or were surrounded by. If we knew more of the people, or of their affinities, perhaps the solution would be easy; at present it hardly interests us, as we have no analogue in Europe.[1]
It only now remains to try and ascertain if any connexion exists or existed between these American monuments and those of the Old World ; and what light, if any, their examination may be expected to throw on the problems discussed in the preceding chapters. If it is wished to establish anything like a direct connexion between the two continents, we must go back to the far distant prehistoric times when the conformations of land and water were different from what they now are. No one, I presume, will be found to contend that, since the continents took their present shape, any migration across the Atlantic took place in such numbers as to populate the land, or to influence the manners or customs of the people previously existing there. It may be that the Scandinavians did penetrate in the tenth or eleventh centuries to Vinland, by the way of Greenland, and so anticipated the discovery of Columbus by some centuries;[2] but this is only a part of that world-pervading energy of the Aryan races, and has nothing whatever to do with the people of the tumuli. If any connexion really existed between the Old and the New World, in anything like historic times, everything would lead us to believe that it took place viâ Behring Strait or the Aleutian Islands. It seems reasonable to suppose that the people who covered the Siberian Steppes with tumuli may have migrated across the calm waters of the Upper Pacific, and gradually extended themselves down to Wisconsin and Ohio, and there left these memorials we now find. It may also be admitted that the same Asiatic people may have spread westward from the original hive, and been the progenitors of those who covered our plains with barrows, but beyond this no connexion seems to be traceable which would account
- ↑ I cannot help fancying that the great animals in stone that line the avenues leading to the tombs of the emperors in China may have some affinity with the American animal sculptures, which occur principally in Wisconsin and the farther West. I am unable, however, to obtain any information with regard to the Chinese or Siberian examples sufficiently reliable to found any argument upon.
- ↑ 'Annal. for Nordk. Oldkyndighed,' ii. p. 3 et seqq. See also C. C. Rafn, 'Antiquitates Americanæ',' &c., Hafniæ, 1837.
