Comparison of Formative Cultures in the Americas. Diffusion or the Psychic Unity of Man: Smitsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Volume 11

摘要

A half century ago, Herbert J. Spinden (1917) presented to the International Congress of Americanists held in Washington, a paper in which he postulated that the high civilizations from the Andes to Middle America were based on a common old cultural stratum. This stratum was supposed to have originated in Middle America, specifically in the region of the advanced Maya culture, and was thought to include maize agriculture, ceramics, crude handmade figurines, and ceremonial centers marked by pyramids that served as bases for temples. Spinden's theory seems to have been greeted with silence by his colleagues, and he himself neglected to elaborate on it in his later work. Ten years later the 'Archaic' theory was criticized by Lothrop, and as Vaillant (1935a, p. 293) says, the ensuing discussion 'changed the status of the 'archaic culture' from a conclusion to a problem.' Indeed it could not be more, considering the amount of data and chronological information available.