the main body characterized by tailored skin clothing, the sinew-backed bow, the snowshoe, the sled, etc. These are all fairly primitive characters; yet, wherever the outposts of this great horde met with favorable uplands they developed agriculture and other complex traits. It seems, therefore, that the solution of our New World problem lies as much in the heart of Asia as in Mexico or Peru. But, reverting once more to this great Mongoloid-Red horde, we may ask from what sources in its primitive cultures sprang the impulses that produced the two great cultures of ancient China and Yucatan? In the New World, the fundamentals of Maya culture are found among the wilder folk; in Asia there are also evidences that Chinese culture sprang from the primitive heritage of the original Mongoloid group settling in the valley of the Yellow River.[1] And while it is true that the most fundamental traits in Old World culture can not be ascribed to these same early Chinese, they did, nevertheless, achieve great originality in the invention of new traits, many of which are now elements of modern culture. Hence, unless we return once more to the old theory of the fall of man, we must look upon these two great cultural achievements as the special contributions of the Mongoloid-Red peoples to the culture of mankind.
Now, as a final conclusion to this volume on the man of the New World and his culture, we beg the reader's indulgence in the formulation of an hypothetical statement. The New World received a detachment of early Mongoloid peoples at a time when the main body had barely developed stone polishing. That this was contemporaneous with the appearance of stone polishing in Europe does not necessarily follow, for future research in Asia may show it to have been much earlier. One or more periods of climatic change followed, cutting off ready communication with the mother-land and forcing both the Old and New World wings southward. In the former, they came in contact with other differentiated groups from whom they received culture stimuli, but in the New World they had only themselves. Yet, in the course of time, the increase of numbers and the development of sub-social groups led to
- ↑ Laufer, 1914. I.
