is no such specialized instinct. With reference to the protest that American man did not borrow mental, religious, social and industrial ideas from Asia, no one has provided more cogent illustrations of the fact that he did do so than the author of the disclaimer himself (see, for example, " On the Diffusion of Mythical Beliefs as Evidence in the History of Culture," Re- port British Association, 1894, p. 774; "On the Game of Patolli," Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. viii., 1879, p. 128). The series of step-pyramids that are scattered from Mesopotamia to Ceylon, to Cambodia and Java, to Japan and Shantung, to Tahiti and the Marquesas, to Peru and Mexico afford so striking a demonstration, not only of the spread of a very definite and peculiar phase of culture, but also of the route of the diffusion that many of the reactionary school in ethnology have felt it in- cumbent on them to get rid of evidence that was so awkward and obtrusive.
It was formerly claimed in effect that man had a pyramid- building instinct, which presumably was kept in check by the vast majority of mankind, but burst its bounds in a chronolog- ical sequence among the peoples scattered along the coasts from Egypt to Central America. The more fully the details of these pyramids are studied the more complete is the demonstration of their derivation one from the other as the stream of culture moved from West to East. In Ceylon at Polonnaruwa we find pyramids of Mesopotamian design but built of stone like those of the Egyptians. The less ornate Khmer pyramids, such as Ka-Keo and Ba-Kong, of Cambodia, reproduce the Sinhalese models with singular accuracy: and then pyramids of the same type appear in western Peru and Equador, Central America and Mexico, the Mississippi Valley and the south-eastern region of the United States, the transference of the incentive across the Pacific having been effected probably between the third and the tenth centuries A.D.
The acceptance of ideas concerning the possibility of spon- taneous generation with curious lack of knowledge and logic the ethnologists called it " evolution " of similar ideas and customs among widely distant peoples was paralyzing the study of ethnology and removing it farther and farther from the stimulating influence of serious discussion and honest ob- servation. Dr. W. H. R. Rivers was mainly responsible for lead- ing ethnology out of this morass. In his presidential address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association in 1911 he exposed the fallacies of the popular ethnological doctrine and insisted on the importance of the diffusion of culture. One of the fallacies that had led ethnologists astray and facilitated the acceptance of the weird speculation of spontaneous genera- tion of culture was the belief that useful arts could not be lost. One finds this view expressed in the earlier article (see 2.117):
" Had the Australians or New Zealanders, for instance, ever possessed the potter's art, they could hardly have forgotten it."
By demonstrating the fallacy of this argument and showing that even so vital an art as boat-building could be lost by an island people, Dr. Rivers (Report British Association, 1912, p. 598; also Feslsscrift Tillagnad Edvard Westcrmarck, Helsingfors, 1912, p, 109) removed the only serious obstacle in the way of the acceptance of the truth of the diffusion of knowledge in the way we know it to have been spread abroad in historical times.
From a detailed s'tudy of the technique of embalming Elliot Smith became convinced that the evidence provided by mummies from the islands in Torres Strait was so conclusive a proof of the influence of Egypt as to leave no possibility of doubt as to the certainty of the spread of culture from Egypt to New Guinea and Australia; and as the result of an examination of methods of mummification in various parts of the world he put forward a theory of The Migration of Early Culture (Manchester, 1915), in which the evidence provided by the geographical distribution of megalithic monuments, sun-worship, ear-piercing, tattooing, couvade, artificial deformation of the head, the use of the swastika, etc., was used to corroborate the reality of the diffusion of the ingredients of early civilization. If, as this theory claimed, the spread of culture took place in large measure by sea (" An- cient Mariners," Journal of 'the Manchester Geographical Society,
1917), the Indonesian archipelago ought to preserve some evi- dence of the movement by which the custom of building stone monuments reached Oceania from the West. This evidence was revealed by Mr. W. J. Perry (The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia, Manchester, 1918), who rendered an even greater service by explaining the motive's of the wandering peoples who were mainly responsible for distributing abroad throughout the world the germs of civilization. Men prospecting for gold, copper, silver, tin and other metals, or for flint, turquoise, lapis lazuli, amber or jet, or divers searching for pearls or pearl-shell were the means of planting the elements of culture in outlying places in the world and making them foci of civilization (" The Relationship of the Geographical Distribution of Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," Mem. and Proc. Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc., 1915; " The Geographical Distribution of Terraced Cultivation and Irrigation," ibid. 1916; " An Ethnolog- ical Study of Warfare," ibid. 1917; " War and Civilization," Bull. John Rylands Library, vol. iv., 1918).
Since Perry put forward this illuminating suggestion its truth has been repeatedly confirmed by investigations in the British Is., in the Caucasus, in Hyderabad, in Siberia, in eastern Asia, in New Guinea and Oceania, and especially in America. Work- ing out the details of the geographical distribution of the dif- ferent ingredients of civilization one is now able to reconstruct the past history of the beginning of culture and its diffusion throughout the world. We now realize that the incentive that spurred men on to build up the artificial structure of civiliza- tion was primarily the instinct of self-preservation. The realiza- tion of the dangers to life impelled men to seek for materials which they believed to be life-giving or death-averting. This was the original value attached to pearls and gold, to incense and jade, and to most of the things which the earliest members of our species sought for in the belief that no adventure was too hazardous and no danger or difficulty too great if by overcom- ing it they could secure the elixir of life (Elliot Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon, Manchester, 1919).
The Beginning of Agriculture. If one single event more than another can be regarded as the foundation of civilization it is surely the invention of agriculture. Much speculation has been made as to where and how this crucial event was brought about; but the breeding experiments of such investigators as Prof. Biffen of Cambridge and the late Mr. Aaronsohn (see Coulter, Fundamentals of Plant Breeding, 1914, p. 192) dispose once for all of the popular view that primitive man more than sixty centuries ago produced the barley and wheat, which has been the staple foods of a large section of mankind since then, by an elaborate and long-continued process of experimental breeding. Having disposed of this anachronism, one is in a better position to appreciate the cogency and conclusiveness of the claim set up recently by Prof. Thomas Cherry of Melbourne (" The Discovery of Agriculture," Proceedings of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1921), that the Nile valley was the place where barley was found growing in a natural state, and that agriculture associated with basin irrigation was invented simply by imitating the natural conditions which the proto-Egyptians had constantly before their eyes. Dr. Cherry has pointed out that in Egypt alone the climatic and seasonal conditions are favourable for the natural growth of barley; and we know that it was the staple diet of the earliest Egyptians (G. Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians, 1911, p. 41). The climatic conditions in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor are such that the cultivation of barley became possible there only when men applied' the lessons of artificial irrigation which they had acquired in Egypt. Dr. Cherry believes that wheat must have grown naturally on some of the smaller Aegean islands he mentioned Melos and Naxos and was first cultivated centuries after barley and by men who had learned the art of agriculture directly or indirectly from Egypt. But before the close of the fourth millennium the Egyptian technique of agriculture and irrigation had been adopted in Sumer and Crete and prbbably also in Syria arid Asia Minor. Soon after- wards it was to spread N. and E. to Turkestan and Baluchistan
