WAS MIDDLE AMERICA PEOPLED FROM ASIA? 7 



dar in Mexico is cited. Dr. Brinton shows, however, that the Mexi- 

 can calendar is an indigenous production, and has no relation to the 

 calendar of the Chinese. In a similar way the Mexican game of 

 patolli is correlated with the East Indian game of parchesi by Dr. 

 E. B. Tylor. Dr. Stewart Culin, who has made a profound study 

 of the games of the world, and Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing, the 

 distinguished student of the ethnology of southern North America, 

 are both convinced that this game had an independent origin in 

 various parts of the world. Mexican divisions of time marked by 

 five colors are recognized as being allied to a similar device in China. 

 The application of colors to the meaning of certain ideographs is 

 common in other parts of the world as well. It is important to 

 remark that the colors named include nearly the whole category as 

 selected by barbarous people, and in the use of colors in this way 

 it would be difficult to avoid similarities. 



The evidences of contact in early times must be settled by the 

 comparison of early relics of the two shores of the Pacific. Resem- 

 blances there are, and none will dispute them, but that they are for- 

 tuitous and have no value in the discussion is unquestionable. As 

 illustrations of these fortuitous resemblances may be cited a tazza 

 from the United States of Colombia having a high support with tri- 

 angular perforations identical in form with that of a similar object 

 found among the mortuary vessels of Korea, and Greece as well. A 

 curious, three-lobed knob of a pot rim, so common in the shell 

 mounds of Omori, Japan, has its exact counterpart in the shell 

 mounds of the upper Amazon. In the Omori pottery a peculiar cur- 

 tain-shaped decoration on a special form of jar has its exact parallel in 

 the ancient pottery of Porto Rico. These instances might be multi- 

 plied, but such coincidences as are often seen in the identity of cer- 

 tain words are familiar to all students. The account of the land of 

 Fusang appears in the records of the Liang dynasty contained in the 

 Nanshi, or History of the South, written by Li Yen-Shau, who lived 

 in the beginning of the seventh century. It purports to have been 

 told by a monk who returned from the land of Fusang in 499 of 

 our era. This hypothetical region has been believed to be Japan, 

 Saghalin, and Mexico. The record is filled with fabulous state- 

 ments of impossible animals, trees of impossible dimensions, and is so 

 utterly beyond credence in many ways that it should have no weight 

 as evidence. If it had any foundation in fact, then one might infer 

 that some traveler had entered Saghalin from the north, had crossed 

 to Yeso and Japan, and found his way back to China. His own 

 recollections, supplemented by stories told him by others, would form 

 the substance of his account. The record is brief, but any one 

 familiar with Japan as Klaproth was is persuaded with him that the 



