35 2 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



No serious inquiry into the ethnical relations of the primitive 



inhabitants of the New World can avoid the discussion of such 



Origin and P r i mar 7 questions as their origin and cultural evolu- 



Cuiturai tion. Are they indigenous in the absolute sense of 



Evolution. 



the word ? It not, from what quarter or quarters 

 of the Eastern Hemisphere did they reach their present habitat ? 

 Or, what is practically the same thing, from what other division 

 or divisions of mankind did they branch off? When did the 

 segmentation take place ? How far, if at all, was their subsequent 

 physical and cultural development influenced by the peoples of 

 the Old World ? 



My own views on these fundamental questions, elsewhere 

 given in some detail 1 , may here be briefly re -stated. The abun- 

 dant traces of primitive man both the works of his hand, and 

 in some places even his osseous remains themselves strewn over 

 the continent from Alaska to Fuegia, show that America forms 

 no exception to the general statement that all the habitable parts 

 of the globe were occupied by man in pleistocene times, that is, 

 during the early Stone Ages. But at that period the works of 

 man, as well as man himself, were still but slightly specialised, 

 everywhere presenting the same generalised and uniform types 2 . 

 Consequently the American pleistocene man was not greatly to 

 be distinguished from his fellows in other regions of the world. 

 But this generalised precursor originated, not independently in 

 several zoological zones from several independent pliocene and 

 miocene ancestors, but in one zoological zone Indo- Malaysia 

 from one pliocene ancestor, perhaps best represented by Dubois' 

 Pithecanthropus erectus, and spread by migration thence over the 

 globe 3 . It follows that the American aborigines are not in- 

 digenous in the absolute sense, but reached the Western from 

 the Eastern Hemisphere in the primitive state, prior to all strictly 

 cultural developments. 



A study of their physical constitution, substantially but not 

 wholly uniform with indeed two marked sub-varieties, respectively 



1 American Indians, Encyclopedia Britannica New (ixth) edition; Ethno- 

 logy, Chap. xni. 



2 See pp. 8-9. 



3 PP- 3-8- 



