Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

the

[ocr errors]

oof Brittany and Spain). The importance of the distinction will be seen later on. Mr Perry maintains that this megalithic culture (megaliths being one of the chief signs of the presence of the archaic civilisation') came from Egypt; but he can give no proof, and certain elementary blunders indicate a lack of first-hand acquaintance with the subject. When we come to England, we shall see that he does not distinguish between megalithic and other stone monuments. As regards Egypt, he thinks that the Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty were mastabas,* whereas these appear first in the Third Dynasty, and that beehive tombs, from Crete to the Orkneys, were modelled on the pyramids of the Twelfth Dynasty. Apart from the difficulty in the dates, it is hard to see how any resemblance can be traced between a beehive tomb and a pyramid. Dr Elliot Smith, it may be noted, is even more surprising in his architectural views, for according to him, 'the dolmen is nothing more than a degenerated mastaba tomb.'† It does not seem to have struck either him or Mr Perry as odd that in the whole of Egypt there is only one example, and that a doubtful one, of true megalithic building. The same may be said of other 'cultural elements.' The polished stone axe is rare in Egypt; copper is not produced there, and the earliest examples seem to be connected with an immigrant folk.‡ Flax grows in a cold climate; its uses for weaving must have been discovered elsewhere, before it was imported into Egypt. Carpentry is said to have begun there; but even the wood is foreign. Corn, again, grows wild in North Syria and other parts of Asia, not in Egypt. 'The Egyptians,' Dr Elliot Smith tells us, 'taught the Syrians the value of metal weapons.' This does not seem likely, in view of the fact that the Syrians were far ahead of them, in the forms and design of their weapons, which bear no resemblance to those of Egypt.

[ocr errors]

The megalithic tombs of western Europe are said to be due to 'Egyptians, who died abroad when exploiting foreign sources of wealth.' There is no evidence, in

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]

Egypt or elsewhere, that any Egyptian exploited wealth abroad in this way, or died in such an adventure. The Greeks have left evidence at Marseilles, the Carthaginians in Spain; but no trace of such Egyptians has ever been found. In an elaborate monograph, Dr Elliot Smith claims that 'characteristic Egyptian inventions can be recognised wherever ships have been built.'* Rough Bronze Age carvings of sledge-like vehicles on Swedish rocks are said to represent ships essentially identical' with the war vessels discovered by Stanley on Lake Victoria Nyanza. Both accordingly show the influence of Egypt. He quotes statements from Mr Cecil Torr and similar writers, to show that the Chinese 'junk' is connected with the Latin 'juncus,' a reed, and that sailors' earrings, and the 'bellying' of sails, are a heritage from the Phoenicians, who handed on the Egyptian tradition. And so on. Yet it is well known that other people's ships were entirely different from those of Egypt, and developed from different sources. The famous knife-blade of Gebel-el-Arak, which is certainly predynastic, shows a sea-fight between men of different races, in which one type of ship represented is obviously non-Egyptian.

We are said to owe our calendar to Egypt; † but as a matter of fact we inherit the Babylonian calendar and Zodiac, with which the Egyptian constellations have hardly anything in common. The search for 'life-giving substances' by Egyptians is said to have given rise to the Sumerian civilisation, and there are no valid reasons for attributing to any Elamite or Sumerian remains a date earlier, if indeed as early, as that of the First Egyptian Dynasty.' Yet strong evidence had already been adduced for the belief that Sumer and Elam had already passed the zenith of their culture when the First Dynasty ruled in Egypt, and the discoveries of Mr Woolley at Ur in the last few months have fully confirmed this. §

Let us turn to the New World to redress the balance

*Ships as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture,' p. 18.

+ 'Children of the Sun,' p. 441.

[ocr errors]

Encyclopædia Britannica,' loc. cit. (1922). Cf. 'Origin of Magic and Religion,' p. 70 (1923).

§ S. Langdon in 'Journal of Egyptian Archæology,' 1921, pp. 133 ff.

[ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

of the Old. The difficulty, referred to above, in the respective dates of the Khmer and Mayan civilisations causes Dr Elliot Smith only a momentary qualm. The end of the 'Old Empire' of the Mayas, a culture of which all the essentials must have been in existence centuries before the Christian era, is placed by Joyce about 340 A.D., by Morley about 610 A.D. These are inconvenient dates for the theory; but he expects (the reason is not stated) that they will soon be brought down to at least 900 A.D. 'However,' we read, 'this is a problem that can be discussed later.' One looks in vain for any further reference to the matter.

Meanwhile, traces of the 'archaic civilisation' meet us on every hand. One element is sufficient to prove its presence. Any people which uses either stone for building, or pottery or metal in any form, or totemism, or exogamy, is obviously a member of it. Let us take a random instance. Mr Perry is dealing with the 'theories' of those who regard Australia as free from the attentions of the Children of the Sun. 'Can we assume that Australia was never visited by bearers of this civilisation? It is claimed that stone circles existed in Australia. If this be so, then the structure on which these theories rest collapses.'* In view of this, it is surprising that the culture of Peru, the most important of the New World after the Mayan, and possessing, moreover, the attraction of a sun-cult, is passed over so lightly.

Proceeding northwards, we reach the heart of the mighty and mysterious Maya civilisation. Its ruined cities, buried in tropical, fever-haunted forest, are still very imperfectly explored, and its history, pieced together from native traditions and a few illuminated manuscripts, the account of a 16th-century Spanish bishop, and the inscribed monuments, is a desperate affair. Here was a chance for the fantaisiste. Le Plongeon, in 1886, turned the tables on the future theories of Dr Elliot Smith by asserting that Egypt was colonised from Yucatan more than 11,000 years ago. Lord Kingsborough, in nine costly volumes, sought to trace the descent of the Mayas from the Lost Tribes of Israel. More recently, in a book

criticism.

'Children of the Sun,' p. 33. Cf. Kendrick, The Axe Age,' p. 87, for a

[ocr errors]

by Mr Lewis Spence, the Lost Continent of Atlantis has been held responsible for both Egyptian and Mayan civilisations. The speculations of Dr Elliot Smith and Mr Perry successfully hold their own beside these imaginative efforts. Neither is hampered by too intimate an acquaintance with facts. A formidable mountainrange on the Pacific coast, reinforced by hundreds of miles of dense forest, presents no difficulties to those invading aristocrats, the Children of the Sun, in their long journey, of which no traces, unfortunately, remain, to Guatemala and Yucatan, in quest of life-giving substances. Superficial similarities, again, are sufficient to prove 'identity of culture' between Egyptians and Mayas. Both have pyramids. There is salmons in both,' as Fluellen said. A little more knowledge would have shown that the Maya pyramids are constructed with a radically different design from those of Egypt, namely, as a platform for buildings which required elevation for astronomical or religious purposes, and that Mayan architecture, as seen, for instance, in the temples at Tikal and Palenque, has no real resemblance to anything in Egypt or Asia. The complicated numeral and dating systems of the Mayas, with their vigesimal peculiarities, the remarkable Tonalamatl, or 260-day period, the Calendar-round, and Long Count' cannot be paralleled in the Old World.

Two further arguments may be mentioned. Mr Perry quotes from Mr Joyce the statement that the Maya civilisation seems to spring full-blown from the ground. This is construed as a proof that it was not autochthonous, but brought by the ubiquitous adventurers and prospectors of the 'archaic civilisation.'* If Mr Perry had read the next sentence, he would have seen that the appearance is due mainly to insufficient excavationmost of the tierra caliente is buried in dense forest-and to the fact that the earlier buildings were of wood, as is shown by the architectural and sculptural technique, and have, therefore, perished. We used to hear much of the Greek miracle'; later research taught us that a long series of xoana and wooden temples led up to the 'Apollo' of Tenea and the Heræum of Olympia.

[ocr errors][merged small]

ge

Distr

req

Oses, 1

, ம்

mhia

Atlant The other point is the famous Elephant versus and Macaw' controversy which has been a continual source Sof amusement to archæologists since it first began some eside years ago. A monolith at Copan, known as Stela B,'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

covered with sculpture in relief, somewhat damaged by montime, displays some conventionalised heads, which Dr andre Elliot Smith declares are elephants, and therefore prove to the Asiatic origin of Maya civilisation. He goes further than this. There is a distinctively Hindu artistic feeling in the modelling,' and in the battered carving he can life see plainly not only some of the correct physical features suf of the Indian elephant, but also a turbaned mahout, in equipped with a goad, on the creature's head. It is difficult, however, to reconcile with this the admission, Iman on the same page, of the 'striking influence exerted by the representation of a well-known creature, the macaw, on the craftsmen who were set the task of modelling the elephant, which to them was an alien and wholly unknown animal.'* More surprising still is the statement that the 'reality of this identification (viz. of the Copan carving with an Indian elephant) is put beyond even the possibility of doubt by the incongruous and irrelevant addition of the spiral ornament, which is not justified by any natural feature of the elephant. . . .'† We are thus asked to believe that because a real elephant has no spiral ornament, the carving in question represents an elephant. The fact is that Dr Elliot Smith is no more acquainted with the critical study of primitive art than with that of primitive architecture. His naïveté in this respect is shown by an elaborately produced monograph, Elephants and Ethnologists,' in which a number of artistic woodcuts, themselves taken from drawings, and prepared under his own direction, are used as evidence in support of his view. It is only necessary to compare with these a photograph of the original monument to realise the unscientific nature of this procedure. A mass of further information, mainly irrelevant, about medieval bestiaries, Scottish carvings, Greek coins, and Indian objects of all periods, provides opportunities for a further series of attractive woodcuts,

Pe

K

TOU

[ocr errors]

* Nature,' Jan. 27, 1916. Cf. Morley, 'Inscriptions at Copan,' p. 406. † 'Elephants and Ethnologists,' p. 7.

« AnteriorContinuar »