A CURIOUS AINO TOY. 5 



earliest Egyptian wheel had four or six spokes. Professor 

 Sayce shows that the Hittite chariots had wheels of four 

 spokes. Dr. Schliemann discovered toy wheels at Mycenae 

 of four spokes, and the Swiss Lake Dwellers had wheel- 

 like ornaments of four spokes. In Asia Minor rough 

 disks of wood (such as these bird toys are provided with) 

 have served as wheels for their vehicles from time imme- 

 morial. 



With the absence of awheel in savagery it is impossible 

 to conceive of a low savage race like the Ainos originat- 

 ing a wheeled object of any kind. It is quite easy to 

 understand how the Ainos might have derived the idea 

 of this toy from the Yakuts in Siberia, as Kamschatka 

 and the Kuriles, or Eastern Siberia and the Island of 

 Saghalien formed avenues of communication with Yezo. 

 Did the idea of the toy originate with the Yakuts or 

 were they in turn indebted to their Turkish progenitors 

 in the past for this odd plaything? We are told by philol- 

 ogists that the Yakuts are a distinct Turkish stock pre- 

 serving many of the Turkish characteristics so strongly 

 that, according to Peschel, it has been said, though with 

 some exaggeration he admits, "that an Osmanli from Con- 

 stantinople can make himself intelligible to a Yakut on 

 the Yena, but it is certain that the brunches of the Turk- 

 ish language separated by this enormous distance are 

 strangely alike." Is it possible that the remote ancestors 

 of the Yakuts in Turkey derived the idea of this toy from 

 the same people whose ancient villages in Fayum have been 

 brought so clearly to light by Mr. Petrie? Certainly, unless 

 it can be shown that any kind of an object provided with 

 wheels originated among a savage people, it does not seem 

 an absurd conjecture to suggest the common origin of this 

 toy even among peoples so widely removed in space and 

 time as those above mentioned. 



