means of sustenance from those of Asia provides difficulties which must be explained before any theory suggesting contact in any form can legitimately be put forward. The question of the ultimate origin of the American population lies beyond the scope of this book, but it 1s an evident fact that the Americans physically stand in comparatively close relation to the Asiatics. That being so a somewhat similar psychology is natural, and this would lead, subject to modifications produced by environment, to the evolution of a culture and art in which certain analogies might be expected to appear. But what I have elsewhere written of Peruvian culture applies with equal force to that of the Mexicans and Maya. The onus probandi must necessarily be upon those who wish to prove that contact with the external world existed, and the evidence which we possess points rather to the undisturbed evolution of Mexican and Mayan civilization on American soil, and that civilization may therefore be regarded as in every sense American.
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CONCLUSIONS
371