ANTHROPOLOGY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE AND PACIFIC ISLANDS. 57 



The biological problem of evolution is success in surviving. Because of 

 the ever-advancing mastery of the materials, laws, and facts of the universe 

 by increasing intelligence, is not the problem of human evolution, for the 

 ethnic group as well as for the individual, success in surviving on an ever 

 higher plane of culture? If so, nations ought to know the influence of envi- 

 ronment on their children. Study should be made of radically different 

 environmental groups of men. 



First should be studied the purest and most stable groups which have 

 lived long in areas where their hereditary characteristics were fixed. 



Next should be studied peoples from these groups who have lived for 

 some generations in radically different environments. 



Last, since men have gone wherever gold has glittered, and nations have 

 raised their flags wherever there were lands too weak to stay them, we should 

 study the immediate influence of new environments on mankind. The 

 environmental influence of the Americas upon the entire life and culture of 

 transplanted Europeans, Africans, and Orientals should not be guessed at, 

 but should be laiown. As Americans, we should be especially interested in 

 the influence of Porto Rican, Hawaiian, and Philippine environments on 

 Americans. 



HUMAN AMALGAMATION. 



For unknown hundreds of generations large and small groups of men 

 were separated from one another by environmental differences of land, sea, 

 altitude, temperature, humidit.y, and various conditions of culture. In this 

 way, because the hereditary type of man was favored and the variations 

 weeded out, the so-called great races and the smaller divisions of men resulted. 

 Patent differences of pigmentation, stature, texture of hair, form of eye, nose, 

 lips, chin, and head have thus been produced. Ethnic groups noticeably 

 differ in temperament. All these characteristics, and many more, pass gener- 

 ation after generation, from parents to offspring. 



For many generations groups of men were born with almost instinctive 

 fear, loathing, and enmity toward persons in other groups; yet during all that 

 time, here and there, the reproductive instinct has been stronger than all 

 anti-group feeling, and amalgamation slowly developed until it became an 

 increasingly strong influence. 



As has been said, the biological problem of evolution is success in surviv- 

 ing; always the physically, mentally, and morally weak must perish before 

 the stronger. Here is the great amalgamation problem. What effect has 

 amalgamation on the survival-fitness and possibilities for development of 

 ethnic groups? The entire Western Hemisphere and America's islands in the 

 Pacific are filled with amalgamating peoples. In the United States alone, 

 thousands of Orientals, hundreds of thousands of American Indians, millions 

 of Negroes, and ten times as many white men from a score of ethnic groups 

 are amalgamating. 



