72 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribu'ion of Mummification, 



ments ! The idea of any savage people, and especially 

 Negroes, planning such structures and undertaking the 

 enormous labour of their construction is surely too 

 ludicrous to be considered seriously. Even if these monu- 

 ments were built no earlier than five or six centuries ago, 

 that does not invalidate the hypothesis that they were 

 inspired by the models of some old civilization. Is it 

 necessary to expound the whole theory of survivals to 

 make this point clear ? The whole of this memoir is 

 concerned with the persistence in outlying corners of the 

 world of strange practices whose inventors passed away 

 twenty-eight centuries and more ago, and whose country 

 has forgotten them and their works for more than a 

 thousand years. [My friend, W. J. Perry, is collecting 

 other evidence which proves quite definitely that the 

 Zimbabwe culture was " heliolithic."] 



In Moll's History (46) the following passage occurs 

 in an account of the customs of Ceylon, p. 430, " when a 

 person of condition dies his corps is laid out and wash'd, 

 and being cover'd with a linnen-cloath, is carried out 

 upon a bier to some high place and burnt : but if he was 

 an officer who belong'd to the court, the corps is not 

 burnt till the king gives orders for it, which is sometimes 

 a great while after. In this case his friends hollow the 

 body of a tree, and having bowell'd and embalm'd the 

 corps, they put it in, filling the hollow up with pepper, 

 and having made it as close as possible, they bury the 

 corpse in some room of the house till the king orders it 

 to be burnt." 



"As for the poorer people, they usually wrap them 

 up in mats and bury them/' 



This traveller's tale would not call for serious attention 

 if it were not confirmed by modern accounts of an 

 analogous practice in Burma and the neighbourhood. 





