu- 

 ments build them in accordance with very 

 definite plans compounded of Egyptian, 

 Babylonian, Indian and East Asiatic mod- 

 els ? And why should the same people who 

 did so also have their wives ' chins tattooed, 

 their sons circumcised, their dead mummi- 

 fied ? Or why should it be the same people 

 who worshiped the sun and adopted the 

 curiously artificial winged-sun-and-serpent 

 symbolism, who practised terraced irriga- 

 tion in precisely the same way, who made 



idols and held similar beliefs regarding 

 them, who had identical stories of the wan- 

 derings of the dead in the underworld ? 



If any theory of evolution of customs 

 and beliefs is adequate to explain the inde- 

 pendent origin of each item in the extensive 

 repertoire, either of the New Empire Egyp- 

 tian or the Pre-Columbian American civili- 

 zation (which I deny), it is utterly incon- 

 ceivable that the fortuitous combination of 

 hundreds of utterly incongruous and fan- 

 tastic elements could possibly have hap- 

 pened twice. It is idle to deny the com- 

 pleteness of the demonstration which the 

 existence of such a civilization in America 

 supplies of the fact that it was derived 

 from the late New Empire Egyptian civili- 

 zation, modified by Ethiopian, Mediter- 

 ranean, West Asiatic, Indian, Indonesian, 

 East Asiatic and Polynesian influences. 



The complete overthrow of all the objec- 

 tions of a general nature to the recognition 

 of the facts has already been explained. 

 There is nothing to hinder one, there- 

 fore, from accepting the obvious significance 

 of the evidence. 



Moreover, every link in this chain of con- 

 nections is admitted by investigators of 

 localized areas along the great migration 

 route, even by those who most strenuously 

 deny the more extensive migrations of cul- 

 ture. 



The connections of the New Empire 

 Egypt with the Soudan and with Syria and 

 its relations with Babylonia ; the intercourse 

 between the latter and India in the eighth 

 and seventh centuries b.c. ; the migrations 

 of culture from India to Indonesia and to 

 the farthest limits of Polynesia — all these 

 are well authenticated and generally ad- 

 mitted. 



All that I claim, then, is that the influence 

 of Egypt was handed on from place to 

 place; that the links which all ethnologists 

 recognize as genuine bonds of union can 



