SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude sulosequentreviete.]
Anthropologists will be interested by Professor G. Elliot Smith's controversial monograph upon The .11ligrations of Early
Culture (Longmans and Co. for the Manchester University Press, Be. 6d. net), which is described in its sub-title as "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." Put very shortly, Professor Elliot Smith's thesis may be said to be an attempt to prove the widespread influence exerted by the ancient Egyptian oivilization. This " helio-lithic culture complex," as be calls it, grew up gradually out of many elements (including sun-worship and the building of megalithic monuments as well as the practice of embalming the dead), and had become thoroughly established in Egypt by 900 B.C. About a century later began "the great migration of the helio-lithic culture complex." Though greatly altered by various local and other influences in the countries through which it passed, it can be clearly traced, according to Professor Elliot Smith, as having crossed the Persian Gulf to India, as having been carried through Indoneela far out into the Pacific, and as having "eventually reached the American coast, where it bore fruit in the development of the great civilizations on the Pacific littoral and isthmus."
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