British Diffusionist School
The British Diffusionst School mainly talked about ancient Egypt as the cultural cradle of the world. Also known as heliocentric diffusion, the theory was based on the conviction that culture originated from one culture centre. The most prominent British “diffusionists” were Grafton Elliot Smith, W.H.R. Rivers and William James Perry.
Grafton Elliot Smith (1871-1937) the pioneer of the British School advocated that culture first evolved in Egypt and had spread to the far corners of the world from about 4000 B.C. He and Perry believed that cultural development had begun about 6000 years ago. Smith (1928) stated that prior to that time, the earth was inhabited by “Natural Man” who were nomads and lacked domestication of animals, agriculture, houses, clothing, but has religion, social organization, hereditary chiefs and formal laws or ceremonies of marriage or burial. In approximately 4000 B.C the inhabitants of the Nile Valley appreciated the fortunate chance provided them by a “natural crop” of barley and adopted a settled mode of life . Thus, following the matrix of evolution the Egyptians according to Smith invented pottery, basketry, building houses; started domestication of animals; built towns and learned to bury their dead in cemeteries and began the worship of deity. Having accomplished their own civilisation, they set out to explore the world, and in so doing the Egyptians rapidly spread through diffusion and colonisation. Smith correlated similarities between Egyptian complex of large stone monuments related to the sun worship and that of Megaliths of England such as stone hedge. Thus, arriving at the conclusion that megalithic monuments of England were crude imitations of Egyptian pyramids and mastabas, as a case of migration, he first published his views in an article in 1911. Later he studied Maya pyramids, Japanese Pagodas, Cambodian and Balenese Temples and American burial mounds are imitations of Egypt pyamids.
Then , Smith published his Pan-Egyptian theory of diffusion in the book entitled Origin of Civilisation (1928) . His theory of diffusion on three basic assumptions: i) He popularized this idea on the ground that man was basically uninventive. ii) Inventions or discoveries began first in Egypt, therefore; iii) discovered or invented traits appeared in their cultures because of contact, communication and migration. Thus, multiple origin, independent invention, psychic unity, progress and survivals were all abolished in one mighty stroke of Smith.
It is because of this very fact that he was popularly designated as extreme diffusionist or pan Egyptologist. He explained diffusion of cultural traits from Egypt to rest spheres of world also in his second book entitled Diffusion of Culture(1933) .
William James Perry (1887-1949): W.J. Perry’s chief aim was to support the theory of diffusion, put forward by Smith, although he carried good field work in the Malayan area .Perry also visited Cairo and took interest in the archaeological excavations and extended a blind support to Smith in his theoretical postulations. Perry much impressed by the remains of Sun temple at Cairo that he wrote a book “The Children’s of the Sun’’. In this book he laid emphasis that “transmission of the culture is always accompanied by degeneration. and No art or craft really enduring. He also pointed that Egypt was the only cultural cradle of the world. Perry’s anther book ” Gods and Men “ which threw light on the early men’s conception of supernatural powers, which have been personified and anthropomorphised in course of history.
As he had done some field-works among the Malayan society, he also published many scientific papers on the social organisation of the Malayan people. However, like Smith he did not put forward any specific scheme of diffusion, but simply supported the theory of Smith that ancient Egypt was quite favourable for the growth of wild barley and other seeds, other cultural traits like dance, drama, music, arts and crafts, Sun-worship, etc., and in course of time these cultural traits diffused to various parts of the world. Thus, Perry was simply a supporter of Smith and personally he did not develop any independent scheme of diffusion, but strengthened the hands of Elliot Smith in forming the British school of diffusion.
W. H. R. Rivers ( theory of degeneration ) In 1912, he published a degeneration-oriented article-the “Disappearance of Useful Arts‘’, and degeneration together with the uninventiveness of the human mind became the major tools of explanation in his subsequent book “History of Melanesian Society (1914)”, . In this book Rivers sought the explanation of contrasts among Melanesian and Polynesian cultures in terms of original complexes which had allegedly been spread by successive waves of migration. He observed that on some of the Melanesian island people had no canoes, and further pointed out that they once must have known these items, so indispensable for any small island population, because without these they could never have even reached their present habitant. Perhaps the canoe craft guilds had died out but in any case this was a clear example of culture traits, which frequently disappeared. There were other phenomena, however, that could not be explained so easily. For instance, in Australia Rivers noted the presence of five different burial rituals in an homogeneous population within a fairly small geographical region. The simple and uninventiveness aborigines could not have developed so many variations just by themselves, and Rivers, thus, pointed out that small successive migrations had occurred. Rivers further threw light on the nature of migration which took place in native Australia. He said that only males arrived in the canoes, and since they married local women, their offspring lost the racial characteristics of their forefathers. Forced to learn the language of their wives so that their original language disappeared without a trace, the men became, thus, completely assimilated with their host a culture, and had no objections to abandoning all their original habits except one, namely the burial rites. According to Rivers, they ( the newly migrated people) had such strong emotional attachment to those practices that they refused to give them, up, and in this way Rivers explained the puzzling variations in burial rites, as referred to earlier. However, it remained of course, unexplained how the rites had arisen in the first place and why the original Australian groups so readily gave up their own burial rites, to which they must have been equally emotionally attached.
Thus W.H.R. Rivers was of the opinion that the similarities in cultures could be explained by closely examining the patterns of imitation and migration. Thus, in his summation was in line with the theory of un-inventiveness put forward by his contemporaries Smith and Perry.
Criticisms
- Egypt as the only epicenter of all invention was the greatest flaw that led other anthropologists to denounce this school as extreme diffusionists.
- Hypothetical assumption of human beings as un-inventive to explain Egypt as the only centre of invention was not acceptable to the later anthropologists. It may be possible that a few cultural traits would have developed there, but that does not mean that all the traits would have developed only at Egypt
- Only simple form of diffusion i.e diffusion of culture traits was taken into account while diffusion of culture complex was not emphasised.
- Material culture was predominantly explained while non-material aspects of culture were not taken into account.
- The so called Egyptologists did not mention any typology of diffusion like their German and American counterparts.
- They depended too much on the archaeological evidence and ignored the other aspects of diffusion.
- British diffusionists had very biased and dogmatic approach and their arguments were not very much convincing.
- The British diffusionists looked at outward form only and any vague similarity was to them an undeniable proof of historical contact and immigration.
- therefore, Lowie says (1937) “they were the last to come and first to disappear”