PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER. The Migrations of Early Culture. Published by the University of Manchester at THE UNIVERSITY PRESS (H. M. MCKECHNIE, Secretary) 12, LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. LONDON: 39, Paternoster Row NEW YORK: 443-449, Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street BOMBAY: 8, Hornby Road CALCUTTA: 303, Bowbazar Street MADRAS: 167, Mount Road The Migrations of Early Culture A study of the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of the Practice of Mummification as Evidence of the Migrations of Peoples and the Spread of certain Customs and Beliefs BY GRAFTON ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., _Professor of Anatomy in the University_ MANCHESTER AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 12, LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. London, New York, Bombay, etc. 1915 UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER PUBLICATIONS No. CII. PREFACE. When these pages were crudely flung together no fate was contemplated for them other than that of publication in the proceedings of a scientific society, as an appeal to ethnologists to recognise the error of their ways and repent. They were intended merely as a mass of evidence to force scientific men to recognise and admit that in former ages knowledge and culture spread in much the same way as they are known to be diffused to-day. The only difference is that the pace of migration has become accelerated. The re-publication in book form was suggested by the Secretary of the Manchester University Press, who thought that the matters discussed in these pages would appeal to a much wider circle of readers than those who are given to reading scientific journals. The argument is compounded largely of extracts from the writings of recognised authorities, and the author does not agree with all the statements in the various extracts he has quoted: this mode of presenting the case has been adopted deliberately, with the object of demonstrating that the generally admitted facts are capable of a more natural and convincing explanation than that put forth _ex cathedra_ by the majority of modern anthropologists, one in fact more in accord with all that our own experience and the facts of history teach us of the effects of the contact of peoples and the spread of knowledge.