From 1927 through 1936, he was the co-author of the ten volumes of The Corridors of Time with H. J. Fleure, which aimed to cover world prehistory from "the dawn of human life to the periods when written ideas and abstract thought spread far and wide". A tenth volume was published posthumously in 1956 by Fleure who used research and notes they had done together.[1][5]
Peake proposed a "prospector theory" within the school of cultural diffusion: this theorised that the megalithic architecture of Europe such as the dolmens was spread by prospectors from the Eastern Mediterranean, probably originating from the Aegean Islands before 2200 BC, who were seeking commodities such as metal ores.[7] He later argued that the rudiments of megalithic architecture originated in Syria c. 4000BC and from there spread to Egypt in the second pre-dynastic period and the eastern Mediterranean.[5][8] He suggested that this was not the spread of a single culture within the same millennia, but of slow diffusion over time from mother sites to daughter sites, perhaps linked to a shared cult.[8]
I have endeavoured to show that it is to the north-east of the Aegean that we must look for the centre from which mining prospectors set out for Spain and Brittany, carrying with them the elements of megalithic architecture.
This is in contrast to Grafton Elliot Smith who argues for hyperdiffusionism with ancient Egypt as the single source of cultural practices, and to Luis Siret who argued that it was the Phoenicians who borough megaliths to the Iberian Peninsula.[7] Peake suggested that Smith had overemphasised and oversimplified events by centring Egypt as the sole origin of cultural diffusion,[3] and that Siret's argument was only possible because he moved the dates of the Phoenicians from 800 BC to 2000 BC.[7]
