1914] Northwestern D6nes and Northeastern Asiatics 165 



The question of food and cooking predicates that of fire-making. 

 S. Muller writes in the work already quoted that a certain traveller 

 named Steller "came to a place where the [native] Americans had but 

 just before dined, but on sight of him were run away. There he found 

 an arrow and a wooden instrument to procure fire made in the same 

 manner as they have them in Kamtschatka".^ 



IX. 



I know perfectly well that the sceptic has long been in wait for me 

 with the remark that such technological and sociological analogies are 

 of little weight in the balance of the serious ethnologist; for, as is well 

 known, the same needs create the same means, Man, placed under 

 similar conditions, will instinctively resort to identical methods of 

 relieving his wants. 



I grant the force of this objection, and freely admit that, while the 

 points of resemblance between American and Asiatic peoples are over- 

 whelmingly convincing to the general reader, because of their very 

 number, I do not see in all those I have already enumerated direct and 

 absolute evidence of a common origin, though past intercourse would 

 seem to be suggested thereby. Some there are, as, for instance, the 

 existence of the fire-drill, which, apart from a similarity of details in 

 its construction, do not prove much more than an identity of needs 

 obviated by the same reasoning animal. Others, as the way of preparing 

 fish by putrefaction, do not seem to answer such an evident human 

 need, and may be considered good evidence in favour of, at least, past 

 intercourse between two different peoples. 



At all events, it cannot be denied that, owing to their number and 

 the nature of many of them, those analogies afi'ord at least a confirma- 

 tion of the argument derived from aboriginal traditions and geographical 

 terminology. 



I shall now proceed to enumerate similarities which have nothing 

 to do with man's needs or environment, purely psychological and socio- 

 logical facts, which are bound to point to a community of race or rela- 

 tions between ancient Asia and America — Palaeo-Asia and America, 

 as I think it is now fashionable to put it. 



I shall, however, commence this section of my paper by treating of 

 a few points, such as the disposing of the dead and others, which may, 

 strictly speaking, be described as holding a middle place between the 



^ S. Muller, 0^. c«7.,p. XLIII. The same traveller also found an underground hut with 

 a store of red salmon "and a sweet herb which is dressed for food in the same manner as 

 in Kamtschatka" {Ibid., ibid.). 



