264 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. 11. 



Asia being identical with that of America, even to its cinder layers, its 

 log walls, and its birch bark coverings^. The Russian archaeologists 

 trace the continuity of the Siberian mounds and sculptures from the 

 ancient Scythic region north of the Black Sea, through the Caucasus and 

 the shores of the Caspian, onward to the Yenisei. Their conjectures as 

 to the origin of the old civilization these represent, and especially as 

 to the derivation of the Siberian runes, have been numerous and 

 varied. Much of Mr. Aspelin's Introduction is taken up with the 

 history of these diverse theories. The first to venture an opinion 

 was the Russian Academician, Th. S. Bayer. He thought re sr.w 

 some resemblance between the Siberian and the old Russian charac- 

 ters, and the latter he derived from an ancient Iberic alphabet that, 

 while marking a transition between Greek and Armenian writing, at the 

 same time displayed traces of Egyptian influence resulting from the 

 Egyptian colony of Colchis, which stands on the authority of Herodotus. 

 It would be a very simple matter to ridicule the Academician, but ridi- 

 cule is not argument. Leaving the Colchian colony out of account, there 

 is archaeological evidence of the identity of a Caucasian people with the 

 builders of the Yeniseian mounds; but the Iberic alphabet unhappily is 

 to seek. Strahlenberg imagined the characters to be of Scythic or of 

 Parthian origin. The Scythic alphabet is unknown ; but the Parthian is 

 found on coins, and has many points of contact with the Siberian. 

 Pallas was divided in opinion between Ancient Greek, Phoenician, and 

 Etrurian. His friend, the philologist Tychsen, favoured a Scythic origin, 

 and found intimate resemblances between the Siberian characters and the 

 Sinaitic, referring the latter to the Scythic invasion of Palestine and 

 Egypt in the time of Pharaoh Hophra. Tychsen's date for the Sinaitic 

 inscriptions is far too low, for it can be proved that the syllabary in 

 which they are written is the parent of a great family of Turanian alpha- 

 bets'. Abel Remusat, calling the Siberian characters Indo-Gothic, 

 derives them from the Devanagari or Sanscrit ; but he also suggests that 

 the Kitan and other northern Asiatic tribes may have created them out of 

 modified Chinese symbols and have passed them on to Corea and Japan^. 

 Rommel allies the Yeniseian writing with that of the Huns found in 

 Hesse. Klaproth regards the system as more European than Asiatic, and 

 imagines that it came in with the Hakas, a Tartar tribe, who derived 

 it either immediately from the B}'zantine missionaries, Cyrillus and 

 Methodius, or mediately through the Kirghis. But time would fail to 

 set in order the many unproved hypotheses concerning the origin of the 

 Siberian documents, hypotheses which, up to the present day, have been 

 entirely barren of results. 



The chief reason for lack of success in interoretine the Siberian in- 



