SOUTH AMERICAN INDIAN" CULTUEES KKIEGER 421 



animal skins of northern Chile and western China ; human excrement 

 manures from Mexico, Peru, and China and Japan. Otlier similari- 

 ties in Old and New World cultures have to do with such widely 

 diverse traits as lacquer, mirrors, stamps and block printing, inlay 

 of teeth, embalming of the dead, and many others. Many of these 

 Asiatic culture traits appear both in Peru and Mexico or Central 

 America, others occur only in South America. The fact that these 

 traits do not all appear in one area of the Old World, but occur one 

 in Java, another in Himalayan Tibet, another in Egypt, still others 

 in China or in central Asia, requires a rather complicated thinking 

 process to bring them all to a focus in Peru and Middle America or 

 Amazonia. When one includes in the comparatiA^e table architectural 

 details, pottery, or metallurgical ages, the search for similarities and 

 identities takes one still farther afield. Japanese neolithic pottery, 

 Egptian pyramids, Chinese and Scythian bronzes complete the mo- 

 saic leading one to suppose that " Lo ! the poor Indian " has become 

 heir to all the ages. Strangely, he just missed inheriting the potter's 

 wheel, the bellows, glazing, kiln-baked brick, the vehicular wheel, 

 stringed musical instruments, the handmill with a turning handle, 

 attached rudders (Peruvians had sails), and the mason's arch. Con- 

 trasted with these omissions are the large number of food and medici- 

 nal plants and the smaller number of domesticated animals, the use of 

 which undoubtedly began in America. The conclusion is obvious, 

 namely, that the high cultures of America, like the more humble 

 Amazonian tropical woodland centers, are the products of a long 

 period of local development entirely independent of Asiatic or Oce- 

 anic influence, not to mention that of the African Negro. 



