More than eighty years ago, Ellis ([15], p. 117) with remarkable insight explained the relationships of the Polynesians and their wanderings, from Western Asia to America, with a lucidity and definiteness which must excite the enthusiastic admiration of those familiar with the fuller information now available. On p. 119 he cites an interesting series of racial factors, usages and beliefs in substantiation of the cultural link between the Pacific Islands and America.
Quite apart from the mere evidence provided by the arts, customs and beliefs in favour of the transmission of certain of the essential elements of American civilization from the Old World, there is a considerable amount of evidence of another kind, consisting no doubt to a large extent of mere scraps. For instance, there are not only the stories of Chinese and Japanese junks arriving on the American shore and of American traditions of the coming of pale-faced bearded men from the east,[20] but there is also a certain amount of evidence from the physical characters of the population themselves. It has been raised as an objection by many people that if there had been any considerable emigration of Polynesians into America they would have left a much more definite trace of their coming in the physical characters of the people of America than is supposed the case. But this argument does not necessarily carry very much weight, for the number of such Polynesians who reached America would have been a mere drop in the ocean of the vast aboriginal population of the Americas. Moreover, there is a certain amount of evidence of the presence of people with Polynesian traits in certain parts of the Pacific littoral. Von Humboldt stated the people of Mexico and Peru had much larger beards and moustaches than the rest of the Indians. But there is a more striking instance in substantiation of the reality of this mixture of Pacific people in America which raises the possibility that a certain number of Melanesians, whose physical characters, being more obtrusive by contrast than those of the Polynesians, were more easily detected. In Allen’s memoir ([2], p. 47) the following statements are found:—
“Sir Arthur Helps tells us in his ‘History of Spanish Conquest in America’ that the Spaniards, when they first visited Darien under Vasco Nunez, found there a race of black men, whom they (gratuitously as it seems to me) supposed to be descended from a cargo of shipwrecked negroes; this race was living distinct from the other races and at enmity with them,”
and on page 48,
“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.).