494, FOOD PLANTS OF ANCIENT AMERICA. 



inferior intelligence and resourcefulness of the aboriginal peoples, but 

 it seems that one tribe or another had domesticated all the American 

 animals likely to be of value to civilized man; certain it is that Euro- 

 peans, with three centuries of opportunity, have not added to the num- 

 ber or uses, or extended the range of any American animals, except 

 the turke}^ and guinea pig. On the other hand, the American Indians 

 have not failed to appreciate the superiority of the domesticated ani- 

 mals brought by Europeans, and the more enterprising tribes have 

 adopted the hen, cat, pig, goat, sheep, cow, and horse. Indeed, even 

 nonagricultural Indians of our Western States have taken kindly to 

 the keeping of herds of sheep and cattle, and have thus assumed the 

 pastoral state, illustrating, perhaps, the manner in which, in ancient 

 times, domesticated animals spread more rapidly than cultivated plants 

 from the agricultural East into the Mediterranean region. 



Nomadic hunters or fruit eaters would not be likely to domesticate 

 anything themselves, but offered the choice of plants or animals already 

 thoroughly tamed and improved by selection, they are more likely to 

 take the animals first as requiring a less radical change of food and 

 habits of life. The milk and flesh of their herds would still be sup- 

 plemented by the game, honey, wild fruits, and other edible plants 

 which might be encountered in searching for pasture for their flocks, 

 after the manner of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Dates, figs, 

 and other fruit trees might receive some attention from such wander- 

 ers, but the more successful they miglit become as shepherds the less 

 likely thej^ would be to take up the planting of cereals or of other her- 

 baceous crops, which, in the absence of fences, would be appropriated 

 by their animals before the owners could make even an initial experi- 

 ment. It is accordingly significant that the origin of the agricultures 

 and civilizations of the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates is no longer 

 sought by ethnologists with Semitic shepherds or more northern peo- 

 ples, but with a seafaring race which has been traced to southern 

 Arabia, and whose language has been found to have analogies with 

 the primitive Malayo-Polynesian tongue of Madagascar." 



OTHER INDICATIONS OF TRANS-PACIFIC COMMUNICATION. 



The American origin of agriculture could ask for no more striking 

 testimony from Old World archaeology and ethnology than the recently 

 discovered fact that the primitive culture race of Babylonia, which 

 brought "letters, astronomy, agriculture, navigation, architecture, and 



«Keane (Man, Past and Present, p. 250 et seq. ) considers the language of Mada- 

 gascar to be Polynesian rather than Malayan, and holds that the similarities between 

 Madagascar and Arabia are not due, as has been suj^posed, to a recent contact 

 during the Mohammedan period, but date back to the ancient Minseans and Sabfeans, 

 maritime peoples who had commerce with India, and who are now supposed to have 

 worked the prehistoric mines of the South African "Oi^hir." 



