28 



BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[bull. 60 



Zealand and the Easter Islands or by sailing around Africa and 

 across the Atlantic. 



It has often been remarked that the faces of modeled and sculp- 

 tured figures in southern Mexico have a suggestive Mongolian cast, 



and the eyes in many 

 cases are decidedly 

 oblique. A pottery 

 head from Vera Cruz, 

 shown in figure 15, 

 illustrates this char- 

 acteristic. Oaxaca, on 

 the Pacific side, has 

 supplied many strik- 

 ing examples of this 

 peculiarity, and it is 

 often remarked that 

 the sculptured stele 

 of (iruatemala and 

 Honduras present 

 suggestions of facial 

 and other analogies 

 with the sculptures of 

 the Far East. 



Certain very re- 



FiG. 15. A lerra-cotta head with oblique eyes, Vera Cruz, Mexico. 



markable Chinese axes of bronze are published by de Mortillet.^ 

 One of these shown in figure 10 is described in the following lan- 

 guage : 



It very nuicli resomblos the polished stone axes of a type with tonsne so 

 common in Cocliin Cliina, and wliicli have also been found in Cambodia, in the 

 Laos, in Burma, in the Malay Peninsula, in Malaysia, in Tonkin, and in 

 Yun-nan in the south of China. . . . The round hole which is found in the 

 middle of the blade does not appear to have been utilized. It rather seems to 

 be a relic of a more ancient form, perhaps in stone, destitute of the rectangular 

 <)])enings just referred to and in which the bands fastening the ax to the handle 

 had to pass through a circular opening easier to pierce. Polished stone axes 

 with tongue and round hole have also been described in North 

 America, particularly in the south and southeast of the 

 Uuited States. South America, Ecuador. I'eru, and IJoIivia 

 have also yielded axes thus pierced, of stone, copper, and bronze. 



Another ancient Chinese ax of the same type as the preceding but 

 larger and embellished Avith incised fretwork is shown in figure 16, 

 a, h, and two examples of American axes of analogous form are 

 shown in figure 17, c/, 1>. The most striking analogies in these cases 

 are the occurrence of an ornamental figure or inscription on the stem 



[Peruvian Analo- 

 gies] 



1 De Mortillet, L'Age du Bronze en Chine, p. 403. 



