FIRST AMERICAN.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18265, 26 December 1924, Page 13

FIRST AMERICAN.

EVIDENCE FOR ASIATIC ORIGIN,

That tho earliest ■ inhabitants of America were of Asiatie origin is a theory widely accepted and strengthened by tho recent discovery of a small Bilver image in the district of Huasteca Potosina, where specimens in the least resembling this one have nover been found before.

The image, the only one of its kind known, is about thrco inches long, and is not of a monster but of a man, and is not deformed. It is remarkably well preserved, in spite of the fact that the archajologists of the National Museum of Mexico estimate that it belongs to an era more than 10,000 years before Christ. The silver is moulded in very primitive fashion and is not purified. Traces of arsenic prove,' according to experts, the date of its making by the composition of its smelting. The figure, now in tho Xational Museum, is the clearest and most beautiful specimen of the almost mythical pre-Toltecs, and comparison with the Totonac and Tarascan figures shows points of similarity, such as the rounding and cubical forming of tho limbs, tho peculiar cylindrical smoothness of the head. It cannot bo identified with any known god, and it shows a distinct Asiatic influence.

Archseologists have taken tho discovery as a further proof of tho affirmation that the oldest inhabitants of America -wore linked with the Taraßcan culture of the State of Michoacan, and tho unusual location of it has modified to a considerable extent the belief that the pre-Toltecs wero found only in the Valley of Mexico and in Michoacan.