BOAS, THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN RACE 179 



our continent. The step from animal to man had long been made. Man 

 brought with him a language, the use of fire, the art of making fire, the 

 use of tools for breaking and cutting and his companionship with the 

 dog. No other animal had yet become the associate of man. Whether 

 he was acquainted with the bow and arrow, the lance and other more com- 

 plex tools, is very doubtful. 



What the languages of the earliest Americans may have been we cannot 

 tell. There is no reason to believe that there was only one language, for 

 the slow infiltration of scattered communities may have brought groups 

 possessing entirely different forms of linguistic expression into the conti- 

 nent. Certain it is, that, when man began to increase in numbers, the 

 number of languages spoken were legion. Complexity of form charac- 

 terized all of them. Sprung from the same root, some became so much 

 differentiated, that their genetic relationship can hardly be recognized. 

 By mutual influences, the articulations of some were so changed as to 

 agree with those of their neighbors. Forms of thought as expressed in 

 one language influenced others, and thus heterogeneous elements were 

 cast in similar forms. As the race increased in numbers, some tribes 

 became more powerful than others, and in intertribal wars many com- 

 munities were exterminated. With them died their languages and some- 

 times also their type, although it is likely that in most cases these persist 

 in the descendants of captured women. Thus a gradual elimination of 

 the older stocks occurred, which were replaced by newer dialects of a few 

 groups in which, for this reason, genetic relationship can still easily be 

 traced. Only in those regions where no tribe gained the ascendancy does 

 the old multiplicity of stocks persist. Hence the confusion of languages 

 in California, in many parts of Central and South America, and the 

 comparative homogeneity on the Great Plains, on the plateau of Mexico,, 

 and in eastern South America. The diversity of sound and grammatical 

 form which pertains to the old stocks is so great that it is hardly possible 

 to find one feature that is common to the languages of America and that 

 does not belong also to other continents. Certainly all the most promi- 

 nent characteristics of many American languages are found to the same 

 extent among the tribes of Siberia. 



When the contact between Asia and America was re-established, the 

 culture of the whole continent was very simple. Some new inventions 

 bad been added to the old stock; weapons had been perfected; the begin- 

 nings of decorative art had been laid, and the ideas of the race had ad- 

 vanced in many directions. At this period, the Central Americans made 

 the important step from the gathering of roots, berries and grains to 

 the permanent cultivation of plants near their homes. The development 



