PREHISTORIC MAN. IN THE NEW WORLD 
thought to be of American origin. But if the Polynesian 
canoe-men, expert and daring as we know they were, ever 
really reached America, it must have been long after 
civilization there had attained a high stage of develop- 
ment. The civilized portions of America, moreover, were 
not on the coast, where such voyagers would have had to 
land. On the contrary, their centers were far inland, in 
regions separated from the Pacific by long stretches of 
deserts and mountains and tropical forests. The civiliza- 
tion of the Incas, the Mayas, and the Aztecs was wholly 
of native American origin, and it is both needless and 
useless to look for its inspiration anywhere in the Old 
World. 
Most aboriginal American cultures are dead. Yet they 
still live in many elements of our own civilization of the 
present day. They have contributed to it many extremely 
valuable cultivated plants, among them such staples as 
Indian corn and the potato. To them we owe the domesti- 
cation of certain creatures like the llama, still used for 
transport over the lofty Andean passes; the guinea pig, 
invaluable for purposes of experiment in biological labo- 
ratories; and the turkey, in a far more intimate sense than 
the white-headed eagle the national bird of the United 
States. Without the gifts we have received from the 
ancient American peoples, our own civilization would 
lack much of value. 
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