Seibal is a major ruin of the southern Maya lowlands, its vast ceremonial center covering several high hills on the banks of the Pasión River in the Guatemalan Department of Petén. In five volumes published over a 15-year period, the archaeological team headed by Gordon R. Willey presents a comprehensive review of their fieldwork from 1964 to 1968 and the results of many years of subsequent data analysis.

The volumes also report on explorations in the peripheral settlements outside of the Seibal center and provide a regional view of the evolution of lowland Maya culture from the Middle and Late Preclassic through the Late Classic periods.

Whether humans crossed the seas between the Old World and the New in the times before Columbus is a tantalizing question that has long excited scholarly interest and tempted imaginations the world over. From the myths of Atlantis and Mu to the more credible, perhaps, but hardly less romantic tales of Viking ships and Buddhist missionaries, people have speculated upon what is, after all, not simply a question of contact, but of the nature and growth of civilization itself.

To the specialist, it is an important question indeed. If people in the Western Hemisphere and in the Eastern Hemisphere developed their cultures more or less independently from the end of the last Ice Age until the voyages of Columbus, the remarkable similarities between New World and Old World cultures reveal something important about the evolution of culture. If, on the other hand, there were widespread or sustained contacts between the hemispheres in pre-Columbian times, these contacts represent events of vast significance to the prehistory and history of humanity.

Originally delivered at a symposium held in May 1968, during the national meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, the papers presented here, by scholars eminent in the field, offer differing points of view and considerable evidence on the pros and cons of pre-Columbian contact between the Old World and the New. Various kinds of data—archaeological, botanical, geographical, and historical—are brought to bear on the problem, with provocative and original results. Introductory and concluding remarks by the editors pull together and evaluate the evidence and suggest ground rules for future studies of this sort.

Man across the Sea provides no final answers as to whether people from Asia, Africa, or Europe visited the American Indian before Columbus. It does, however, present new evidence, suggested lines of approach, and a fresh attempt to delineate the problems involved and to establish acceptable canons of evidence for the future.