496 FOOD PLANTS OF ANCIENT AMERICA. 



admitted by ethnologists that the remote ancestors of these races did 

 overrun all the Tropics of the Old World, and the latest investigations 

 warrant the belief that they made their influence felt also along the 

 shores of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, v^here the civilization of 

 the Mediterranean countries was formerly thought to have originated. 



It can not be declared impossible, of course, that this primeval 

 migration from America took place at a time when there was more 

 land in the Pacific than now, as Belt and other geologists have held 

 that there was, some thousands of years ago, but such conjectures are 

 rendered gratuitous in view of the highly developed seafaring talents 

 of the inhabitants of the Pacific islands and of the adjacent shores of 

 America, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. It is no farther from 

 America to the inhabited islands of the Pacific than from Tahiti to 

 Hawaii, a route traversed by the Polynesians." In ancient, as in modern 

 times, the sea was not a barrier, but the most open way of communica- 

 tion between distant regions; then, as now, the boat was the easiest 

 means of transportation known to man. In time and labor of travel 

 the islands of the Pacific were far nearer to Peru, for example, than 

 many of the inland regions conquered by the Incas of Cuzco. More- 

 over, the Peruvians told the Spaniards of inhabited islands in the Pacific, 

 or at least gave sailing directions which enabled Quiros to reach the 

 Low Archipelago. There was a tradition that one of the Incas had 

 made a voyage of two years in the Pacific and returned with black 

 prisoners of war. Apparently, too, they told the Spaniards that the 

 banana was brought from this quarter, for Acosta gathered from the 

 Indians that it was not a native of America but came from "Ethiopia." 

 These historical incidents have been overlooked or disregarded, pei'haps 

 because such possibilities as an American origin of agriculture and a 

 trans-Paoific dissemination of food plants have not been considered by 

 writers on primitive man. The times, routes, and methods of travel 

 are, of course, questions to be approached by detailed studies of many 

 kinds. For the present purposes it suffices to remember that the 

 actual introduction of plants by human agency discounts in advance 

 all objections on the ground of distances and difficulties of communica- 

 tion, and justifies the fullest use of biological or other data in tracing 

 the origin and dissemination of agricultural civilization in the Tropics 

 of both hemispheres. 



The distribution and the uses of tropical cultivated plants support, 

 it is true, the belief of ethnologists in the truly indigenous character 

 of the peoples, agricultures, and civilizations of the western hemi- 

 sphere, but they also testify to a very early colonization of the islands 

 and coasts of the Pacific and Indian oceans from tropical America. 



"Tlio similarity of Polyiu>»i;in culture to tluit of ancient America has been discusseii 

 !it length in Lang's Polyni'siun Nation, Ellis's Polynesian Researches, and Rutland's 

 History of the Pacifii'. 



