MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
have been performed. But no evidence whatever exists 
to indicate the presence of vessels using sails in the regions 
of southeastern Asia until about the beginning of the 
Christian Era. The evidence against it, on the other 
hand, is plentiful and, it would seem, decisive. 
The great Polynesian migration, from the East Indian 
Archipelago to the islands of the Pacific, is now thought 
to have begun sometime about A. D. 100. It did not reach 
the eastern Pacific until some six centuries later. This 
movement depended wholly upon the use of sailing- 
canoes, and probably commenced not long after the latter 
had become known. 
Again, the Chinese began rather early to keep copious 
records of all sorts, yet these say nothing whatever of 
sailing craft until as late as the third century 4. D. 
The Japanese, who have also been mentioned as possi- 
ble importers of the Old World culture to America, learned 
the use of the sail from the Chinese, but employed it very 
little until about the year A. D. 1000. 
The great American civilizations were founded ages 
before this. The Mayas and Peruvians had already 
reached a high degree of development long before the 
commencement of the Christian Era. 
It is true that Asiatic junks have been blown across the 
relatively narrow North Pacific more than once during 
the past two or three hundred years. Yet there is no sign 
that their crews ever succeeded in the slightest degree in 
spreading their civilization among the American Indians. 
There have been preserved a few traditions of invasions 
by sea along the northwestern coast of South America, 
just where, as we have seen, the early Spaniards found the 
sail in use. It is quite needless, however, to suppose that 
these were anything more than raids by canoe from other 
regions farther up or down the same coast. 
Statements in Polynesian legends, again, have been 
interpreted as referring to visits to the American continent. 
Also certain food-plants in the Pacific islands have been 
[350] 
