WISSLER— ARCHEOLOGICAL AND CULTURE AREAS 



tween 2000 and 5000, while the Shoshoni-Nahuatl stock occupies land 

 above 5000. Then if we turn from linguistic to culture characters, we 

 find similar agreements. Southeastern culture is below 500 feet, the 

 Eastern Woodland area is in the main from 500 to 2000, the Nahua 

 area above 5000, as was also the home of Inca culture. 



It is also suggestive to take the topographical map as our point 

 of departure and compare the cultures of the different sections. Thus, 

 the Algonkins of the Atlantic coast-plain from Maine southward are 

 below 500 feet, or on a level with the Muskhogean group, and it is 

 just here that we find certain northern traces of Southeastern culture. 

 In the Mississippi valley these same lowlands reach up to the Ohio 

 and the Missouri, and here also we find the margin of Southeastern 

 traits. The two types of culture we find in the Bison area, the western 

 and the eastern, line up along the north and south divide of 2000 

 feet. Further, it is distinctly among the eastern tribes that we find 

 Eastern Woodland traits, the elevation of both being below 2000 feet. 



These few illustrations must suffice, but the reader can follow out 

 others by referring to suitable maps. We are not contending for a 

 direct correlation between elevation and culture, for the numerals 

 we have used are but convenient geographical indices to climatic, 

 faunal, and floral areas. As boundaries, they are just as arbitrarily 

 chosen as those for culture areas, but for that very reason should be 

 strictly comparable. The fact that they do then so correspond cannot 

 be dismissed as a logical error. We are thus brought to the conclusion 

 that the phenomena of our subject manifest a strong tendency to 

 expand to the limits of the geographical area in which they arise and 

 no farther. Language seems to spill over the edges far more readily 

 than culture, from which we must infer that linguistic dispersion is a 

 by-product of migration ; but these migratory linguistic groups seem 

 unable to resist complete cultural assimilation. 



The carrying of a culture into a new area and maintaining it 

 entire, is a correlate of organized governments. We see in the Inca 

 and Aztec areas the working of this factor. Outside of these areas 

 there were no such organizations, only small independent groups. 



From this point of view it is conceivable that the Muskhogean 

 and Algonkin stocks, for instance, could have exchanged habitats 

 without changing the cultures localized within the two areas, provided 

 the shifting was by successive small units; or that all the Shoshonean 

 peoples could have become Pueblos like the Hopi and the Keresan, 

 and other stocks have scattered out on the plateaus to the north, 

 while the culture values of the two areas remained relatively the 

 same. That such extreme transpositions ever occurred is, of course, 



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