356 



NATURE 



{Aug. 24, 1876 



unsatisfactory result. Fortunately there were some solid 

 men at the congress who were able to perceive the utter 

 futility of discussions of this kind. M. de Rosny, for 

 example, had frequent occasion to recall the attention 

 of the congress to its main purpose, and to remind 

 the members that while we knew comparatively so 

 little of the American aborigines and of their remains, 

 it was a waste of time and energy to discuss the civilisa- 

 tion of any other country. " Our duty," he said, " is 

 to establish formally, against all the crotchets which 

 have hitherto infested the domain of Americanism, a 

 method. Every hypothesis which is not based on certain 

 proofs is of no scientific value ; " and Dr. Dally justly re- 

 marked that there is no special " Americanist method," 

 but that there is a scientific method, whose rules are quite 

 sufficient for this new department of science. " No docu- 

 ments," Dr. Dally continued, " are adduced in support of 

 these connections between the Old and the New Worlds ; 

 we must, therefore, provisionally consider them as non- 

 existent. All the alleged analogies are only vain appear- 

 ances. The presumptions are, on the contrary, against 

 the hypotheses of an analogy or a filiation between the 

 religions of Mexico or of Peru and those of Eastern 

 Asia. The solution of the question is that the Americans 

 are neither Indians, Phoenicians, Chinese, nor Europeans ; 

 they are Americans." "All these hypotheses," M. de 

 Rosny remarked again, "of Asiatic influences in America 

 are very piquant : it is the proof which is always wanting." 

 What a pity a few men like M. de Rosny and Dr. Dally 

 were not appointed beforehand to decide on what papers 

 were deserving of the serious attention of the congress ! 

 However, wisdom comes by experience. The fairly mode- 

 rate paper on Fu-Sang, by M. Lucien Adam, might have 

 been admitted, as might also that of M. Gravier on the 

 Deighton Rock inscription, but we are sure that all the 

 papers thus admitted could have been published in one- 

 third of the space of these two volumes. 



M. L^vy-Bmg brought much learning to bear on the 

 Grave Creek inscription for the purpose of proving it to 

 be Phoenician, with the usual unsatisfactory result, we 

 are sure, on all unbiased listeners. Perhaps the most 

 deliberate and cold-blooded attempt to prove an intimate 

 connection between America and Old World civilisation 

 was made by Prof. Campbell, of the Theological College, 

 Montreal, in his paper, " The Traditions of the Ancient 

 Races of Peru and Mexico identified with those of the 

 Historical Peoples of the Old World." His object is to 

 prove that the Peruvians and Mexicans had " their origi- 

 nal home on the banks of the Nile, and that their tradi- 

 titions relate primarily to an early national existence either 

 in Egypt or the neighbouring region of Palestine ; " and 

 besides various other conclusions, " that there is the 

 strongest reason for finding the affinities of the civilised 

 races of ancient America, not among the Turanian or 

 Semitic, but among the Aryan or Indo-European families 

 of the world." This is rushing to a conclusion with a 

 vengeance, and some of the more sober members of the 

 congress had good reason to animadvert on the " haste 

 to conclude '' manifested by many of the Americanists, 

 and the want of patience to wait for more light. An idea 

 of the value of the " facts " on which Prof. Campbell 

 builds his sweeping conclusions may be gathered from 

 the following extracts : — " Animal worship prevailed in 

 Peru, and it is worthy of note that flies, called cuspi (a 

 word of the same origin as the Semitic zebub, the Latin 

 ■uespa, and the English wasp) were offered in sacrifice, 

 thus recalling the Baal-zebub of the Phtli-sheth." " In 

 Manco I find the first monarch of universal history, the 

 Egyptian Menes, the Indian Menu, the Greek Minos, the 

 Phrygian Manis, the Lydian Macon, the German Mannus, 

 the Welsh Metiev, the Chinese Min^-ti, and the Algon- 

 quin Manitou " — and so on through endless ingenuities. Is 

 not this comparative philology playing at "high jinks?" 

 and is it not one more striking proof that to trust to lan- 



guage alone in questions of ethnography is to trust to a 

 chain of sand ? 



While the Baron de Bretton's paper on the Origins of 

 the Peoples of America contains some suggestions of 

 value, it also, like the one just mentioned, is disfigured by 

 many etymological fantasies. It is quite legitimate to 

 try to show that America may have been in part peopled 

 from Europe, but to base such a theory on arguments like 

 the following makes one almost despair of the progress 

 of scientific method : — " The first invaders from whom, 

 according to the tradition of the Toltecs, that people were 

 descended, were called Tans, Dans (Danes !). Their 

 god, Teoti, strongly resembles linguistically the Greek 

 iheos, Latin deus" &c. The temples of this god were 

 called tescabli, " a word which comes from Greek theos 

 and Celtic ca-cas, house." A god, Votati, is probably 

 IVodin, and Thara, Thor-as Asa-thor. Azlan, the sup- 

 posed original home of the Aztecs, is, according to Baron 

 de Bretton, evidently Scandinavian Asaland, country of 

 the Ases, of the Asiatics, of the Aztecs themselves. 

 What answer can be made to such etymological leger- 

 demain ? 



The Abbd Petitot has been for many years a zealous 

 missionary in the Athabasca-Mackenzie region of North 

 America, and has made some valuable contributions to 

 a knowledge of the geography of that region ; not con- 

 tent with this, however, he is eager through the medium 

 of language to prove the unity of origin of the human 

 race. He argues that because certain North American 

 Indian words have a more or less distant resemblance to 

 Chinese, Malay, Tamul, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Japanese, 

 German, English, &c. , therefore all these are descended from 

 one common stock. We shall give only one specimen of 

 the Abba's easy-going comparisons: English each, Y^^ 

 tells us, is the same word as Hebrew isch. He gives 

 pages of this sort of thing. It is easily done ; any 

 ignoramus with the dictionary of a dozen different lan- 

 guages before him could do it. The " Tower of Babel " 

 is the Abbd's starting-point in tracing the diversities of 

 human speech. 



It seems to us a pity that the reputation of an interna- 

 tional congress that might do much good should be 

 endangered by puerilities such as those we have referred 

 to. We hope that in this their first meeting the froth has 

 come to the surface, and that in future meetings means 

 will be taken to prevent middle-age word-puzzles being 

 foisted on the congress. 



The two volumes, however, contain some papers of real 

 value ; these we have space only to name. Prof. Luciano 

 Cordeiro's (of Coimbra) paper on the part taken by the 

 Portuguese in the discovery of America is of considerable 

 interest, and shows great research. A paper by M. Paul 

 Broca on two series of crania from ancient Indian 

 sepulchres in the neighbourhood of Bogota is a model of 

 careful observation and reasoning. M. J. Ballet, of Gua- 

 daloupe, has a long memoir on the Caribs, full of infor- 

 mation. A paper by M. Julien Vinson on the Basque 

 language and the American languages is able and 

 scholarly and cautious. He shows that in structure and 

 grammar they have many points of resemblance, but that 

 on this ground there is no reason whatever for concluding 

 that they or their speakers have a common origin. Other 

 papers of value are Dr. Cornilhac's on the Anthropology 

 of the Antilles, Mr. Francis A, Allen's on the Origin of 

 the Primitive Civilisation of the New World, an elaborate 

 paper, the result of great research, and M. Oscar Comet- 

 tant's paper on music in America before the discovery of 

 Columbus. 



On the whole, we cannot think that these two volumes 

 show that this International Congress of Americanists 

 has done much in furtherance of the object for which it 

 met, and we shall look with interest for the results of the 

 second congress, which will meet at Luxembourg in 

 September, 1877. 



