nate that the author does not display the same admirable 
caution towards his other kinds of ethnographic data. 
The position of maize relative to other crops in the 
economy of the hill peoples does not seem to us to have 
the significance which the authors attach to it. Maize, 
like millet and Job’s-tears, is subordinated to rice among 
peoples living at lower altitudes, but is said to be ‘‘of 
more importance to the tribes living at high altitudes. ”’ 
While we can agree with the authors that this probably 
is ‘a state of affairs not unconnected with absence of rice 
varieties suitable for cold elevations, ’’ it is difficult to see 
how this has any bearing on their case. In view of the 
ethnological sequence in this region of Asia, it is not sur- 
prising to learn that rice is a relatively recent introduction 
among some of these tribes in spite of the fact that rice is 
an ancient Asiatic food crop. We cannot, however, put 
these circumstances together to conclude, as these au- 
thors have done, that maize is necessarily pre-Columbian 
in this region. 
Laufer concluded some years ago that maize may have 
reached China as early as 1540. Goodrich (1988) dates 
the first Chinese reference to it at 1573. Some 400 years 
have now elapsed since maize came to Asia. It surely 
does not tax an anthropologist’s credulity to believe that 
the Assamese and their neighbors, however conservative, 
have within this period learned or rediscovered or adapted 
to their own purposes several of the most obvious ways 
of using maize. Wonder would have been aroused if 
they had not. 
Parallels between Maize in Asia and the Potato 
in Ireland 
To those who are astonished at the extent to which 
maize is grownin Asia and the number of uses to which 
it is put and who feel that more than four centuries must 
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