X.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 361 







of vast extent, have brought to light further remains of primitive 

 man, including as many as seven skeletons found at different 

 levels 1 . Thus are greatly strengthened the views which were 

 already entertained regarding the presence of Pleistocene Man in 

 South America, and were based on the researches of Ameghino, 

 Lund, Moreno, Burmeister, Hudson, Lovisato and others in the 

 now classical Lagoa Santa caves of Minas Geraes, in the Parana 

 basin (Rio Carcarana\ in the Buenos Ayres district (Sambo- 

 rombon), in Patagonia (Rio Negro Valley), and in Tierra del 

 Fuego (Elizabeth Island) 2 . 



It may be incidentally mentioned that, from a thorough study 

 of the fossil remains, especially of Lagoa Santa, the Danish 

 anthropologist, Herluf Winge, infers that man is more closely 

 allied to the gibbon than to the other simians a conclusion also 

 pointed at by the Java skull and that the cradle of mankind is 

 to be sought in the Old World, whence primitive man migrated 

 to America at a remote period 3 . These independent inferences 

 harmonise completely with the views here advocated on the origin 

 and dispersion of the human race, and on the peopling of America 

 during the Stone Ages. 



They are also confirmed by the linguistic relations in the New 

 World. These are such as can be explained only 

 on the assumption that the early settlers possessed 



some agglutinatine form of speech at a low stage of Speech in 



America. 



of development, and that its further development 

 took place on American soil during an immense period of com- 

 plete isolation unaffected in any way by extraneous influences. 

 The freedom from extraneous influences is shown by the entirely 

 independent character of the American languages, not one of 

 which, after many years of patient comparative study, has yet been 

 traced to a foreign source. It is not merely that they differ from 

 other forms of speech in their general phonetic, structural, and 



1 Fully described in Globus, LXIX. p. 338 sq. 



2 EtJi. p. 96 sq. 



:5 Jordf undue og nulevende Aber (Primates) fra Lagoa Santa, &c. Copen- 

 hagen, 1895. The migration from the Old to the New World is, of course, 

 necessitated by the absence of all traces of the Simiictoe from America, as this 

 naturalist insists upon. On this point see Eth. p. 157. 



