THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN.*
Mn. PERRY, who has just left the University of Manchester to take up the new Readership in Cultural Anthropology at University College, is known to students as a disciple of Professor Elliot Smith and the late Dr. Rivers, and as the author of a notable volume on The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia, based on his own researches in Malaysia. His new book more than fulfils the promise of his earlier work. It may be said, indeed, to mark an epoch in the study of anthropology. Mr. Perry boldly champions the historical method as against those who, like Professor Westermarck, accumulate examples of apparently similar practices from all over the world, and assume that such practices were developed independently, or as against the geographers who suppose that -early man was the puppet of climate and weather. Mr. Perry holds that early man, like later man, moved about in search of the things that he wanted—whether it was food, or stone,, or the " life-givers " such as gold and pearls, turquoise and amber—and that he was not deterred by the perils of travel by land or by sea. The author's thesis is that an early food- producing civilization was developed in Egypt and spread eastward to India, Malaysia, the Pacific Islands, Australia, • The Children of the Bun : An Enquiry into.the Harty History of Civilization. By W. I. Perry. London : Methuen. [18e. riet4 and thence to Central America under the Mayas, and through North America. We cannot attempt here even to outline his closely-knit argument, based on a multitude of well- attested facts and native traditions, which gain greatly in significance by being brought together. We can only say that Mr. Perry is extremely reasonable and persuasive, and that he throws much new light, not only on sun-worship and pyramid-building, gold-mining and pearl-fishing, but also on the development of society and religion in general. His main contention that a civilization can grow, spread over the' world and then decay utterly and disappear must provoke serious thought, for, if such a thing happened once,- it may conceivably happen again. The " Children of the Sun " were highly efficient in their own time and lorded it over a great part of the earth, yet their rule has passed away and been forgotten. Many of the details in the essay are extraordinarily interesting. We are shown, for example, how the ancient gold-workings in India, or the old copper and silver-workings in Arizona and New Mexico are found to lie on or near the railways, which engineers have built to serve the modern mines, and how the traces of early man in the Eastern States coincide with the places where fresh-water pearls were and are most readily found. We are told that in bygone days the sun-worshippers in the Pacific would assemble periodically at Raiatea, in the Friendlies, and take home with them, in their frail canoes, stones from the sacred circle in that island. The tradition fits in with the latest theory of Stonehenge, namely, that one set of the megaliths was transported bodily from a site in South Wales where numerous stone circles may still be seen ; the legends of the coronation stone of Scone, of the Kaaba at Mecca, are familiar illustrations of the same idea that a peculiar sanctity may attach to a great stone. Some of Mr. Perry's suggestions as to the development of religious beliefs, or as to the origin of war are, to say the least, highly speculative, but they compel attention, and the main part of his thesis is very solidly based. He appends a full bibliography and a good index, and gives many instructive maps. The Children of the Sun has not the literary charm of The Golden Bough, but its scientific significance, we make bold to say, is not less than that of Sir James Frazer's classic work.
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