io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a people advanced enough to have been powerfully affected in their 

 " arts, customs, and religious belief." It seems reasonable to believe 

 that traces of a Mongolian release would be found in Central 

 America, the more so as a warlike people would eagerly seize upon a 

 more powerful method of pulling the bow, yet no trace of a stone or 

 metal thumb ring has ever been found in the western hemisphere. 

 Ancient Mexican codices, while depicting the archer, reveal no 

 trace of the Mongolian method. In the Old World this release crept 

 westward as a result of the migration of, or contact with, Asiatic 

 tribes, and metal thumb rings are dug up on the Mediterranean lit- 

 toral. While the arrow release of China might not have effected a 

 lodgment in America, the terra-cotta roofing tile certainly would. 

 This important device, according to Schlegel, was probably known 

 in China 2200 b. o., in Korea 500 b. c, and in Japan in the early 

 years of our era. In the ancient records of Japan reference is made 

 to " breaking a hole in the roof tiles of the hall," etc., and green- 

 glazed tiles are dug up on the sites of ancient temples in Japan. The 

 fragments are not only unmistakable but indestructible. I have 

 shown elsewhere * that the primitive roofing tile crept into Europe 

 from the East, distributing itself along both shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean, and extending north to latitude 44°. Graeber finds its 

 earliest use in the temple of Hira in Olympia, 1000 b. c. The ancient 

 Greeks had no knowledge of the roofing tile. Among the thousands 

 of fragments and multitudinous articles of pottery found by Schlie- 

 mann in the ruins of Ilios, not a trace of the roofing tile was dis- 

 covered. One is forced to believe that so useful an object, and one 

 so easily made, would have been immediately adopted by a people so 

 skillful in the making of pottery as the ancient Mexicans. Certainly 

 these people and those of contiguous countries were equal to the 

 ancient Greeks in the variety of their fictile products. Huge jars, 

 whistles, masks, men in armor, curious pots of an infinite variety 

 attest to their skill as potters, yet the western hemisphere has not 

 revealed a single fragment of a pre-Columbian roofing tile. Vi- 

 ning, in his work, cites an observation of the Rev. W. Lobseheid, the 

 author of a Chinese grammar. In crossing the Isthmus of Panama 

 this writer was much struck with the similarities to China ; " the 

 principal edifices on elevated ground and the roofing tiles identical 

 to those of China." The roofing tile is indeed identical with that of 

 China. It is the form that I have elsewhere defined as the normal 

 or Asiatic tile, but it reached America for the first time by way 

 of the Mediterranean and Spain, and thence with the Spaniards 

 across the Atlantic, where it immediately gained a footing, and 



* On the Older Forms of Terra-Cotta Roofing Tiles. Essex Institute Bulletin, 1882. 



