752 PRIMA TES 



greater than those between different nations of Europe, as Gauls and 

 Germans on the one hand, and Greeks and Romans on the other, in 

 the time of Julius Caesar. Yet all these were Aryans, and in treat- 

 ing the Americans as one race it is not intended to imply that they 

 are more closely allied than the different Aryan peoples of Europe 

 and Asia. The best argument that can be used for the unity of 

 the American race — using the word in a broad sense — is the great 

 difficulty of forming any natural divisions in it founded upon physical 

 characters. Thus there is no difference throughout the whole con- 

 tinent in the important character of the hair, this being always straight 

 and lank, long and abundant on the scalp, but sparse elsewhere. 

 The colour of the skin, notwithstanding the enormous differences of 

 climate under which many members of the group exist, varies but 

 little. It is true that in the features and cranium certain special 

 modifications prevail in different districts, but the same forms 

 reappear at widely separated parts of the continent. Thus skulls 

 almost undistinguishable from one another may be met with from 

 Vancouver's Island, from Peru, and from Patagonia. 



Naturalists who have admitted but three primary types of the 

 human species have always found a difficulty with the Americans, 

 hesitating between placing them Avith the Mongolian or so-called 

 "yellow" races, or elevating them to the rank of a primary group. 

 Cuvier, indeed, does not seem to have been able to settle this point 

 to his own satisfaction, and leaves it an open question. Although 

 the large majority of Americans have in the special form of the 

 nasal bones, leading to the characteristic high bridge of the nose of 

 the living face, in the well-developed superciliary ridge and retreat- 

 ing forehead, characters which distinguish them from the typical 

 Asiatic Mongol, yet in many other respects they resemble them so 

 closely that, while still admitting the difficulties of the case, we are 

 inclined to include them as aberrant members of the Mongolian 

 type. 1 It is, however, quite open to any one adopting the Negro, 

 Mongolian, and Caucasian groups as primary divisions to place the 

 Americans apart as a fourth. 



Now that the high antiquity of man in America — perhaps as 

 high as that which he has in Europe — has been discovered, the 

 puzzling problem, from which part of the Old "World the people of 

 America have sprung, has lost its significance. It is, indeed, quite 

 as likely that the people of Asia may have been derived from 

 America as the reverse. However this may be, the population of 

 America, except at the extreme north, was, before the time of 

 Columbus, practically isolated from the rest of the world. Such 

 visits as those of the early Norsemen to the coasts of Greenland, 



1 No one can have seen a group of Botocudos from Brazil or of natives of 

 Tierra del Fuego without being struck by their markedly Mongolian external 

 characteristics. 



