COOPER] BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TRIBES OF TIERRA DEL FUEGO 227 



The most obvious objection that might be raised against such a 

 provisional conclusion is that based on the notorious instabiHty of 

 culture. This objection, however, would have more weight were we 

 considering peoples of somewhat more advanced culture. But both 

 archeology and ethnology give good evidence that very low culture 

 may be as stable, or even more stable, than physical types; for the 

 available archeological and paleontological evidence shows pretty 

 clearly that the earher paleohthic peoples remained nearlj^ stationary 

 in culture for periods measurable by millenia; while, as examples from 

 ethnology, we may instance the somatologically distinct Semang, 

 Sakai, and Jakun, all three at a nearly isoplane culture, or the various 

 groups of Indo-Oceanic Negritos, who, separated from one another 

 for many centuries at least and modified supei-ficially by cultural 

 accretions from neighboring tribes, still preserve in the main a com- 

 mon inherited material and psychical culture (cf . the cultural sections 

 in Skeat and Blagden, and in W. Schmidt, 11. c). 



C. What bearing on the question has the Kulturkreis theory ? 



For an outline of Dr. Graebner's position, see Author Bibliography, 

 imder Graebner, a and d. Fathers Schmidt and Hestermann con- 

 sider that their three earliest Indo-Oceanic strata, differing somewhat 

 from Dr. Graebner's analysis, have been fused to a certain extent in 

 southern South America, including Fuegia. 



Dr. Graebner at first called attention chiefly to the skin mantle, 

 the beehive hut, and half-hitch coiled basketry as being common to 

 Fuegia and the Tasmanian and southeastern Australian areas. Later 

 some other resemblances were noted by Fathers Schmidt and Hester- 

 mann Q), 115-117). 



These resemblances in themselves might be the result of conver- 

 gence rather than of genetic relationship; but, the advocates of the 

 theory emphasize, they need to be viewed in the light of the sunilar 

 stratification of cultures that prevails over ihewhole of Indo-Oceanica 

 and the whole of South America. That such a parallel stratification 

 exists, notwdthstanding very considerable interlocking, overlapping, 

 and disintegration of the several strata or cycles, especially in South 

 America, is main tamed by Dr. Graebner {a, h, and d), by Dr. Foy, and 

 byFathere W. Schmidt and Hestermann (cf. also E. Nordenskiold) . 



The contrary view, so far as South America is concerned, is taken 

 in a detailed criticism by Dr. Krause, and on more general grounds by 

 Prof. Dixon and Dr. Krickeberg (163-164) . See also R. H. Lowie, On 

 the prmciple of convergence in ethnology, m Jour. Amer. foTJc-lore, 

 1912, XXV, 24-42; F. Boas, in Science, New York, 1911, n. s. xxxiv, 

 804-810. 



But as yet a thorough and adequate treatment of the whole ques- 

 tion of South Ajneiican cultural stratification in its relation to Indo- 



