X.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 355 



The question of origins thus disposed of, that of cultural 

 development is settled a priori. It must be ob- 



i- r American 



vious that if the American race starts on its life culture 



history from the Stone Ages, and receives no later 



accessions from abroad, whatever degree of culture 



it ultimately reached, whatever stage of progress the arts, in- 



dustries, science, and letters may have acquired in Mexico, 



Yucatan, Peru, or any other centre of civilisation, they must all 



have been independent local growths, owing absolutely nothing 



to foreign influences. 



To this logical position the only possible reply might be an 

 a posteriori argument based on facts at variance with the a priori 

 assumption. Such facts, if forthcoming, might, for instance, be 

 the presence in some part or parts of the continent of some 

 language or languages clearly traceable to an eastern source; 

 or some ancient buildings unmistakably designed on Egyptian, 

 Babylonian, Hindu, or other foreign prototypes; or any inscrip- 

 tions on such monuments either explicable by the aid of Asiatic 

 or other languages, or carved in some script whose foreign origin 

 could not be denied ; or any sailing craft built on the lines of the 

 Greek trireme, the Venetian galley, the Chinese junk, the Malay 

 prau, or even the more primitive Polynesian outrigger or Indian 

 catamaran ; or oil lamps of some familiar type l ; or some such 

 economic plants as wheat and rice, which, not being indigenous, 

 might be found cultivated in suitable localities, and thus supply 

 an argument at least for later intercourse. But nothing of all this 



Revisla del Museo dc la Plata, vn. 1896). Here may be quoted Virchow's 

 weighty words on the general uniformity of the American type in connection 

 with the seven Patagonians (Piyoche tribe) brought to Europe in 1879: " Wir 

 haben fast nichts in der alten Welt dieser Homogeneitat an die Seite zu stellen. 

 Die Massenhaftigkeit der Knochenentwickelung...die bei den Gronlandern 

 anfangt, und sich durch fast alle altern Vb'lkerschichten Amerikas bis zur 

 Magelhaensstrasse verfolgen lasst, tritt hier so auffallend vor, class der Kopf, in 

 Verhaltniss zu dem Gesammtkorper, nahezu so gewaltig erscheint wie der 

 Kopf eines Lowen" (Zeitsc/i.f. Ethnol. 1879, P- Z 99)- 



1 Except amongst the Eskimo, who might have borrowed the idea from the 

 Norsemen, "no lamps at all were known to the indigenes of America, not even 

 to the comparatively cultured Mexicans and Peruvians" (E. B. Tylor, Jonrn. 

 Anthrop. Inst. 1884, P- 35 2 )- 



232 



