Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10- 21 



that no hypothesis of independent evolution can seriously 

 be entertained in explanation of their geographical dis- 

 tribution. They must be regarded as evidence of the 

 diffusion of information, and the migrations of bearers of 

 it, from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Eastern 

 Mediterranean, step by step out into Polynesia, and even 

 perhaps beyond the Pacific to the American littoral/' 



At that time it was my intention further to develop 

 the arguments from megalithic monuments which I had 

 laid before the Association at the three preceding meet 

 ings and elsewhere (90; 91 ; 92; 93; and especially 94) ; 

 and endeavour to prove that the structure and the geo- 

 graphical distribution of these curious memorials pointed 

 to the spread of a distinctive type of culture along the 

 Southern Asiatic littoral, through Indonesia and Oceania 

 to the American Continent. The geographical distri- 

 bution of the practice of mummification was to have been 

 used merely as a means of corroboration of what I then 

 imagined to be the more complete megalithic record, and 

 of emphasizing the fact that Egypt had played some part 

 at least in originating these curiously linked customs. 



But when I examined the mummy from Torres 

 Straits in the Macleay Museum (University of Sydney), 

 and studied the literature relating to the methods em- 

 ployed by the embalmers in that region (1 ; 19 ; 25 ; and 

 27), I was convinced, from my knowledge of the technical 

 details used in mummification in ancient Egypt (see 

 especially 78; 86 and 87), that these Papuan mummies 

 supplied us with the most positive demonstration of the 

 Egyptian origin of the methods employed. Moreover, 

 as they revealed a series of very curious procedures, such 

 as were not invented in Egypt until the time of the New 

 Empire, and some of them not until the XXIst Dynasty, 

 it was evident that the cultural wave which carried the 



