14 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ton has devised a new word to express their character, which he calls 

 ikonomatic. This distinguished philologist of the American lan- 

 guages confesses that not even the threshold of investigation in 

 the solution of these enigmatical puzzles has been passed. Had the 

 Chinese introduced or modified or even influenced in any way the 

 method of writing as seen on the rock inscriptions of Central 

 America, one familiar with Chinese might have found some clew, as 

 was the case in deciphering the ancient writings of Assyria and 

 Egypt. Grotefend's work on cuneiform inscriptions and Champol- 

 lion's interpretation of Egyptian came about by the assumption of 

 certain inclosures representing historic characters, which were re- 

 vealed in one case by an inference and in another by an accompany- 

 ing Greek inscription. If we examine the early Chinese characters 

 as shown on ancient coins of the Hea dynasty (1756 to 2142 b. c), 

 or the characters on ancient bronze vases of the Shang dynasty 

 1113 to 1755 b. c), we find most of them readily deciphered by 

 sinologists, and coming down a few centuries later the characters 

 are quite like those as written to-day. On some of the many in- 

 scribed stone monuments of Central America one might expect to 

 find some traces of Chinese characters if any intercourse had taken 

 place, whereas the Maya glypts are remotely unlike either Chinese 

 or Egyptian writing. Some acute students of this subject are inclined 

 to believe that these undecipherable characters have been evolved 

 from pictographs which were primarily derived from the simple 

 picture writing so common among the races of the New World. 



It seems clearly impossible that any intercourse could have taken 

 place between Asia and America without an interchange of certain 

 social commodities. The " divine weed," tobacco, has been the com- 

 fort of the races of the western hemisphere north and south for un- 

 numbered centuries: stone tobacco pipes are exhumed in various 

 parts of the continent; cigarettes made of corn husks are found in 

 ancient graves and caves; the metatarsals of a deer, doubly per- 

 forated, through which to inhale tobacco or its smoke in some form, 

 are dug up on the shores of Lake Titicaca. 



The question naturally arises why tobacco was not carried back 

 to Asia by some of the returning emigrants, or why tea was not in- 

 troduced into this country by those early invaders. A Buddhist 

 priest without tea or tobacco would be an anomaly. There are many 

 other herbs, food plants, etc., that should not have waited for the 

 Spanish invasion on the one hand, or the Dutch and Portuguese 

 navigator along the Chinese coast on the other. 



Finally, if evidences of Asiatic contact exist, they should cer- 

 tainly be found in those matters most closely connected with man, 

 such as his weapons, clothing, sandals, methods of conveyance, pot- 



