Sir,—In his interesting paper on “The Pyramids of Mexico,” in your issue of to-day, Mr. Stephen Graham asks whether it is “possible that the repute of the Pyramids of Egypt raised the Pyramids of Mexico?”
Perhaps Mr. Graham may not have seen an answer to this question given by the historical school of anthropologists, whose chief representative is Professor Elliot Smith, F.R.S. The explanation which long held the field was that where the same cultures are found in distant places they are due to the identical workings of the human mind under like conditions. In opposition to this theory the newer school contends that the resemblances, which in some cases, notably in the ritual and mummification of the dead, are identical, are due to intercourse between peoples of higher and lower civilisation, the higher race imposing its culture on the lower.
Professor Elliot Smith holds, and this with no mean body of evidence, that the essential elements of the ancient
civilisations of India, Further Asia, the Malay Archipelago, Oceania, and America were brought in succession to each of
these places by mariners, whose Oriental migrations began as trading intercourse between the Eastern Mediterranean and
India some time after 800 B.C.—Yours, etc.,
EDWARD CLODD.
Aldeburgh, 14 March.
Source info: Journal named in cutting; letter dated “14 March”.
Edward Clodd here gives a brief statement of the diffusionist theory of culture.
This is not one of the many cuttings from the Weekly Westminster Gazette, but comes from the daily Westminster Gazette.