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economic botany, ethnobotany, comparative philology, archae- 

 ology, exploration, and history as illustrations of the types of 

 source material on which more or less definite conclusions could 

 be drawn. Thus from pre-Columbian graves in Peru we have 

 very definite information as to the foods used by the Incas and 

 basic to their civilization; from the Egyptian pyramids we gain 

 similar information regarding the foods of the ancient Egyp- 

 tians; even from charred remains preserved in the lake bottoms 

 in proximity to ancient villages of lake dwellers in Switzerland 

 we gain information regarding the food of this people. The use 

 of comparative philology was illustrated by certain Sanskritic, 

 Chinese, and Aztec names currently used for introduced and 

 cultivated plants in the Philippines, with an explanation based 

 on historic evidence as to when and how these names reached 

 the Philippines. The speaker stressed the point that in investi- 

 gating this field the worker had constantly to be on guard in 

 reference to certain types of published papers based on pre- 

 conceived theories, in which only the data supporting the theory 

 were given, while all evidence contrary to the theory were over- 

 looked or ignored ; and cited a number of typical cases from the 

 literature, of ethnology and ethnobotany, where the conclusions 

 reached had been definitely shown to be erroneous in reference 

 to the origin and dissemination of important cultivated food 

 plants. The point was made that in no field impinging on the 

 domain of systematic botany were there more pitfalls to be 

 avoided than in this complex one of ethnobotany, particularly 

 the problems associated with early man and the beginnings of 

 agriculture, and hence of civilizations. 



The point was emphasized that previous to 1492 not a single 

 basic cultivated food plant, or a single domesticated animal ex- 

 cept the dog was common to the two hemispheres; that when 

 European explorers reached America they found here civiliza- 

 tions based on agriculture as in the Old World, but on an agri- 

 culture based wholly on plants and animals different from those 

 of the Old World, so different that in practically every case the 

 genera represented in America were unrepresented among the 

 cultivated plants of the Old World. Lists of plants and animals 

 of Eurasian and American origin were given. The botanical and 

 agricultural evidence is that the early American civilizations 

 were developed in America on the basis of a strictly American 



