When these pages were crudely flung together no fate was contemplated for
them other than that of publication in the proceedings of a scientific
society, as an appeal to ethnologists to recognise the error of their
ways and repent. They were intended merely as a mass of evidence to force
scientific men to recognise and admit that in former ages knowledge and
culture spread in much the same way as they are known to be diffused
to-day. The only difference is that the pace of migration has become
accelerated.
The re-publication in book form was suggested by the Secretary of the
Manchester University Press, who thought that the matters discussed in
these pages would appeal to a much wider circle of readers than those who
are given to reading scientific journals.
The argument is compounded largely of extracts from the writings of
recognised authorities, and the author does not agree with all the
statements in the various extracts he has quoted: this mode of presenting
the case has been adopted deliberately, with the object of demonstrating
that the generally admitted facts are capable of a more natural and
convincing explanation than that put forth _ex cathedra_ by the majority
of modern anthropologists, one in fact more in accord with all that our
own experience and the facts of history teach us of the effects of the
contact of peoples and the spread of knowledge.
Such a method of stating the argument necessarily involves a considerable
amount of repetition of statements and phrases, which is apt to irritate
the reader and offend his sense of literary style. In extenuation of this
admitted defect it must be remembered that the brochure was intended as
a protest against the accusation of artificiality and improbability so
often launched against the explanation suggested here: the cumulative
effect of corroboration was deliberately aimed at, by showing that many
investigators employing the most varied kinds of data had independently
arrived at identical conclusions and often expressed them in similar
phrases.
Only a very small fraction of the evidence is set forth in the present
work. Much of the most illuminating information has only come to the
author’s knowledge since this memoir was in the press; and a vast amount
of the data, especially that relating to Europe, India and China, is too
intimately intertwined with the effects of other cultures to be discussed
and dissociated from them in so limited a space as this.
Nor has any attempt been made to discuss the times of the journeys,
the duration of the intercourse, or the details of the goings and the
comings of the ancient mariners who distributed so curious an assortment
of varied cargoes to the coast-lines of the whole world—literally
“from China to Peru.” They exerted an influence upon the history of
civilization and achieved marvels of maritime daring that must be
reckoned of greater account, as they were so many ages earlier, than
those of the more notorious mediæval European adventurers and buccaneers
who, impelled by similar motives, raided the Spanish Main and the East
Indies.
As the pages show, this book is reprinted from volume 59, part 2, of the
“Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical
Society,” session 1914-15; and I am indebted to the Council of that body
for their kind permission to re-issue it in its present form.