ANTHROPOLOGY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE AND PACIFIC ISLANDS. 47 



If man is a migrant to America, he probably tarried for a considerable 

 time along the sea-shore. Rock-shelters and caves there should be explored. 

 Shell-heaps or "kitchen-middens," as they are sometimes called in Europe, 

 so plentifully scattered around the entire coastal fringe of the Western 

 Hemisphere, should be carefully studied for what data they may reveal of 

 man's early, or earliest, migration routes to America. If the problem should 

 prove to be primarily that of autochthonous man, researches should be con- 

 ducted in those areas where strata are found carrying fossils of animals most 

 likely to have been contemporary with such man ; for instance, in the Pampean 

 formations of South America, where already alleged discoveries of very ancient 

 man, and even prehuman ancestors of man, are said to have been made. 



The many theories of the origin of man in America show that the fore- 

 most students of anthropology have been interested in the unsolved problem 

 at hand, and their diversity shows the need of a solution. 



THE ESKIMO PROBLEM. 



A special problem, a unit in itself, in connection with that of the origin 

 of the American aborigines, is that of the Eskimo. It is commonly agreed 

 that there are to-day distinct physical and cultural differences between the 

 Eskimo and the Indian. Are the Eskimo a variant of the American type? 

 Or do they represent the ancestral stock of the American Indians, the Indians 

 being the variants? Are the Eskimo representatives of one of the ancestral 

 stocks of the Indians, or are they a distinct race in origin? If so, when did 

 they come to America, and from where did they come? 



It has been suggested that if man were in the Western Hemisphere in 

 glacial times, the Eskimo maybe direct descendants of a geographical division 

 of those early men who have remained glacial, while the Indians are descend- 

 ants of those who were driven southward and westward by the glacier. 

 Their long separation by the ice might account for the marked physical and 

 cultural differences between the two peoples. Others classify the Eskimo 

 with the present-day people of northeastern Asia, with the implication that 

 they are more recently and immediately derived from Asia than are the 

 Indians. Recent researches have shown that while indisputable evidence 

 exists connecting the people on both sides of Bering Strait physicallj^, lin- 

 guistically, and otherwise culturally, the evidence points strongly to an ethnic 

 and cultural movement from America to Asia. The Yuit of the west shores 

 of Bering Strait are a branch of the Eskimo stock which in recent times 

 migi'ated from America to Asia. Boas has formulated the theory that "the 

 so-called Palse-Asiatic tribes [Chukchi, Koryak, etc.] must be considered as 

 offshoots of the American race, which msiy have migrated back to the Old 

 World after the retreat of the Arctic glaciers." 



There is still debate as to the original American nest of differentiation of 

 the Eskimo, provided his physical and cultural characteristics were fixed in 

 America. Rink placed it in Alaska; many American anthropologists assign 



