STUDY OF MAN

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 108, 3 November 1923, Page 6

STUDY OF MAN

LESSONS FROM TUTANK HAMEN'S TOM.B

SEAECH FOR GOLD.

(HtOJI DOR OWN CORBESPONDENT.)

LONDON, 18th September. : The work in Tutankhamen's tomb, said Professor G. Elliott-Smith, in a lecture on "The Study of Man," at the British Association. Congress, had yielded singularly, little information of direct scientific value. Yet there were certain aspects, of this dazzling illumination of thalast phase of the eighteenth dynasty that were worthy of attention. In the first place the vast quantity of gold actually found in the tomb was a point of special v interest. Gold was the first metal used by man, and it was the arbitrary value he attached to it for its supposed magical value as an elixir of life that initiated the world-wide search for it, which had now lasted sixty centuries, although the motive for the search had changed. The search for gold had been the most potent influence in the development of civilisation. The geographical distribution of archaeological remains, and the features of the culture revealed to everyone who. was willing to read ' the plain story- told by these facts, that the same process had been going on ever since the first civilisation was invented, and that the search for gold had been the chief motive for the diffusion of culture throughout the world.

Tho pictures of the boats used by Tutankhamen's viceroy revealed certain peculiar, features which were adopted also in seagoing sliips in the Mediterranean and Erythraean Seas. These distinctive methods of shipbuilding had been preserved until the present day on the Victoria Nyanza, in East Africa, and v in certain parts of the Malay Archipelago., They were also revealed in"quite unmistakable fashion in sculptures of the Early Bronze-, Age in Sweden. Here, then, was a specific illustration not only of the fact of the world-wide diffusion of culture but also of the chief meane by which it was affected.

That demonstration of the unity, of civilisation, Professor Elliott-Smith -went on to say, contained the germ of a new method of approach to the. problem whereby, in time, the unification of anthropology would be effected and a real science of man created. It could be demonstrated that at certain scattered localities, ; widespread throughout the world, the germs of the] common civilisation were planted by immigrants. The recognition .of their presence at some places and not at others was a fact of cardinal importance to the student who was attempting_ to interpret the puzzling results of the intensive study of race in localised areas.- The investigation of the meaning of myth and folk-lore,' of c<istorn and belief, was coming to play an increasing part in the study of human behaviour, ajid the further development of this tendency was certain to be the chief factor in ridding anthropological studies of the encumbrances of error which «txll hjynpered jt* grgwtbs