530 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



clear to us in the light of further study. For the present I think it 

 better to postpone our investigations in such specialized fields. First 

 of all we must clearly determine the nature of the early cultures and 

 define them more exactly than we have yet been able to do. Until 

 then, we should not try to deal with these further questions, important 

 though their solution imdoubtedly is. Before we imdertake to do so, 

 we must learn the true nature of the original relationship among the 

 Austroasiatic, the Austronesian, the Tibeto-Burman, and the Sino-T'ai 

 groups of languages. Then only shall we be in a position to proceed 

 further with our study. 



Should the working-hypotheses suggested here hold good, they will 

 also provide us with a method of drawing fresh deductions as to the 

 early ethnology of Farther India and Indonesia. These deductions 

 will rest upon a foundation similar to that afforded by the hypothesis 

 which Professor Heine-Geldern has already sought to establish. They 

 will likewise give us a new picture of early Japan. According to the 

 old theory, the origin of the Japanese people was to be explained as 

 the result of a fusion of Tungus from the north, of Ainu of uncertain 

 affinities, and of Malays from the south. But now investigations 

 seem to have made it clear that the Japanese culture was already 

 in existence before the period of the Malayan wanderings had com- 

 menced. The Malayan theory has weaknesses in several other 

 respects also. It would seem, indeed, that the question might be 

 far better explained if in place of the Malays we were to put the 

 Yiieh people. For the features which, in both culture and in language, 

 have been regarded as "Malayan" seem rather to indicate the presence 

 in Japan of influences emanating from the Yiieh Culture. Nor can 

 the Tungus theory bo any longer permitted to stand. 



Further discussion of such points as the foregoing would, however, 

 be outside the scope of our present inquiry. I hope, in the course of 

 a cooperative study which is to be undertaken together with a group 

 of speciahsts, to reach a satisfactory explanation of such questions 

 and to obtain for Japan and Farther India also working-hypotheses in 

 harmony with the one which I have set forth above in respect to China. 



Finally, the question goes much further, for it poses problems 

 much more far reaching still. Of these, one is that raised by the 

 existence of numerous parallels between the Central American civiliza- 

 tions on the one hand and those of eastern Asia and Farther India 

 on the other. There has already appeared a whole group of American 

 culture-elements which may have reached America partly from the 

 northern portions of the Asiatic continent and partly through direct 

 contacts with the Chinese coast. All such features must in any case 

 be considered from the point of view which we have been discussing. 

 Their study, thus undertaken, seems lilicly to lead to results of very 

 great importance. 



