“Perhaps other black tribes may be discovered upon a more careful enquiry, and if the theory of Crawford be accepted, which represents the inhabitants of Polynesia in Ante-historic times as being a great semi-civilized nation who had made some progress in agriculture and understood the use of gold and iron, were clothed ‘with a fabric made of the fibrous bark of plants which they wove in the loom,’ and had several domesticated animals, a new and unexpected light may possibly be thrown upon the origin of primitive American culture. It is certain that massive ruins and remains of pyramidal structures and terraced buildings closely analogous to those of India, Java and Cambodia, as well as to those of Central America, Mexico and Peru, exist in many islands of Polynesia, such as the Ladrone Islands, Tahiti, Fiji, Easter Island and the Sandwich Islands, and the customs of the Polynesians are almost all of them found to exist also amongst the American races.” “Perhaps here, then, we have the ‘missing link’ between the Old World civilizations and the mysterious civilizations of America.” SUMMARY. Between 4000 B.C. and 900 B.C. a highly complex culture compounded of a remarkable series of peculiar elements, which were associated the one with the other in Egypt largely by chance, became intimately interwoven to form the curious texture of a cult which Brockwell has labelled “heliolithic,” in reference to the fact that it includes sun-worship, the custom of building megalithic monuments, and certain extraordinary beliefs concerning stones. An even more peculiar and distinctive feature, genetically related to the development of megalithic practices and the belief that human beings could dwell in stones, is the custom of mummification. The earliest known Egyptians (before 4000 B.C.) practised weaving and agriculture, performed the operation of “incision” (the prototype of complete circumcision), and probably were sun-worshippers. Long before 3400 B.C. they began to work copper and gold. By 3000 B.C. they had begun the practice of embalming, making rock-cut tombs, stone superstructures and temples. By the mere chance that the capital of the united Kingdom of Egypt happened to be in the centre of serpent-worship (and the curious symbolism associated with it—Sethe, =74=), the sun, serpent and Horus-hawk (the older symbol of royalty) became blended in the symbol of sun-worship and as the emblem of the king, who was regarded as the son of the sun-god. The peculiar beliefs regarding the possibility of animate beings dwelling in stone statues (and later even in uncarved columns), and of human beings becoming petrified, developed out of the Egyptian practices of the Pyramid Age (circa 2800 B.C.). By 900 B.C. practically the whole of the complex structure of the “heliolithic” culture had become built up and definitely conventionalized in Egypt, with numerous purely accidental additions from neighbouring countries.