Here, then, we have a very extraordinary and unnatural custom, existing
to this day on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching back to a vast
antiquity, and finding its explanation only in the superstition of the
American races. A practice so absurd could scarcely have originated
separately in the two continents; its existence is a very strong proof
of unity of origin of the races on the opposite sides of the Atlantic;
and the fact that the custom and the reason for it are both found in
America, while the custom remains in Europe without the reason, would
imply that the American population was the older of the two.
The Indian practice of depositing weapons and food with the dead was
universal in ancient Europe, and in German villages nowadays a needle
and thread is placed in the coffin for the dead to mend their torn
clothes with; "while all over Europe the dead man had a piece of money
put in his hand to pay his way with." ("Anthropology," p. 347.)
The American Indian leaves food with the dead; the Russian peasant puts
crumbs of bread behind the saints' pictures on the little iron shelf,
and believes that the souls of his forefathers creep in and out and eat
them.
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