VII 
THE ANTIQUITY AND ORIGIN OF MAN 
429 
it is stated that the mounds and earthworks of various kinds 
in the State of Ohio alone amount to between eleven and 
twelve thousand. In their habits, customs, religion, and arts, 
they differed strikingly from all the Indian tribes ; while 
their love of art and of geometric forms, and their capacity 
for executing the latter upon so gigantic a scale, render it 
probable that they were a really civilised people, although the 
form their civilisation took may have been very different from 
that of later peoples, subject to very different influences and 
the inheritors of a longer series of ancestral civilisations. 
We have here, at all events, a striking example of the transi- 
tion, over an extensive country, from comparative civilisation 
to comparative barbarism, the former leaving no tradition and 
hardly any trace of its influence on the latter. 
As Mr. Mott well remarks : “ Nothing can be more striking 
than the fact that Easter island and North America both give 
the same testimony as to the origin of the savage life found 
in them, although in all circumstances and surroundings the 
two cases are so different. If no stone monuments had been 
constructed in Easter island, or mounds containing a few 
relics saved from fire, in the United States, we might never have 
suspected the existence of these ancient peoples.” He argues, 
therefore, that it is very easy for the records of an ancient 
nation’s life entirely to perish or to be hidden from observa- 
tion. Even the arts of Nineveh and Babylon were unknown 
only a generation ago, and we have only just discovered the 
facts about the mound-builders of North America. 
But other parts of the American continent exhibit parallel 
phenomena. Recent investigations show that in Mexico, 
Central America, and Peru, the existing race of Indians has 
been preceded by a distinct and more civilised race. This 
is proved by the sculptures of the ruined cities of Central 
America, by the more ancient terra -cottas and paintings of 
Mexico, and by the oldest portrait -pottery of Peru. All 
alike show markedly non -Indian features, while they often 
closely resemble modern European types. Ancient crania, 
too, have been found in all these countries, presenting very 
different characters from those of any of the existing indi- 
genous races of America. 1 
1 Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, 3d ed., vol. ii. pp. 125, 144. 
