The Press Saturday, July 4, 1925. The Growth of Civilisation.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18425, 4 July 1925, Page 12

The Press Saturday, July 4, 1925. The Growth of Civilisation.

It is perhaps too early to talk of a New Ethnography, but the theories of Perry, Elliot Smith and the late Dr. Rivers practically amount to such. They also include fresh theories about the growth of civilisation. Professor Perry, recently reader in Comparative Religion in the University of • Manchester, now Teader in' Cultural Anthropology in the University.of London, holds that all civilisation originated in Egypt, whence it spread over the world, to be destroyed by internal decay or swept away by the inrush of uncultured and barbaric races. This belief has been developed in a variety of books, but finds its main exposition in a volume entitled the "Children of the Sun." To us New Zealandei's its chief interest lies in the explanation it gives of the origin of Maori and Polynesian civilisation. It is too early yet to say what measure of acceptance the theory will receive, but as it is based on a large amount of evidence, it is bound to be a subject' of discussion for many years.

As far as New Zealand is concerned, the theory will do little to modify the views put forward by the late Percy Smith, Elsdon Best, and other recognised students of the Maori race, but it will develop a deeper interest in them and provide matter for much debate. Briefly, the evidence goes to show that in most parts of the. world there has been an archaic civilisation, which built megalithic monuments, used irrigation, made stono images, and stone axes, mined gold and hunted for pearls. This civilisation has in most places disappeared, and very often has been replaced by races in a much lower cultural state. Professor Perry divides all races of the world into two stages; the food gatherers and the food growers. Thd Australian natives may be taken as an example of the former class: they cultivate nothing, but live by hunting and collecting fruits and sometimes other vegetable products. Manifestly they represent a very low stage of culture, though, not so low as sometimes has been supposed. The Maoris, on the other hand, with a higher civilisation, were to some extent at least a foodproducing race. Now the argument attempts to show, that wherever we have a race of cultivators we have a race that somewhere or tit some time has been in touch with Egyptian civilisation dirc'ctly or indirectly, no matter how low its present status may be. It must be confessed that the endeavour to show that there has been in New Zealand an older forgotten and megalithic civilisation is based so far upon scanty evidence. The papers of Joshua Rutland are lai'gcly used in proof of this belief. Near Kenepuru, in Pelorus Sound, according to Rutland, " scattered over the steep hill- " sides, and on the small flats, pits, " terraces, shell heaps and other relics "have been discovered in numbere "that testify . . . to a large population." These were the work' of a vanished people, who had disappeared .long before the arrival of Captain Cook. "Between the revival of agriculture . . . and the days of the " pit-dwellers, there was an interval of "centuries, during which the Sound "could only have been inhabited by "people subsisting on the natural products of the district." The rock paintings of the Weka Pass and South Canterbury are also drawn in (o support the belief in a pre-Maori people. " Clearly,'' says Perry, " the Maoris " were not the first-comers to New Zea- " land. They were anticipated by " jJeoplo who' made great terraces on " the hillsides, who did not hesitate " to cut dwellings out of the rook, who " taught them the use of several kinds "of weapons. . . . These mysterious "strangei\s presumably left cannibalism " behind them as a legacy, and eer- "' tain forms of human sacrifice. They " used several kiuds of stone for their " implements, and were most skilful in "stone-carving, their work being bet- " ler finished than that of later cen- " turies. Here, then, is another mys- " tcry, one more vanished people of "'relatively high civilisation who are "succeeded by their inferiors in the " arts and crafts."

The case, as it stands, scarcely seems to us to bear the superstructure built upon it; but taken in conjunction with the rest of the volume, it becomes naturally much weightier. This people antecedent to the Maoris may have been of similar race; but on this point the evidence is not considered sufficient. At any rate Professor Perry thinks that they came to New Zealand attracted by the gold, obsidian, jade and possibly the pearls, that were to be found there. Here again there is lack

of sufficient supporting evidence, in this country at least, for his theory, though throughout the Pacific, as the maps provided show, megalithic remains arc most abundant in the pearlshell islands. From there they can be traced backward through Indonesia, and the Malay countries to India, where they arc usually found associated with gold-workings and sometimes with ancient diamond, copper, gold, and tin mines. Further still the traces of (his archaic civilisation stream backward through Sumir to Egypt, Egypt of twenty-five centuries B.C. Here were to be found the Children of the Sun, as they termed themselves. They were ruled over by kings, who were grids, and in whose veins ran gold. There, according to this theory, originated all the arts and crafts, whence they radiated outward over the jrlobe, even as far as Mexico with its

.Mayan and Toltee civilisation, passing by no lost Atlantis, but through the furthest isles of the sea. This of course quite contradicts the ordinary theory that civilisations rose independently in different races in the same stage of psychic development: but we must leave the anthropologists and archaeologists to fight it out amongst themselves. They will enjoy the contest and learn from it.