594 



NATURE 



[January 27, 19 16 



the mind of the ancient American sculptor between 

 the pictures of the elephant (b and c) and that of the 

 macaw (a). Thus he provided the modern American 

 ethnologist with an additional argument for refusing 

 to admit that the sculptures h and c, as well as that 

 which I reproduced in Nature of November 25, and 

 now repeat (Fig. 2), cannot have been intended for 

 anything else than an elephant. Never having seen 

 an elephant, and not being aware of its size, no doubt 

 the Maya artist conceived it to be some kind of mon- 

 strous macaw ; and his portraits of the two creatures 

 mutually influenced one another. The geometrical 

 pattern around the macaw's eye is an excellent con- 

 ventialisation of the peculiar marking of the 

 Central American macaw (Fig.> 3) : the pale area 

 surrounding its eye occupies approximately an area 

 relatively corresponding to the Indian elephant's 

 pinna. The ear-ring often depicted (in Indian draw- 

 ings) over the auditory meatus gives it an eye-like 

 appearance. Is it any won- 

 r der, then, that the Maya 



artist should have taken the 

 elephant's meatus (in a pic- 

 ture) for its eye, and have 

 confused its pinna with the 

 pale area on the macaw's 

 head? Therefore, it was a 

 natural thing to use the same 

 Fig. 3.-The Central American Convention for representing it 

 Macaw. as he had done m the 



case of the macaw. But 

 the macaw's scroll was derived from the elephant- 

 design. These and several other considerations, when 

 the facts are set forth and examined in detail, as I 

 have done in my memoir, make every stage in the 

 history of the confusion so transparently clear that 

 one can reconstruct the psychology of it with the 

 utmost confidence. It is equally certain that the scroll 

 below the ear, as well as the tree-like appendages above 

 the head (shown in Fig. i, c), are parts of the 

 conventional waves breaking around the sea-elephant 

 type of the Indian " Makara," which was the com- 

 monest form of the elephant spread abroad by the 

 seamen of southern India, whence the great migra- 

 tions started. This is admirably demonstrated also 

 in the Scotch and Scandinavian pictures of elephants. 

 The Copan sculptor has provided the elephant with 

 a new ear (Fig. i, c), also modelled on the Makara's 

 ear, and provided with a characteristically Cambodian 

 pendant. If c was meant to be a macaw, why was it 

 given a mammalian ear? 



It is significant that the American ethnologists who 

 entertain the macaw-hypothesis do not refer to the 

 perfect example, which I have used (Fig. 2), but only 

 to the cruder, damaged remains of the other Copan 

 elephant (Fig. i, c), in which the compromising 

 curbaned-rider and his elephant-goad, as well as the 

 distinctive profile of the Indian elephant's head, have 

 been destroyed. In this sculpture also the artist was 

 influenced to a greater degree than in the more perfect 

 head (Fig. 2) by the macaw-design, and instead of 

 restricting the geometrical pattern, as in the latter, to 

 the area of the pinna, encircled the eye with it {c\. 

 This occurs in a more striking form in the glyph (&), 

 to which Prof. Tozzer refers. In other respects, how- 

 ever, this also represents an unmistakable elephant. 



Prof. Tozzer argues that Bancroft's drawings do not 

 represent elephants, but the long-nosed god B. But 

 the "long-nosed god" of the old codices is as un- 

 mistakable an elephant as the Copan sculpture is. 

 As Prof. Stempell remarked, in reference to it (see 

 my first letter), no zoologist can have any doubt that 

 it was the artist's intention to represent an elephant 

 — or, as I would prefer to put it, to copy the drawing 



NO. 2413, VOL. 96] 



of an elephant. In this case again the method of 

 conventionalising the elephant, and especially his tusk, 

 is a close parallel to the Cambodian prototype. 



As to the so-called "elephant mound" and "elephant 

 pipes," I may say that in my memoir I have not 

 based any part of the argument upon them. If they 

 are genuine, they are of trifling value as corrobora- 

 tion, in comparison with the consideration that the 

 whole of the legends centred around the rain-gods of 

 India and Mexico (Nature, December 16) witness 

 to the truth of the identification of the "long-nosed 

 god B" as the elephant of Indra, who has been con- 

 fused with Indra himself. If the pipes are forgeries 

 — and I am not unaware of the literature relating to 

 the point raised by Prof. Tozzer — the maker of them 

 must have been one of the most remarkable archaeolo- 

 gists America has yet produced. 



I may add, in conclusion, that the evidence pro- 

 vided by these American pictures of the elephant is 

 merely one link in the chain of connection between 

 the early civilisations of the Old World and the New, 

 which my collaborators and I are now putting to- 

 gether. It will be so strong that it can never be 

 broken. 



Out of the vast mass of proofs which we have now 

 accumulated I selected the elephant-story for publica- 

 tion in Nature, because the criticism that invariably is 

 levelled at most of our other evidence cannot be used 

 in this case. It is usually argued that even the most 

 complex designs and the most fantastic customs and 

 beliefs may be invented independently the one of the 

 other in widely separated localities. But even the 

 Maya artist, skilled as he was in conventionalising, 

 could not invent the elephant, even by making a 

 grotesque caricature of a macaw. 



Since I posted the foregoing comments on Prof. 

 Tozzer's letter, the Editor has kindly submitted Dr. 

 Spinden's letter to me. With the previous instalment 

 of my letter, so as to put the critics' case fairly before 

 readers of Nature, I sent the same three of Dr. 

 Spinden's drawings which he has now submitted to 

 illustrate his letter. My letter in Nature of Decem- 

 ber 16, as well as my reply to Prof. Tozzer, cover 

 most of the issues raised by Dr. Spinden. 



These two distinguished interpreters of< Central 

 American art can decide between themselves what the 

 Yucatan "heads with projecting snouts" were really 

 intended to represent. 



As for the real intentions of the Copan artists, I 

 am quite content to leave it to the readers of Nature to 

 decide for themselves whether the sculpture reproduced 

 on November 25, p. 340, and here repeated (Fig. 2), 

 was or was not meant to depict an elephant with his 

 Indian rider. If further corroboration is wanted, I 

 might refer them to the manner of representing such 

 a rider and his head-dress in early Indian and Cam- 

 bodian sculptures ; and as for the spiral ornament, 

 which probably originated in the Indian representa- 

 tions of Makara, I might direct attention to the Cam- 

 bodian and Chinese variations of the spiral, all of 

 which reappear in Mexico and Central America. I 

 would especially refer to Laufer's monograph on 

 "Jade" (Chicago Field Museum of Natural Historj-, 

 1912, pi. xliii.), where a perfect prototype of the Copan 

 spiral is represented upon a jade ornament of the Han 

 dynasty. 



Dr. Spinden's refusal to admit that the Copan 

 sculptures represent elephants becomes more intel- 

 ligible when one reads the statement in his monograph 

 on "Maya Art" that he "does not care to dignify 

 by refutation the numerous empty theories of ethnic 

 connections between Central America and the Old 

 World" (p. 231). This is the attitude of mind not 



