128 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification. 



In the same place he refers to Humboldt's argument 

 based on the similarity of calendars and of mythical 

 catastrophes. But the ' mythical catastrophes/ floods and 

 the like, have long been discounted, while the Mexican 

 calendar, despite the authority of Humboldt's name, 

 presents no resemblance whatsoever to those of the 

 ' Tibetan and Tartar tribes,' or to any other of the Asiatic 

 calendars with which it has been compared. ' There is 

 absolutely no similarity between the Tibetan calendar 

 and the primitive form of the American,' which, 'was not 

 intended as a year-count, but as a ritual and formulary,' 

 and whose signs ' had nothing to do with the signs of the 

 zodiac, as had all those of the Tibetan and Tartar calen- 

 dars ' (D. G. Brinton, 'On various supposed Relations 

 between the American and Asian races,' from Memoirs of 

 the International Congress of Anthropology, Chicago, 

 p. 148). Regarding all such analogies as may exist 

 'between the culture and customs of Mexico and those of 

 China, Cambodia, Assyria, Chaldaea, and Asia Minor,' 

 Dr. Brinton asks pertinently, ' Are we, therefore, to trans- 

 port all these ancient peoples, or representatives of them, 

 into Mexico?' (id. p. 147). So Lefevre, who regards as 

 ' quite chimerical ' the attempts made to trace such re- 

 semblances to the Old World. ' If there are coincidences, 

 they are fortuitous, or they result from evolution, which 

 leads all the human group through the same stages and 

 by the same steps' ('Race and Language/ p. 185). 



" Many far more inexplicable coincidencies than any 

 of those here referred to occur in different regions, where 

 not even contact can be suspected. Such is the strange 

 custom of Couvade, which is found to prevail among 

 peoples so widely separated as the Basques and Guiana 

 Indians, who could never have either directly or indirectly 

 in any way influenced each other" (34). 



