Human history / by G. Elliot Smith.

  • Grafton Elliot Smith
Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Human history / by G. Elliot Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    497/520 (page 491)
    origin. He says the capitals of the galleries and vestibules of Angkor Vat remind him of the Doric order of classical Graeco- Roman architecture; and he suggests that the influences of Europe and Western Asia might have reached as far as Indo-China, by way of Syria and Persia, to India. As we have already seen, Greek influence had been impressed upon Buddhist culture before its easterly diffusion, if indeed it was not itself Hellenic in origin. The solution of the problem defined by these quotations from M. Mar dial's essay is a matter of fundamental importance. But due recognition has not been accorded by the majority of anthropologists to the fact that elements of early culture often survive in distant places long after they are lost or profoundly modified nearer the home of their invention. For example, the practice of mummification has been extinct in the home of its invention for more than twelve centuries. Only very slight traces of it can be discovered in India. In Indonesia and Indo-China it is still practised, but with profound modifications of the original technique. Yet in the islands of Torres Strait, in Melanesia and Polynesia, in Peru and elsewhere in America, the ancient Egyptian methods were more completely preserved than at any of the intermediate places. The late Dr. W. H. R. Rivers repeatedly called attention to this phenomenon, which for so many writers has been a cause of difficulty and confusion of thought rather than the revelation of a common historical fact. But its significance is plain enough. When the germs of an alien culture are planted in a new territory it takes a long time after they have taken root before the growth assumes a distinctive character peculiar to the new focus. There is no doubt that India derived a great deal of its earliest (pre-Hellenic) culture from Babylon and Egypt, and gradually assimilated these adopted customs and beliefs until there de¬ veloped a new cultural compound distinct from Babylonian and Egyptian civi lizations, and characteristic enough to receive the name ‘Indian.’ But, during the centuries it took to effect this process, India was handing on to Indo-China the torch of Western know¬ ledge before it had assumed its distinctively Indian form. Hence the Far Eastern civilization preserves more definite traces of its