20 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 60 



Accepting the view that America was peopled from the Old World 

 by way of Bering Strait, it follows that the culture 

 Culture Relations introduced would be that of the Arctic, and, so far as 

 observed, no other than primitive forms of native cul- 

 ture have ever reached the shores of Bering Sea. All American cul- 

 ture is classed as neolithic, but the range of achievement is extremely 

 wide, and as we pass into the south it takes forms so diversified and 

 extraordinary that the inquiry is frequently raised as to whether the 

 Arctic gateway has been the only means of admission to ancient 

 America. That the civilized nations of the Old World have never 

 been in intimate relations with the tribes of the New World is ap- 

 parent from the fact that so far as the material traces show pre- 

 Columbian American culture was of strictly Stone Age types. The 

 aborigines were without Old World beasts of burden, w^heeled ve- 

 hicles, and sail-rigged craft — essentials of the civilized state; they 

 had no cattle, sheep, or goats — potent factors in the development of 

 Old World sedentary life: they had little knowledge of iron or the 

 smelting of ores — essentials in the development of civilization; no 

 keystone arch — a principal requirement of successful building; no 

 wheel or glaze in the potter's art; no well-developed j^honetic alpha- 

 bet — the stepping stone from barbarism to civilization. Cattle, a 

 civilizing agency of much importance in the Old World, could not 

 have survived a long voyage, and the calendar, a device of the priest- 

 craft, might not readily be transferred from shore to shore by 

 occasional or chance wayfarers, but it would appear that the wheel 

 as a means of transportation might readily appeal to the most primi- 

 tive mind. That no extended contact with the civilized peoples of 

 the Old World occurred in pre-Columbian times is strongly suggested 

 by the fact that this device was unknown in America, except possibly 

 as a toy. It appears in no pictographic manuscript or sculpture, the 

 highest graphic achievements of the race. Charnay obtained from 

 an ancient cemetery at Tenenepanco, Mexico, a number of toy 

 chariots of terra cotta, presumably buried with the body of a child, 

 some of which retained their wheels (fig. 7).^ The possibility that 

 these toys are of post-Discovery manufacture must be taken into 

 account, especially since mention is made of the discovery of brass 

 bells in the same cemetery Avith the toys. 



Have we, then, any trustworthy evidence in the whole range of pro- 

 historic material culture of the introduction into America from 

 transoceanic sources of elements of culture other than those which 

 might have arrived with migrating peoples by way of Bering Strait? 

 As the continents stand to-day, and considering primitive means of 

 migration, there seems small chance of the arrival of wayfarers in 



* Charnay, Ancient Cities of the New World, p. 174. 



