630 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



batants, for their laws forbade a troglodyte to strike a woman. Their 

 food consisted of meat of their herd, milk, and blood and of bones 

 which were crushed and mixed with meat so as to form a kind of hash 

 which was wrapped in raw untanned skins and roasted. Butchers 

 were regarded as unclean persons. They slaughtered only old and 

 sickly animals for food. They did not regard human beings as their 

 ancestors but looked upon the cattle and sheep which furnished them 

 food as their parents. They went nude or dressed in skins. Those 

 who were too old to work committed suicide by hanging themselves 

 by the neck to the tails of wild bulls, who dragged them to death. 

 Cripples and those afflicted with incurable diseases were put to death. 

 Herodotus says of the Ethiopian troglodytes that they were swift 

 runners, fed on serpents and lizards, and had no real language but 

 screeched like bats or twittered like birds." l 



The highest form of cliff habitation in the New World is the cliff- 

 pueblo which is practically a village built in a large natural cave. 

 When the cliff dwellers of Colorado had arrived at such perfection in 

 masonry that they could construct a village like the Cliff Palace of 

 the Mesa Verde National Park they had progressed far beyond the 

 primitive cave house. This was the highest and most characteristic 

 American form of stone cliff dwelling north of Mexico and its counter- 

 part is not known in the Old World. 



There are true cliff houses of this type in Asia as well as in Amer- 

 ica. The examples which have been chosen for illustration of this 

 point are cliff dwellings situated in Shansi, the northern Province of 

 China (pi. 9, fig. 1). The cliff temple of the Mienshan Mountains, 

 one of many in that region, lies in a great mountain cave which re- 

 minded Boerschmann - of the " Cave of Winds " behind Niagara 

 Falls. Although there is no architectural resemblance between this 

 temple and a cliff dwelling in Arizona (pi. 9, fig. 2), both are con- 

 structed under an overhanging cliff and it is interesting to note that 

 the country in which both occur is semiarid. A necessity for shelter is 

 not so evident in the Chinese cliff houses as in Colorado, but the 

 same thought is apparent in the choice of the sites of these cliff 

 houses. They show that in localities thousands of miles apart, where 

 geological conditions favor the custom of constructing villages in 

 natural caverns, there these structures have been found. It must be 



1 It is instructive to note the evidences of totemism and matriarchial descent that 

 crop out in the above account. If we regard the Berbers or Tibbus as the lineal de- 

 scendants of the cliff dwellers of North Africa, and the pueblos as living representatives 

 of American cliff dwellers, several other common characteristics can be traced to a 

 common influence. 



Dawkins says that " Dr. Livingstone alludes in his recent letters to the vast caves of 

 Central Africa, which offer refuge to whole tribes with their cattle and household stuff." 



2 Ernst Boerschmann, Architektur und Kulturstudien in China. Zeit. f. Ethnol. 42. J. 

 3. 4. 1910. I am indebted to Herr Boerschmann for the use of his photograph of this 

 temple. 



