74 LIMITATIONS TO THE USE OF ANTHROPOLOGIC DATA. 
has undergone many and important changes. All known camp and vil- 
lage sites, graves, mounds, and ruins belong to that portion of geologic 
time known as the present epoch, and are entirely subsequent to the 
period of the original dispersion as shown by geologic evidence. 
In the study of these antiquities, there has been much unnecessary 
speculation in respect to the relation existing between the people to whose 
existence they attest, and the tribes of Indians inhabiting the country 
during the historic period. 
It may be said that in the Pueblos discovered in the southwestern 
portion of the United States and farther south through Mexico and per- 
haps into Central America tribes are known having a culture quite as 
far advanced as any exhibited in the discovered ruins. In this respect, 
then, there is no need to search for an extra-limital origin through lost 
tribes for any art there exhibited. 
With regard to the mounds so widely scattered between the two oceans, 
it may also be said that mound-building tribes were known in the early 
history of discovery of this continent, and that the vestiges of art dis- 
covered do not excel in any respect the arts of the Indian tribes known 
to history. There is, therefore, no reason for us to search for an extra- 
limital origin through lost tribes for the arts discovered in the mounds 
of North America. 
The tracing of the origin of these arts to the ancestors of known tribes 
or stocks of tribes is more legitimate, but it has limitations which are 
widely disregarded. The tribes which had attained tothe highest culture 
in the southern portion of North America are now well known to belong 
to several different stocks, and, if, for example, an attempt is made to 
connect the mound-builders with the Pueblo Indians, no result beyond 
confusion can be reached until the particular stock of these village peoples 
is designated. 
Again, it is contained in the recorded history of the country that sev- 
eral distinct stocks of the present Indians were mound-builders and the 
wide extent and vast number of mounds discovered in the United States 
should lead us to suspect, at least, that the mound-builders of pre-historic 
times belonged to many and diverse stocks. With the limitations thus 
indicated the identification of mound-building peoples as distinct tribes 
or stocks is a legitimate study, but when we consider the further fact 
now established, that arts extend beyond the boundaries of linguistic 
stocks, the most fundamental divisions we are yet able to make of the 
peoples of the globe, we may more properly conclude that this field prom- 
ises but a meager harvest; but the origin and development of arts and 
industries is in itself a vast and profoundly interesting theme of study, 
and when North American archeology is pursued with this end in view, 
the results will be instructive. 
