As the American languages have no affinity with the Teutonic or Semitic stocks, it is evident that the source or sources from which they came far antedate the birth of the oldest people of which history takes cognizance. Man must therefore have set foot on American soil before the sprouting of the linguistic twig which, after millenniums, produced the cuneiform inscriptions of ancient Persia and Assyria. The diversity of arts, customs, myths, religions, etc., among the American aborigines, and their difference in nearly all instances from the analogous attributes of the peoples of other lands, also point to a long period of isolated development in much the same manner as has been referred to in the case of a comparative study of their languages. The skin boats used by the Eskimos are widely different from the birch-bark canoes of the Algonquins, and these again differ conspicuously from the dug-out canoes of southeastern Alaska and British Columbia; still other varieties of boats are peculiar to the more southern Indian tribes, and all alike differ from the boats used in other lands. Like individuality pertains also to the houses of the American aborigines, their clothing, arms, utensils, basket-work, picture-writings, etc. One is forced to recognise in each of these arts or industries not only development in many diverging lines among the various tribes, but the birth of ideas analogous to those which arose in other lands, and their independent growth under special conditions. All of this, and much more in the same general direction that might be discussed did space permit, points to a great antiquity for the indigenous American peoples.