tribes. These villages must, therefore, be considered as the originators of the trait as it appears in the New World.
We must not overlook one difficulty in dealing with culture similarities of this kind; viz., the proof that these similarities are real. Recently, Elliot Smith[1] revived the discussion of certain elephant-like figures found on Maya sculptures. In this case, we may doubt the reality of the similarity between these figures and southern Asiatic drawings of elephants, because those who have studied the Maya sculptures themselves, instead of the pencil sketches made by earlier observers, find proof that another creature was in the artist's mind. In cases of this kind when we are dealing with the conventionalized drawings of the New World and the Old, it can scarcely be expected that the mere objective similarity between a few of these drawings is to be taken as proof of their identity in origin. Other check data must be appealed to before even a useful working hypothesis can be formulated. Yet, if it should ultimately turn out that a stray vessel did drift ashore in Mexico and land a sculptor who created a new art motif such would be a mere incident in the culture history of the New World. Further research into the chronology of archæological remains ought to show just how abruptly this fancied elephant motif appeared and at what relative period. In such chronological data the basis for the real solution to the problem may be expected.
Again, when the similarity of cultural phenomena has actually been demonstrated, empirical procedures cease and interpretation begins. This interpretation is, in last analysis, speculative It is truly amusing to read some passages in current anthropological literature in which writers who, considering their own observations of similarity valid, offer the most fantastic interpretations which they assert are strictly empirical. We should bear in mind, then, that the comparative study of Old and New World cultures is no mere diversion. Superficial and hasty comparisons will retard rather than hasten the solution of the main problem. Patient, unremitting toil in the trenches of the archæologist, and not spectacular flights on the part of curio hunters and literary enthusiasts, will show at
- ↑ Elliot Smith, 1915. I; 1916. I.
