226 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 63 



peninsulas, continents, or archipelagos — farthest removed from 

 cultural influences from temperate or tropical climes, that we find 

 the lowest culture in other parts of the world. Cf. also Furlong, g, 5. 



The more isolated of the two tribes of Canoe Indians should on 

 this score have preserved better the earlier culture, and it is just the 

 more isolated, the Yahgans and apparently the West Patagonian 

 Alacaluf too, who have the slightly less advanced culture in Fuegia. 



The evidence grouped under the above four heads seems accumu- 

 lative and convergent, although of coui*se far from being demonstra- 

 tive. As far as it goes, it points to the Fuegian Canoe Indians as 

 being, not cultural degenerates, but survivals, in the main unchanged, 

 of a very early, and perhaps the earliest, aboriginal South American 

 culture. 



B. In what cultural relation do the Fuegians stand to peoples of 

 very low culture in Indo-Oceanica and elsewhere ? 



There seems to be no adequate ground for doubtuig that these 

 latter peoples, or most of them, are themselves in the main cultural 

 survivals, not cultural degenerates. It is possible, for instance, that 

 the Tasmanian represented a more or less disintegrated culture. 

 Then, too, we know, for example, that most of the Negritos have 

 acquired manv elements from neighboring tiibes. Moreover, time, 

 isolation, and var\dng environment and needs have inevitably wrought 

 some changes. But, apart from these exceptions or possil)le excep- 

 tions, we have very good reasons for regarding the Old World primi- 

 tives as fundamentally and in the main the conservers of an ancient 

 culture long outgrown by more progressive peoples. 



Between this primitive Old World culture and the Fuegian there is 

 practical equality of development or want of development. ' In addi- 

 tion, there is a noticeable parallelism or resemblance, a resemblance 

 even more mteresting in what is lacking than in what is present, and 

 even more patent in the psychical than in the material fields (cf., 

 e. g., H. Ling Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, London, 1890; W. 

 Schmidt, Die Stellung der Pygmaenvolker u. s. w., Stuttgart, 1910; 

 A. LeRoy, Les Pygmees, Tours, 1905 ca.; Skeat and Blagden, Pagan 

 races of the Malay Peninsula, 2 vols., London, 1906; C. G. and B. Z. 

 Sehgniami, Veddas, Cambridge, 1911). Viewing this parallelism and 

 resemblance, not in itself alone, wliich would be taking sides iji the 

 convergence controversy, but in the light of the probabilities against 

 major degeneration on the part either of the Fuegians or of the Old 

 World primitives, we seem to have good grounds for suspecting that 

 both' groups have preser\'ed faiily well an earlier conmion culture, 

 and that both are, not unchanged, but only superficially changed, 

 survivals from a common cultural ancestry. 



