Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/182

172 that megalithic monuments wherever found must have been the work of people sharing a common culture, and that culture derived from Egypt. This thesis has been complicated by Dr. Rivers, who, dealing with the megalithic monuments of Oceania, has contended that they were probably the work of sun-worshipping immigrants. Mr. Perry's aim, therefore, is to trace the course of this immigration into Melanesia. Indonesia, he tells us, "occupies a position of peculiar importance in relation to the main argument as to the origin and nature of megalithic monuments, for it forms the sieve through which any extensive migration from the west to Oceania must pass. Any migration into the Pacific of sun-worshipping megalith-builders should have left traces of their passage in Indonesia." But these hypothetical sun-worshipping, megalith-building immigrants have proved a somewhat elusive people. It is true that Mr. Perry's investigations, as they proceeded, showed plenty of megaliths; they showed plenty of microliths also, inextricably mixed up with the megaliths. Worse than that, "the attempt to record only the facts concerning the sun-cult proved abortive; for it was difficult to discover any standard to which facts could be referred." In these circumstances Mr. Perry was compelled either to abandon the attempt to collect the evidence desired, or to include and present as such evidence very much more of doubtful value for his purpose." The problem became so involved that it was at length decided to collect and examine the whole of the evidence concerning stonework in Indonesia, irrespective of the purpose to which the latter was put, stone implements alone excepted." [Why except stone implements?] And with regard to the sun-cult "the difficulty of deciding which facts to retain for examination, and which to reject, was avoided by including in the survey all practices, beliefs and tales concerning the sun that it was possible to collect."

To make even this diluted evidence available, Mr. Perry has had to make a number of assumptions. There are a few, and only a few, places in the world where mankind has not passed through, or is still in, the stone-age. Mr. Perry practically admits this. "At every stage in the presentment of the evidence," he says, "customs and beliefs will be revealed in