at one and the same time and also introduced a knowledge of agriculture and weaving. So far as I am aware no one hitherto has called attention to the fact that the practice of mummification has a geographical distribution exactly corresponding to the area occupied by the curious assortment of other practices just enumerated. Not only so, but in addition it is abundantly clear that the coincidence is not merely accidental. It is due to the fact that in most regions the people who introduced the habit of megalithic building and sun-worship (a combination for which it is convenient to use Professor Brockwell’s distinctive term “heliolithic culture”) also brought with them the practice of mummification at the same time. The custom of embalming the dead is in fact an integral part of the “heliolithic culture,” and perhaps, as I shall endeavour to demonstrate, its most important component. For this practice and the beliefs which grew up in association with it were responsible for the development of some of the chief elements of this culture-complex, and incidentally of the bond of union with other factors not so intimately connected, in the genetic sense, with it. Before plunging into the discussion of the evidence provided by the practice of mummification, it will be useful to consider for a moment the geographical distribution of the other components of the “heliolithic culture.” I need not say much about megalithic monuments, for I have already considered their significance elsewhere (=90= to =96=); but I should like once more specifically to call the attention of those who are obsessed by theories of the independent evolution of such monuments, and who scoff at Fergusson (=17=), to the memoirs of Lane Fox (=20=) and Meadows Taylor (=100=). The latter emphasises in a striking manner the remarkable identity of structure, not only as concerns the variety and the general conception of such monuments, but also as regards trivial and apparently unessential details. With reference to “the opinion of many,” which has “been advanced as an hypothesis, that the common instincts of humanity have suggested common methods of sepulture,” he justly remarks, “I own this kind of vague generalisation does not satisfy me, in the face of such exact points of similitude.... Such can hardly have been the result of accident, or any common human instinct” (p. 173).