PreE-CoLUMBIAN MAIZE IN Asta? 
Among the herbalists and early botanists who gave 
their attention to maize, there were a number who re- 
garded it as a plant of Old World origin (cf. 30). The 
evidence which de Candolle (7) marshalled to support his 
conclusion on the American origin of maize was so con- 
vincing that the problem was then generally regarded 
as solved. But several times in this century the question 
of an Asiatic origin or of a pre-Columbian distribution 
of maize in Asia has been raised. Following the discovery 
of a previously unknown type of endosperm, ‘“‘waxy,”’ 
in a variety of Chinese maize, Collins (9) suggested, de- 
spite Laufer’s (23) earlier conclusion to the contrary, that 
maize may have been known in Asia before the discovery 
of America. More recently Anderson has, on several 
occasions (1, 2), suggested the possibility of an Asiatic 
origin of maize or of its prehistoric spread to Asia, and, 
in a joint paper with Stonor (38) describing some collec- 
tions of maize from Assam, reached the conclusion that 
‘‘maize must either have originated in Asia or have been 
taken there in pre-Columbian times.” 
The conclusions of Stonor and Anderson were wel- 
comed by the ‘‘diffusionists,’* a school of geographers, 
anthropologists and others who professed to see in art 
forms, myths, and other cultural traits, including the use 
of plants, great similarities between Asia and America 
and who, for reasons which are not at all clear to us, are 
apparently determined to prove that all of these traits 
diffused from a common center. So far as plants are con- 
cerned the diffusionists’ theses have had the support, 
especially of Carter (8), Heyerdahl (15), and Sauer (37), 
all of whom have regarded the conclusions of Anderson 
or of Stonor and Anderson as supporting the idea of pre- 
Columbian, trans-Pacific diffusion. 
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