APPENDIX : EI.KPHANT PIPES AND INSCRIBED TABLETS. 297 



the American aborigines, while they leave the problem unsolved, have 

 yet an important bearing upon the interesting questions suggested by 

 this discussion. Learned and careful investigators, both in this country 

 and Europe, have not hesitated to confront biblical chronology with 

 their bold speculations, and a brief statement of some of the more 

 important of these new theories may tend to throw light upon the sub- 

 ject of our inquiry : 



"A vast deal has been written in support of various hypotheses of the migraticMi 

 of the American aborigines from the old continent, and there is hardly a country or 

 a race which has not been assigned the honor of being its progenitor; and to com- 

 plicate matters still more, there have not been wanting high authorities to suggest 

 that the tide of emigration may have set the other way, from America to Asia. 

 Dr. Lapham says: ' I know reasons valid enough and numerous enough to have 

 made the notion of the new world being the eldest of the two a paradox; neverthe- 

 less I know no absolutely conclusive ones.' As the new world, so called, is the oldest 

 geologically, it may prove to lie so ethnologically." * 



"In the classification of Blumenliach, the American Indians are treated as a dis- 

 tinct variety of the human race; but in the three-fold division of mankind laid down 

 by Dr. Latham, they are ranked among the Mongolidif. Other ethnologists also 

 regard them as a branch of the great Mongolian family, which, at a remote period 

 of the world's history, found its way from Asia to the American continent, and 

 there remained for thousands of years, separate from the rest of mankind, ])assing 

 meanwhile through various alternations of barbarism and civilization. Morton, 

 however, the distinguished American ethnologist, and his disciples, Nott and Glid- 

 den, claim for them a distinct origin, one as indigenous to the continent itself as its 

 fauna and flora. "t 



"It may be asserted with some confidence that there is nothing in the physical and 

 mental condition of the aboriginal Americans which requires us to postulate for them 

 a foreign origin. If man was evolved originally from several centers, America as- 

 suredly included one at least; if he sprung from a single pair, then we can even con- 

 ceive that pair to have been first estal)lished in the new world; and the arguments 

 brought forward in support of an Asiatic origin of the American would not lose 

 their point if adduced in favor of an American origin of the Asiatic peoples.":}: 



"Dr. Augustus Le Plongeon is satisfied that Egyj^tian civilization originated on 

 •the American continent, and he is in possession of a vast number of evidences which 

 he believes fully establish this extraordinary theory. One of these is the resem- 

 blance between the Egyptian and the Maya alphabets as derived from the monu- 

 mental remains of the two systems." ^ 



These curious speculations seem to establish the great anti([uity of 

 man in xAmerica, and thus are not unconnected with the scientific 



*New American Cyclopaedia, Vol. IX., ]). 4SS, title "Indians." 



f Chambers' Cyclopa'dia, Vol. V., p. 554, title "Indians." 



}; Encyclop;f dia Britannica, otli edition, p. Szz, title "American Indians." 



^Scieji/ific America>i Supp/emoii, }i.n-aa.ry 31st, 1SS5. 



