JANUARY 12, 1912] 
a really remarkable series of parallelisms 
between certain elements of American and 
Oceanic cultures, some of the more im- 
portant of which, however, to my mind, the 
theory as proposed fails to note. That 
such parallels existed has for years been 
known, but hitherto little systematic at- 
tempt has been made to gather or explain 
them. The obvious suggestion has of 
course been made that they were the re- 
sult of culture contacts alone the Pacific 
Coast, of Oceanic with American peoples, 
but beyond this, little has been done. In 
part this has no doubt been due to the fact 
that most investigators have felt that our 
, knowledge, particularly in regard to South 
America and much of Oceania itself, was 
still too imcomplete to make a detailed 
study of the question profitable. Although 
I share in this feeling, I may perhaps be 
permitted in closing to point out a few of 
the facts which seem to me of special sig- 
nificance, and to urge the need of very 
thorough investigation of the whole field. 
To my mind the most striking and for 
the purposes of tracing cultural relations, 
perhaps most important elements in com- 
mon between the Oceanic area and Amer- 
ica are, the true plank canoe, the use of a 
masticatory with lime, head-hunting and 
associated skull-cults, the blow-gun, throw- 
ing-stick, the hammock and perhaps the 
institution of the men’s-house and cer- 
tain peculiar masked dances and forms of 
masks in use in Papuan Melanesia and in 
America only in parts of Brazil. Of 
these the first three are either wholly con- 
fined to or reach their highest develop- 
ment on the Pacific coasts of both Ameri- 
ean continents, and the last three (with 
the exception perhaps of the men’s- 
house) together with the third and fourth 
are confined to northwestern and northern 
South America and the immediately ad- 
jacent parts of Central America, with, in 
SCIENCE 53 
the case of the blow-gun, such parts of 
North America as have been influenced by 
Carib and Arawak cultures. Compared 
with the self-bow, the use of coiled pot- 
tery, twilled basketry, the spoon, paddle 
with cross-handle and the communal dwell- 
ings of the Melanesian bow-culture, these 
are for the most part far from being 
simple affairs, and occur, moreover, with 
few exceptions, only in America and 
Oceania together with the adjacent parts 
of southern Asia. Six at least of the ele- 
ments (the plank canoe, use of a mastica- 
tory with lime, head-hunting and skull- 
cults, blow-gun, men’s-house and peculiar 
form of mask and masked dances) may be 
said to be in varying degrees exotic in 
American culture, in that their distribu- 
tion is limited and that they are in con- 
trast to the usual and prevailing American 
types. Four at least (the plank canoe, 
use of a masticatory with lime, head- 
hunting and skull-cults and the institution 
of the men’s-house) are on the other 
hand of very wide and continuous distribu- 
tion in Melanesia, Indonesia and south- 
eastern Asia. To this list of cultural coin- 
cidences may be added among others the cu- 
rious and ingenious process of polychrome 
dyeing known in Indonesia as Ikat, and 
which occurs except for the region of 
Indonesia and adjacent southeastern Asia 
nowhere else, so far as known, but in Peru. 
In any attempt at explanation of these 
facts, the strong concentration of the ele- 
ments in America on the Pacific coast 
and in the western portions of the two 
continents, and their almost total absence 
in the eastern parts, seems of considerable 
importance. In this connection the as yet 
only fragmentary evidences of early 
migrations in South America from the 
Pacific coast eastward into the Orinoco- 
Amazon area must not be lost sight of. 
From this distribution, the explanation 
