TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 907 



institution it expresses. In this region there were found Iroquois, Algonquins, 

 Dakotas, separate in language, and yet whose social life was regulated hy the 

 matriarchal totem structure. May it not he inferred from such a state of things, 

 that social institutions form a deeper-lying element in man than language or even 

 phvsical race-type? This is a prohlem which presents itself for serious discussion 

 when the evidence can be brought more completely together. 



It is obvious that in this speculation, as in other problems now presenting 

 themselves in anthropology, the question of the antiquity of man lies at the basis. 

 Of late no great progress has been made toward fixing a scale of calculation of the 

 human period, but the ai'guments as to time required for alterations in valley- 

 levels, changes of fauna, evolution of races, languages, and culture, seem to 

 converge more conclusively than ever toward a human period short indeed as a 

 fraction of geological time, but long as compared with historical or chronological 

 time. While, however, it is felt that length of time need not debar the anthro- 

 pologist from hypotheses of development and migration, there is more caution as 

 to assumptions of millions of years where no arithmetical basis exists, and less 

 tendency to treat everything prehistoric as necessarily of extreme antiquity, 

 such as, for instance, the Swiss lake-dwellings and the Central American temples. 

 There are certain problems of American anthropology which are not the less 

 interesting for involving no considerations of high antiquity ; indeed, they have the 

 advantage of being within the check of history, though not themselves belonging 

 to it. 



Humboldt's argument as to traces of Asiatic influence in Mexico is one of these. 

 The four ages in the Aztec picture-writings, ending with catastrophes of the four 

 elements, earth, fire, air, water, compared by him with the same scheme among 

 the Banyans of Surat, is a strong piece of evidence which would become yet stronger 

 if the Hindu book could be found from which the account is declared to have been 

 taken. Not less cogent is his comparison of the zodiacs or calendar-cycles of 

 Mexico and Central America with those of Eastern Asia, such as that by which 

 the Japanese reckon the Sixty-year cycle by combining the elements seriatim with 

 the twelve animals, Mouse, Bull, Tiger, Hare, &c. ; the present year is, I suppose, 

 the second water-ape year, and the time of day is the goat-hour. Humboldt's case 

 may be reinforced by the consideration of the magical employment of these zodiacs 

 in "the Old and New World. The description of a Mexican astrologer, sent for to 

 make the arrangements for a marriage by comparing the zodiac animals of the 

 birthdays of bride and bridegroom, might have been written almost exactly of the 

 modern Kalmuks ; and in fact it seems connected in origin with similar rules in 

 our own books of astrology. Magic is of great value in thus tracing communication, 

 direct or indirect, between distant nations. The power of lasting and travelling- 

 which it possesses may be instanced by the rock-pictures from the sacred Roches 

 Percees of Manitoba, sketched by Dr. Dawson, and published in his father's 

 volume on ' Fossil Man,' with the proper caution that the pictures, or some of 

 them, may be modern. Besides the rude pictures of deer and Indians and their 

 huts, one sees with surprise a pentagram more neatly drawn than that defective one 

 which let Mephistopheles pass Faust's threshold, though it kept the demon in when 

 he had got there. Whether the Indians of Manitoba learnt the magic figure from 

 the white man, or whether the white man did it himself in jest, it proves a line of 

 intercourse stretching back 2,500 years to the time when it was first drawn as a 

 geometrical diagram of the school of Pythagoras. To return to Humboldt's argu- 

 ment, if there was communication from Asia to Mexico before the Spanish Con- 

 quest, it ought to have brought other things, and no things travel more easily than 

 games. I noticed some years ago that the Aztecs are described by the old Spanish 

 writers as playing a game called patotti, where they moved stones on the squares- 

 of a cross-shaped mat, according to the throws of beans marked on one side. The- 

 description minutely corresponds with the Hindu game of pachisi, played in like 

 manner with cowries instead of beans ; this game, which is an early variety of 

 backgammon, is well known in Asia, whence it seems to have found its way into 

 America. From Mexico it passed into Sonora and Zacatecas, much broken down 

 but retaining its name, and it may be traced still further into the game of plum- 



