Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10- 19 



sideration of elements of culture which are not so easily 

 bartered or borrowed as bows and spears. He has in- 

 sisted upon the fundamental importance of the study of 

 social organisation as supplying the most stable and trust- 

 worthy data for the analysis of a culture-complex and an 

 index of racial admixture. The study of such a practice 

 as mummification, the influence of which is deep-rooted in 

 the innermost beliefs of the people who resort to it, affords 

 data almost as reliable as Rivers' method ; for the subse- 

 quent account will make it abundantly clear that the 

 practice of embalming leaves its impress upon the burial 

 customs of a people long ages after other methods of 

 disposal of their dead have been adopted. 



I have been led into this digression by attempting to 

 make it clear that the mere demonstration of the identity 

 of geographical distribution and the linking together of a 

 series of cultural elements by no means represents the 

 solution of the main problem. 



What has still to be elucidated is the manner and the 

 place in which the complex fabric of the " heliolithic " 

 culture was woven, the precise epoch in which it began to 

 be spread abroad and the identity of its carriers, the in- 

 fluences to which it was subjected on the way, and the 

 additions, subtractions and modifications which it under- 

 went as the result. 



Although 1 have now collected many of the data for 

 the elucidation of these points, the limited space at my 

 disposal compels me to defer for the present the con- 

 sideration of the most interesting aspect of the whole 

 problem, the identity of the early mariners who were the 

 distributors of so strange a cargo. It was this aspect of 

 the question which first led me into the controversy ; but 

 I shall be able to deal with it more conveniently when 

 the ethnological case has been stated. The enormous 



