Some have thought that the Maya of Yucatan has in its vocabulary a certain number of Chinese elements; but all these can readily be explained on the doctrine of coincidences. The Mexican antiquary Mendoza has marshalled far more coincidences of like character and equal worth to show that the Nahuatl is an Aryan dialect descended from the Sanscrit.[39] In fine, any, even the remotest, linguistic connection between American and Mongolian languages has yet to be shown; and any linguist who considers the radically diverse genius of the two groups of tongues will not expect to find such relationship.
I shall not detain you long with arguments touching supposed Mongolian elements of culture in ancient America. Any one at all intimately conversant with the progress of American archæology in the last twenty years must see how rapidly has grown the conviction that American culture was homebred, to the manor born: that it was wholly indigenous and had borrowed nothing—nothing, from either Europe, Asia, or Africa. The peculiarities of native American culture are typical, and extend throughout the continent. Mr. Lewis Morgan was perfectly right in the general outline of his theory to this effect, though, like all persons enamored of a theory, he carried it too far.
This typical, racial American culture is as far as possible, in spirit and form, from the Mongolian. Compare the rich theology of Mexico or Peru with the barren myths of China. The theory of governments, the method of house-construction, the position of woman, the art of war,[40] are all equally diverse, equally un-Mongolian. It is useless to bring up single art-products or devices, such as the calendar, and lay stress on certain similarities. The doctrine of the parallelism of human development explains far more satisfactorily all these coincidences. The sooner that Americanists generally, and especially those in Europe, recognize the absolute autochthony of native American culture, the more valuable will their studies become.
It is no longer in season to quote the opinions of Alexander von Humboldt and his contemporaries on this subject, as I see is done in some recent works. The science of archæology has virtually come into being since they wrote, and we now know that the development of human culture is governed by laws with which they were unacquainted. Civilization sprang up in certain centres in both continents, widely remote from each other; but, as the conditions of its origin were everywhere the same, its early products were much alike.