In each case, he holds, all the circumstances of the case must be
examined and considered. For instance, when the Australians tell a myth
about the Pleiades very like the Greek myth of the Pleiades, we must ask
a number of questions. Is the Australian version authentic? Can the
people who told it have heard it from a European? If these questions are
answered so as to make it apparent that the Australian Pleiad myth is of
genuine native origin, we need not fly to the conclusion that the
Australians are a lost and forlorn branch of the Aryan race. Two other
hypotheses present themselves. First, the human species is of unknown
antiquity. In the moderate allowance of 250,000 years, there is time for
stories to have wandered all round the world, as the Aggry beads of
Ashanti have probably crossed the continent from Egypt, as the Asiatic
jade (if Asiatic it be) has arrived in Swiss lake-dwellings, as an
African trade-cowry is said to have been found in a Cornish barrow, as an
Indian Ocean shell has been discovered in a prehistoric bone-cave in
Poland. This slow filtration of tales is not absolutely out of the
question. Two causes would especially help to transmit myths. The first
is slavery and slave-stealing, the second is the habit of capturing
brides from alien stocks, and the law which forbids marriage with a woman
of a man's own family. Slaves and captured brides would bring their
native legends among alien peoples.

But there is another possible way of explaining the resemblance (granting
that it is proved) of the Greek and Australian Pleiad myth. The object
of both myths is to account for the grouping and other phenomena of the
constellations. May not similar explanatory stories have occurred to the
ancestors of the Australians, and to the ancestors of the Greeks, however
remote their home, while they were still in the savage condition? The
best way to investigate this point is to collect all known savage and
civilised stellar myths, and see what points they have in common. If