358 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



well as now ? Where the linguistic affinities, the inevitable loan 

 words, the Egyptian or Chinese hieroglyphs, the Phoenician 

 alphabet, the Babylonian cuneiforms, or other eastern scripts ? 

 Of such things there are frauds, enough and to spare, but not a 

 single genuine document in stone, bronze, or durable material has 

 ever been found anywhere between the two oceans. Not one 

 link, not one tangible link, has ever come to light to connect the 

 cultures of the Old and New Worlds. Yet how many links would 

 be needed for a chain long enough to stretch across Atlantic or 

 Pacific ! 



The a priori assumption therefore stands, and, pending further 

 research, those ethnologists are fully justified who maintain the 

 absolutely independent evolution of post-neolithic culture in the 

 New World. Amongst them it is satisfactory to be able now to 

 include Mr J. W. Powell, who has rendered such inestimable ser- 

 vices to American anthropology, of which he may claim to be 

 the first living exponent. In the paper already referred to 1 Mr 

 Powell affirms that " the aboriginal peoples of America cannot be 

 allied preferentially to any one branch of the human race in the 

 Old World"; that "there is no evidence that any of the arts of the 

 American Indians were borrowed from the Orient " : that " stone 

 implements and many other things are found in the latest pleisto- 

 cene deposits of valleys and plains everywhere throughout 

 America," although "nothing has been discovered which antedates 

 the glacial epoch"; that "the industrial arts of America were born 

 in America, America was inhabited by tribes at the time of the 

 beginning of industrial arts. They left the Old World before they 

 had learned to make knives, spear and arrowheads, or at least 

 when they knew the art only in its crudest state. Thus primitive 

 man has been here ever since the invention of the stone knife and 

 the stone hammer." He further contends that "the American 

 Indian did not derive his forms of government, his industrial or 

 decorative arts, his languages, or his mythological opinions from 

 the Old World, but developed them in the New"; and that "in 

 the demotic characteristics of the American Indians, all that is 

 common to tribes of the Orient is universal, all that distinguishes 



1 Whence came the American Indians? Forum, Feb. 1898. 



