120 DANIEL WILSON ON 
and architect were brought to this continent by wanderers from an Asiatic fatherland, 
then those of the potter and of the metallurgist will also prove to be an inheritance from 
the old Asiatic hive of the nations. 
From the evidence thus far adduced it appears that ethnically the American is 
Mongol, and by the agglutinative element his language may be classed as Turanian. The 
Finnic hypothesis of Rask, and the melanochroic Metis of Huxley, alike pertain to a prehis- 
toric era of Europe of which the Finns and the Basques are assumed to be survivals; and 
to that elder era, rather than to any date within the remotest limits of authentic history, 
the languages of America seem to refer us in any search for a common origin with those 
of the eastern hemisphere. But a zealous comparative philologist, already referred to, 
has sought for linguistic traces of relationship between the Old and the New World 
which, if confirmed, would better harmonise with the traditions of intercourse between 
the maritime nations of the eastern Mediterranean and a continent lying outside of the 
pillars of Hercules. In these investigations he aims at determining the relations of the 
Aztec or Nahuatl culture and language to those of Asia. Humboldt long ago claimed for 
much of the former an old world derivation. It seems premature to attempt to deduce any 
comprehensive results from the meagre data thus far gathered. But the author of the “The 
Khita and Khita-Peruvian Epoch,” in tracing the progress of his Sumerian race, assigns 
an interval of four thousand years since their settlement in Babylonia and India. In like 
manner, on the assumption of their migration from a common Asiatic centre, which the 
division of Western and Eastern Sumerian in pronouns and other details is thought to 
indicate, Peru it is conceived, may have been reached by a migratory wave of earlier 
movement, from four to five thousand years ago. Mr. Hyde Clarke indead conceives that 
it is quite within compass that the same great wave of migration which passed over 
India and Babylonia, continued to propagate its centrifugal force, and that by its means 
Peru was reached within the last three thousand years. But, whatever intercourse may 
possibly have been carried on, at such early dates, between the Old and the New World, 
it must be obvious, on mature reflection, that so recent a date for the peopling of South 
America from Asia is as little reconcilable with the very remote traces of linguistic affinity 
thus far adduced, as it is with any fancied relationship with a lost Atlantis of the elder 
world. The enduring affinities of long-parted languages of the Old World tell a very 
different tale. With the comparative philologist, as with the archæologist, time is more 
and more coming to be recognised as an all-important factor. 
But, leaving the estimate of centuries out of consideration, in the researches into the 
origin of the peculiar native civilisation of America here referred to, the recently 
deciphered Akkad is accepted as the typical language of the Sumerian class. This is 
assumed to have started from High Asia, and to have passed on to Babylonia; while 
another branch diffused itself by India and Indo-China, and thence, by way of the 
islands of the Pacific, reached America. Hence, in an illustrative table of Sumerian words 
arranged under four heads, as Western, Indo-Chinese, Peruvian, and Mexican, etc., it is 
noted that “while in some cases a root may be traced throughout, it will be seen that more 
commonly the Western and American roots, or types, cross in the Indo-Chinese region.” 
But another and older influence, related to the Agaw of the Nile region, is also traced in 
the Guarani, Omagua, and other languages of South America, indicating evidences of more 
remote relations with the Old World, and with the African continent. This is supposed 
