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Art. 6.-THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN MAN.

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11. The American Indian. By Clark Wissler. New York: Douglas C. McMurtrie, 1917.

2. Handbook of Aboriginal American Antiquities. (Bulletin 60, Part 1, Bureau of American Ethnology.) By W. H. Holmes. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919.

3. The Riddle of the Pacific. By J. Macmillan Brown. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1924.

4. Legendary Isles of the Pacific. By W. H. Babcock. New York: American Geographical Society, 1922.

THE question of human origins presents a perennial interest, but at no time, perhaps, has it been the subject of so much popular curiosity and debate as at the present. Africa, with its new-found anthropoid skull and early simian crania, may hold the anthropological stage for the moment. But, sooner or later, America, the ethnological history of which has aroused the keenest controversy since the Discovery, must once more reappear as one of the great central issues in the age-long discussion of man's origin and distribution. Few topics, indeed, connected with the science of man possess a romance so permanent and enthralling, for if American Ethnology has no immediate connexion with the origin and evolution of our species, it cannot but illuminate our still darkling notions of human development and upward progress when isolated and cut off from the region of its inception.

The majority of American official anthropologists— though markedly disinclined to pronounce conclusively on a question so bewildering-now seem disposed to accept the theory of an Asiatic affinity for the Red Man. But it is not disputed that in the course of ages immigrants from other sources may have landed on American soil. According to the more conservative view, America furnishes no tangible evidence of an antiquity so great as to support the theory of an independent origin for the Red race, nor has it so far afforded satisfactory evidence of human arrivals on its shores in remote geologic times. All American aboriginal culture, indeed, is now classed by trustworthy authorities as Neolithic, Vol. 244.-No. 484.

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and the protagonists of its Old Stone Age origins are in a rather discredited minority.

Assuming a place of origin for man in some part of the Old World, America would naturally be the last of the great areas to be reached. If man arrived in the American continent by way of Bering Strait, it must have been at a comparatively recent period, geologically speaking, for the ice-sheet persisted in these regions until an epoch which is variously estimated at from seven to twenty thousand years ago, and, indeed, still persists there. Man's arrival in North-Western America may perhaps be referred to one of the recurring intervals of climatic mildness which intervened during the long and rigorous conditions imposed by the Ice Age. Tribes acclimatised in Siberia would readily adapt themselves to the conditions of life in the Yukon Valley, but ice, mountain ranges, and other intervening obstacles must have made it difficult for them to find their way to the valley of the Columbia or the banks of the St Lawrence for many centuries. But migration southward would present no such difficulties, and their spread over the Mississippi Valley to the south would be quickly accomplished, nor would the passage from North to South America present any insuperable obstacles.

In all probability the first settlement of America did not begin until the peoples of Northern Asia had acquired a degree of cultural development somewhat analogous to the more primitive hunting, fishing, and fire-using tribes of the Far North in recent times. Arriving in small groups, the movement would be hesitating and slow. The pioneers would camp along the ocean shores and river courses, and only after a considerable lapse of time would they negotiate the mountain ranges and ice-clad areas. The culture of those who went southward would alter insensibly according to needs and environment, and in time far-reaching changes would be initiated.

After carefully weighing the evidence collected by him in Alaska, Mr W. H. Dall reached the conclusion that the earliest shell-midden deposits on the Aleutian Islands, by which route man may have entered America, are probably about three thousand years old. Indeed, the testimony of racial and cultural phenomena, when

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in studied apart from geological evidence, does not seem to indicate clearly an antiquity for the presence of man in America beyond a few thousand years. On the other hand, the geological evidence of his presence there would seem to point to occupation towards the close of the last glacial period in Middle North America. This geological evidence is extensive, but by no means satisfactory, and in the present state of knowledge it is impossible to accept it as final. Everything points, then, to the conclusion that in all probability America was first peopled by way of Bering Strait at an epoch not less than seven thousand and not more than twenty thousand years ago.

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Since geologic observations were first set on foot, a vast body of testimony has been collected regarding the early presence of man in the Western continent, and here it is only possible to summarise this rather scantily. South America claims to furnish the most primitive data, and Señor Ameghino and other authorities have sought to push man's antiquity on that sub-continent back to the early Tertiary period of the Eocene, a time when as yet even the anthropoids were probably not developed. An exhaustive review of the claims of the South American School, by Dr Ales Hrdlička of the United States National Museum and Dr Bailey Willis of the United States Geological Survey, left little doubt as to the true character of its assumptions, which were found to be based on 'very imperfect and incorrectly interpreted data, and in many cases on false premises.' The geologic determinations, no less than the faulty consideration of the circumstances relating to the human remains discovered in South America, particularly as to the possibility of their accidental introduction into older strata, and the lack of anatomical knowledge displayed by the finders, made it clear that even the best authenticated of their discoveries must be classed as 'doubtful.' As Mr W. H. Holmes of the United States Bureau of Ethnology remarks, 'There appears to be no very cogent reason for assigning any of the cultural traces to sources other than tribes occupying the region in comparatively recent times.'

In North America, from 1830 onwards, a most imposing body of evidence was gathered to substantiate

the claim for the presence of Tertiary Man, especially in California, where mining operations resulted in numerous discoveries. But practically the same disabilities attach to it as to the South American data. Most of the discoveries in question were made by inexpert observers, and it has been demonstrated that the antiquity claimed for them 'required a human race older by at least one-half than the Pithecanthropus erectus of Java.' Moreover, they were associated with artifacts which could certainly not be assigned to the Tertiary Period, and the knowledge that the western half of the North American coast has been completely remodelled, geologically speaking, twice or three times since that period, at once deprives such claims of all authenticity. Still, as Holmes admits, certain portions of the deep gravels appear to have yielded traces of human occupancy of the region during the formation of these deposits.' This partial admission does not, however, extend to such imagined relics of the Tertiary Period as the famous Calaveras skull, the Lansing skull, or the Nampa image, a terra-cotta figurine in human form taken from early Quaternary deposits in Idaho. The crania in question exhibit such striking analogies with those of the historic Indians as to render their ethnological association with these a matter of no dubiety.

The greater number of observations relating to the geological antiquity of man in America are associated with the closing stages of the Glacial Period in the northern United States. This period in America did not come to an end until the retreat of the main body of the ice-sheet beyond the Arctic shores. That retreat was necessarily gradual, so that the terms 'Glacial' and 'Post-glacial' apply to different epochs in different American localities. Thus the former nomenclature may be applied to a period in the Ohio or Delaware Valleys estimated at some twenty thousand years ago, whilst in the region of the Great Lakes it refers to an antiquity only half as extensive. The confused and unconsolidated nature of Post-glacial deposits in North America adds enormously to the difficulties attending an estimate of their age. Human and animal disturbance and the forces of nature have been continuously active in altering the superficial strata, nor can the geological chron

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ology of the Old World be accepted as a trustworthy guide in any estimate of American geology. In the case of the Tertiary gravels in the Delaware Valley it was proved that the Lenni Lenape Indians had worked certain sites as lately as 1700 A.D. This notwithstanding, there can be no question that men have dwelt in the region probably from the closing period of the American Ice Age, but the collection of evidence of their presence there is sadly hampered by the recent existence of the Stone Age in America.

'Thus far,' remarks Holmes, 'the testimony brought forward is scattered, disconnected and contradictory, and tells no consistent story.' He adds that in his view man did not reach American soil'until after the first retreat of the glacial ice from middle North America.' So far, no definite evidence has been gathered which seriously militates against the conclusion, and until archæological data of a trustworthy nature are forthcoming, it must serve as a basis for all estimates of the first presence of man in America. These views have naturally been combated by the less conservative school of Americanists, especially by Mr Franz Boas, who formulated the dissenting opinion that man reached the American North-West during one of the inter-glacial periods of the Ice Age rather than at the close of that epoch. The ten or twenty thousand years which Holmes permits appeared to him sufficient for the growth of American aboriginal culture, but he pointed out that the ice retreated very gradually from the connecting bridge across the Bering Sea. In fact, it still lingers there, so that a much more recent date must be found for the opening of communication by that route. This leaves a very narrow margin for the development of aboriginal culture, and Boas and his supporters assume that the peopling of the New World was contemporaneous with that of Western Europe, and that the subsequent return of the ice practically isolated the two hemispheres, leaving each to develop as it might. They point to a certain parallelism between Western Europe and Eastern North America, and to the fact that the Crô-Magnon type of man, an Old Stone Age man, who entered Europe about twenty thousand years ago, had a skeletal and facial resemblance to the American Red Man.