In the account of the method of mummification adopted by the Virginian Indians (supra) it was seen that the whole skin was removed and afterwards fitted on to the skeleton again. Great care and skill had to be used to prevent the skin shrinking. Apparently the difficulties of this procedure led certain Indian tribes to give up the attempt to prevent the skin shrinking. Thus the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador, as well as certain tribes in the western Amazon area, make a practice of preserving the head only, and, after removing the skull, allowing the softer tissues to shrink to a size not much bigger than a cricket ball ([44]; [52], p. 252, and [61], p. 288).
According to Page ([52]), who has described one of the two Jivaro specimens now in the Manchester Museum, desiccation by heat was the method of preservation. He adds, “‘Momea’ and ‘Chancha’ are the names commonly given to such specimens by the natives.” Surely the former must be a Spanish importation!
A comparison of this variety in the methods of preserving the body in America with the series of similar practices which I have been following from the African shore, makes it abundantly plain that there can be no doubt as to the source of the American inspiration to do such extraordinary things. The remarkable burial ritual and all the associated procedures afford strong corroborative evidence.
But the proof of the influence of the civilizations of the Old World on pre-Columbian America does not depend upon the evidence of one set of practices, however complex, bizarre and distinctive they may be.
The positive demonstration that I have endeavoured to build up in this communication depends upon the fact that the whole of the complex structure of the “heliolithic” culture, which was slowly built up in Egypt during the course of the thirty centuries before 900 B.C., spread to the east, acquiring on its way accretions from the civilizations of the Mediterranean, Western Asia, Eastern Africa, India, Eastern Asia and Indonesia and Oceania, until it reached America. Like a potent ferment it gradually began to leaven the vast and widespread aboriginal culture of the Americas.
The rude megalithic architecture of America bears obvious evidences of the same inspiration which prompted that of the Old World; and so far as the more sumptuous edifices are concerned the primary stimulus of Egyptian ideas, profoundly modified by Babylonian, and to a less extent Indian and Eastern Asiatic, influences is indubitable. Comparison of the truncated pyramids of America, of the Pacific, Eastern Asia and Indonesia with those of ancient Chaldea, affords quite definite corroboration of these views. It would be idle to pretend that so complex a design and so strange a symbolism as the combination of the sun’s disc with the serpent and the greatly expanded wings of a hawk, carved upon the lintel of the door of a temple of the sun, could possibly have developed independently in Ancient Egypt and in Mexico (see especially Bancroft, [3], Vol. IV., p. 351).
But it is not merely the designs of the buildings and their association with the practice of mummification (and later, in Mexico, with cremation), but the nature of the cult of the temples and all the traditions associated with them that add further corroboration. Thus, for example, Wake ([103], p. 383), describing the geographical distribution of serpent-worship (the intimate bond of which with sun-worship and in fact the whole “heliolithic” cult was forged in Egypt, as I have already explained), writes:—“Quetzalcoatl, the divine benefactor of the Mexicans, was an incarnation of the serpent-sun Tonacatlcoatl, who thus became the great father, as the female serpent Cihuacoatl was the great mother, of the human race.” “The solar character of the serpent-god appears to be placed beyond all doubt.... The kings and priests of ancient peoples claimed this divine origin, and ‘children of the sun’ was the title of the members of the sacred caste. When the actual ancestral character of the deity is hidden he is regarded as ‘the father of his people’ and their divine benefactor. He is the introducer of agriculture, the inventor of arts and sciences, and the civilizer of mankind.”
Writing of the Maya empire, Bancroft ([3], Vol. V., p. 233) says:—“The Plumed Serpent, known in different tongues as Quetzalcoatl, Gucumatz, and Cukulcan, was the being who traditionally founded the new order of things.”
Even the most trivial features of the “heliolithic” culture-complex make their appearance in America. Thus, for example, Harrison tells us that:—
“The artificial enlargement of the lobe [of the ear] appears originally to have been adopted in India for the purpose of receiving a solar disc” ([29], p. 193).