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 beliefsSmith, Grafton Elliot
History
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
Smith, Grafton Elliot
Ethnology; Human beings -- Migrations; Mummies
Moreover the evidence which I have culled from Oldham bears out
the conclusions my own investigations lead up to, namely, that the
“heliolithic” culture spread from India to Malaysia soon after it reached
India itself. It is surely something more than a mere coincidence that
the period of the greatest maritime exploits of the Phœnicians, in the
course of which, according to many authorities, they reached India or
even further east, should coincide with that of the great pre-Aryan
maritime race of India, whose great expeditions, as the above quotations
indicate, were primarily for purposes of commerce between the Persian
Gulf and the West Coast of India. There is gradually accumulating a
considerable mass of evidence to suggest that, if the Asuras were not
themselves Phœnicians, they acquired their maritime skill from these
famous sailors and traders. The same hardy mariners who brought the new
knowledge and practices from the Persian Gulf to India and Ceylon also
carried it further, to Burma and Indonesia.
That this is so is clearly shown by the fact that these customs spread to
Indonesia and the Pacific _before_ cremation was introduced; and it has
been indicated above that the introduction of the practice of cremation
into India may have taken place within a century of the arrival of the
“heliolithic” civilization there. Hence it is obvious that the latter
must have spread to the far east soon after it reached India; and the
completeness of the transmission of the distinctive culture-complex can
be explained only by supposing that the same people who brought it to
India also carried it further east.
All the other evidence at our disposal is in full harmony with this view.
The advancing wave of western culture swept past India into Indonesia,
carrying into the isles of the Pacific and on to the American littoral
the products of the older civilizations at first almost, but not
altogether, untainted by Indian influence; but for centuries afterwards,
as this same ferment gradually leavened the vast bulk of India, the
stream of western culture continued to percolate eastwards and carried
with it in succession the influence of the Brahmanical, Buddhist and,
within in a more restricted area, Mahometan cults.
It is an interesting confirmation of the general accuracy of the scheme
that has now been sketched out that the dates at which the influence
of Egypt began to be exerted in the east, that to which Rhys Davids
assigns the definite influencing of India by Babylonia, that at which
India influenced Malaysia, and finally that assigned by students of
the Polynesian problem to the inauguration of the great Indonesian
migration into the Pacific (=60= and =98=), all fit into one consecutive
series, though each was determined from different kinds of evidence and
independently of the rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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