io ELLIOT Smith, Distribution of Mummification. 



tattooed on the skin was the sun, we further strengthen 

 the woof of the closely woven fabric that is gradually 

 taking shape. 



To these forty-year-old demonstrations let me add 

 Wilson's interesting recent monograph on the swastika 

 (105), which independently tells the same story and 

 blazens the same great track around the world (see his 

 map). He further calls attention to the close geographical 

 association between the distribution of the swastika and 

 the spindle-whorl. By attributing the introduction of 

 weaving and the swastika into most localities where they 

 occur by the same culture-heroes he thereby adds the 

 swastika to the " heliolithic " outfit, for weaving already 

 belongs to it. 



To these practices one might add a large series of 

 others of a character no less remarkable, such, for example, 

 as circumcision, the practice of massage (57, 67 and II), 

 the curious custom known as couvade, all of which are 

 distributed along the great " heliolithic " pathway and 

 belong to the great culture-complex which travelled 

 by it. 



But there are several interesting bits of corroborative 

 evidence that I cannot refrain from mentioning. 



One of the most carefully-investigated bonds of 

 cultural connection between the Eastern Mediterranean 

 in Phoenician times and pre-Columbian America (Tehuan- 

 tepec) has recently been put on record by Zelia Nuttall in 

 her memoir on "a curious survival in Mexico of the use 

 of the Purpura shell-fish for dyeing " (50). After a very 

 thorough and critical analysis of all the facts of this truly 

 remarkable case of transmission of an extraordinary cus- 

 tom, Mrs. Nuttall justly concludes that " it seems almost 

 easier to believe that certain elements of an ancient 

 European culture were at one time, and perhaps once only, 



