ABSTRACT

Some of the most striking similarities between pre-Columbian Asia and Mesoamerica are in art, architecture, and mythology. Diffusion of Hindu-Buddhist art and architecture, with its mythology, is perhaps our grandest example of diffusion, incontrovertibly historic, covering most of a continent and its island chain into the western Pacific. Alleging meaningful similarities in art and intellectual creations between Asia and Mesoamerica carries us into an uncomfortable realm of postulating basic ideas realized in varieties of actual structures. Paul Tolstoy used the criterion of collocation in arguing that his complex of many discrete steps in making inner-bark cloth and paper weighed heavily in favor of transpacific carriage from Island Southeast Asia to Mesoamerica. Some other Mayan sites appear to represent artist-architects' borrowings of Hindu-Buddhist architecture, so powerfully diffused throughout Asia, to enhance established Mayan style. Gordon F. Ekholm and Heine-Geldern, and Kelley, suggested gifted individuals becoming familiar with Asian styles, not migrations of Asians to Mesoamerica.