VOLUME XIX

NUMBER 2

T

HE origin of human culture is a question which has challenged the thought and imagination of man since long before the days of writing. Nearly every people, whether of high or low attainments, possess myths and legends to account for the principal inventions and technical processes of which they make use. Prehistoric man evidently recognized that such ordinary things as hammerstones and houses and domestic hearth-fires had not always been; that, in short, somebody invented them or brought them from elsewhere, and the person who accomplished such a feat for the general enhancement of human life was usually immortalized as a culture-hero. Our best known and classic example is doubtless the Greek story of Prometheus, who, with the aid of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, went up to heaven to light his torch at the chariot of the sun and thus brought down fire as a gift to man. The implication is The implication is that Prometheus literally stole the sacred flame and for this crime he was duly punished. But the gods had been outwitted; and though they raged, they were doomed, for with the help of fire, man proceeded to make himself master of the earth.

To the iconoclastic scientist of the last few decades such explanations have too often been only mere nonsense. We are still trying to explain the many gifts which our rude predecessors have left us to enjoy; and our explanations, partial and imperfect as yet, are at best written in terse technical language which only the specialist is supposed to understand. But some day when the matter-of-fact investigator has finished the skeletal structure of his thought on the subject of human culture a gifted imagination will arise to clothe it and make it live. Of such poetic nature is undoubtedly much of the lore, like the Prometheus story, which has come down to us from the ancient East. Originally based at least in part on sound observation, it was adapted so that all who saw and heard might understand, each according to his capacity. We of the West with our cut-and-dried views on every subject have all too commonly insisted on literal interpretation where only suggestion to encourage original thought was intended.

And what now of our modern explanation of human culture? We of the present generation think that we have done much in building the aeroplane:

but in the process which we call culture history, the making of a simple pointed stick for digging edible roots. out of the ground, was hardly less important. If now we should attempt to name all the discoveries and inventions which lie between these two extremes we should be astonished at how much was really accomplished before our own day.

We need not, however, go to such lengths here but we may properly ask when and where the more important inventions were made. When did man actually first make use of fire? Where were our numerous domesticated plants and animals first brought under control? What people made the first loom, the first potter's wheel, the first flint knife? The answer to these and similar questions is not yet recorded in books, nor is it handed down in reliable form as oral tradition. The material for the answer is scattered all over the world, even in places where we should not have expected men to congregate. For the most part the data lie buried in ruins located on the desert and on the plain as well as in the forest and among mountain fastnesses; they occur in mounds and in cemeteries, in caves and in rock-shelters and even in

peat bogs and the muddy depths of lake bottoms. The fact of these occurrences of the record of early human life and activity has become known largely through accident and it is only of late that we have begun honestly to admit their significance and to go deliberately in search of them.

Where this search will ultimately lead we do not precisely know. But with respect to the time and place of origin of many of the fundamental elements which go to make up what we term human culture a definite opinion is slowly gaining ground. Briefly stated this opinion is, first, that the most widely distributed inventions like fire-making and flint-chipping are the oldest; and, second, that because these inventions are so nearly identical in

widely separated parts of the world, they had probably a common center of origin. This center of origin is not yet definitely located but we know at any rate that it lies much nearer the center of the earth's land formation than it does to any one of the various continental extremities. In other words, it lies nearer to the meeting place of Europe, Asia, and Africa (a great traditional center of origin, it is well to recall) than it does to the Cape of Good Hope, or to the far away island of Tasmania, or to the still more distant Cape Horn.

The whole question is one of profound interest and importance, not only to students of anthropology, but also to the students of everything else that is human. The subject is here approached from the point of view of several years' archæological work done under the auspices of the American Museum in the Pueblo region of the Southwest. Certain conclusions developed from this investigation are of such a nature that they seem to throw light not only on the archæological problem presented by the whole American continent but on the problem presented by the entire world.

Discovery in the American Southwest of the Apparent Law of Distri

bution of Human Cultures

In 1912 the writer began archæological investigation in a hitherto unexplored section of the Pueblo area known as the Galisteo basin, directly south of and adjacent to the city of Santa Fé, New Mexico. The region, which was abandoned by native settlers finally toward the end of the eighteenth century, comprises about twelve hundred square miles and contains upward of one hundred ruins, about sixty of which are small, even insignificant, while the remaining forty attain, some of them, the size of respectable towns. After having spent a whole season sampling seven of the larger settlements, it became apparent that in addition to being