Summing up the introduction of maize into China, we may say that 
maize was introduced into China two or three decades before 1550; that 
it was probably introduced by both the overland and maritime routes ; 
that there is little reason to justify Laufer’s far-reaching conclusion, 
especially in the light of the introduction of other New World plants, 
that in the dissemination of food plants ‘a land route is preferred over 
a sea route as their way of propagation’; and that, barring a sensa- 
tional discovery in Chinese sources clearly indicating a pre-Columbian 
introduction, Chinese maize as a topic for anthropological speculation 
should be closed. 
Sut6 and Yoshida (39) were doubtless unaware of 
Ho’s paper when they concluded, on the basis of decid- 
edly meager evidence, that one of the types of oriental 
maize, Persian, described by them must have had an ex- 
tensive pre-Columbian distribution in parts of Asia. 
They also favored Anderson’s suggestion (2) that corn 
originated in Asia perhaps as an amphidiploid of a five- 
chromosome species of Coiv or Sorghum. They were 
apparently unaware also of the discovery by Barghoorn 
et al (4) of fossil maize pollen in the Valley of Mexico 
almost identical with that of modern maize pollen. This 
discovery, to be discussed in more detail later, virtually 
proves the American origin of corn and rules out the pos- 
sibility of an Asiatic origin. 
PRE-COLUMBIAN CORN IN AFRICA / 
The confusion which can result from what Enfield has 
called ‘‘idle and unprofitable speculation’’ is nowhere 
better illustrated than in Jeffreys’ (20) acceptance of that 
part of the Stonor-Anderson thesis which holds that, if 
maize did not originate in Asia, it must have been taken 
there in prehistoric times. 
Jeffreys (17) had earlier assembled extensive historical 
references purporting to show that there had been Arab- 
Negro contacts with the Americas beginning about 900 
A.D. and that maize had been introduced into Africa 
before 1492. When Goodwin (12) described potsherds 
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