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 — John Shaqi
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
If space permitted I should have liked to make extensive quotations from
Park Harrison’s most conclusive independent demonstration of the spread
of culture along the same great route, at which he arrived from the study
of the geographical distribution of the peculiar custom of artificially
distending the lobe of the ear (=29=). This practice was not infrequent
in Egypt (=79=) in the times of the new Empire, a fact which Harrison
seems to have overlooked: but he records it amongst the Greeks, Hebrews,
Etruscans, Persians, in Bœotia, Zanzibar, Natal, Southern India, Ceylon,
Assam, Aracan, Burma, Laos, Nicobar Islands, Nias, Borneo, China, Solomon
Islands, Admiralty Islands, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Pelew Islands,
Navigators Island, Fiji, Friendly Islands, Penrhyn, Society Islands,
Easter Island, Peru, Palenque, Mexico, Brazil and Paraguay. This is an
excellent and remarkably complete [if he had used the data now available
it might have been made even more complete] mapping out of the great
“heliolithic” track.
The identity of geographical distribution is no mere fortuitous
coincidence.
It is of peculiar interest that Harrison is able to demonstrate a linked
association between this custom and sun-worship in most of the localities
enumerated. In the figures illustrating his memoir other obvious
associations can be detected intimately binding it by manifold threads
into the very texture of the “heliolithic culture.” If to this we add the
fact that in many localities the design tattooed on the skin was the
sun, we further strengthen the woof of the closely woven fabric that is
gradually taking shape.
To these forty-year-old demonstrations let me add Wilson’s interesting
recent monograph on the swastika (=105=), which independently tells the
same story and blazens the same great track around the world (see his
map). He further calls attention to the close geographical association
between the distribution of the swastika and the spindle-whorl. By
attributing the introduction of weaving and the swastika into most
localities where they occur by the same culture-heroes he thereby adds
the swastika to the “heliolithic” outfit, for weaving already belongs to
it.
To these practices one might add a large series of others of a character
no less remarkable, such, for example, as circumcision, the practice of
massage (=57=, =67= and =11=), the curious custom known as _couvade_, all
of which are distributed along the great “heliolithic” pathway and belong
to the great culture-complex which travelled by it.
But there are several interesting bits of corroborative evidence that I
cannot refrain from mentioning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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