52 SCIENCE 
tral America and Mexico, where indeed he 
proceeds to show their presence. 
In respect to most of the evidence thus 
brought forward for South and Central 
America, the same criticisms may be made 
as in the case of North America, and in 
many instances with added force. Here, 
as there, the mutual relations of the vari- 
ous cultures within the area are largely 
overlooked, and-such well-established facts 
as that of the northward dispersal and 
migrations of the Carib and Tupi tribes 
are completely ignored. The propriety 
also of assuming that a feature so char- 
acteristic and widely distributed in South 
and Central America as the hammock has 
been introduced there from Melanesia 
where its occurrence is, on the contrary, ex- 
tremely rare, seems rather questionable. 
One of the strongest arguments against 
the validity of the Melanesian bow-culture 
theory as outlined by Dr. Graebner is, 
however, furnished curiously by the au- 
thor himself, in the very abundance of the 
evidence and the closeness of the similari- 
ties which he claims for South America. 
The essence of the theory is that this Mela- 
nesian culture has, as a coordinated and 
intimately connected group of elements, 
been transmitted as a unit to the southern 
continent by way of eastern and north- 
eastern Asia, Bering Straits and North 
America. Now as the theory has not the 
temerity to assert the actual migration of 
Melanesian peoples from Melanesia 
through Asia and North America to the 
southern continent, it follows that the 
spread of the culture-complex must have 
been in the nature of a slow transmission 
from tribe to tribe, each in turn receiving 
the various elements, and incorporating 
them into the fundamental structure of its 
culture, before transmitting them to the 
next. That any such heterogeneous and 
not inherently related group of cultural 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 889 
elements could survive unchanged trans- 
mission through scores of different tribes 
belonging to several distinct races; pass- 
ing through the whole gamut of varied 
environments from the tropics to the 
Arctic circle and back again to the tropics; 
such transmission lasting necessarily over 
a period which must be reckoned in cen- 
turies or thousands of years; this is an as- 
sumption which is not merely beyond 
reasonable probability but is contradicted 
by almost all historical and ethnological 
evidence. It is to deny absolutely the well 
demonstrated fact that cultural elements 
when borrowed are subject to far-reaching 
and often fundamental modifications im 
accordance with the peculiar psychological 
characteristics of the borrowers and the 
environment in which they live; it is to as- 
sume that not even in the case of such 
absolutely elementary and natural things 
as the use of the skins of animals as pro- 
tection against the weather, or of a spoon 
or a communal dwelling, could these have 
been developed independently and with- 
out historical relation; it is, in spite of 
Dr. Graebner’s disclaimer, to throw aside 
the hard-learned lessons of the past two or 
three decades derived from the study of 
mythology, and to revert to the standards 
of a previous generation, and assume that 
similarities, whatever their nature and 
wherever they may be found, can only be 
explained as due to a common origin. 
If then we must, as I believe, regard the 
theory proposed by Dr. Graebner of the 
presence of a Melanesian bow-culture in 
America as in no sense demonstrated, as 
fundamentally false in method and as ex- 
emplifying the most extreme position in the 
revolt against the theories of independent 
development, it does not follow that it 
must be barren of results. Indeed, its 
value lies, it seems to me, in the fact that 
it calls serious attention to the existence of 
