PRE-ARYAN AMERICAN MAN. 45 
large extent perished. But no inconsiderable remnant finally disappeared by absorption 
into the general stock; not without leaving enduring evidence of the process in the 
Melanochroi, or dark whites—the Iberians, or Black Celts, as they are sometimes styled, — 
of western Europe; as well as in the allied type, not only of the Mediteranean shores, but 
of Western Asia and Persia. A process has thus been going on on the American continent 
for three centuries, which cannot fail to beget new types in the future; even as a like 
process is seen to have produced them under analogous conditions in ancient Europe. 
Viewed in this aspect, the archeology and ethnology of the New World presents in 
some important respects a startling analogy to pre-Aryan Europe. Assuredly the status of 
the allophylian races of Europe can scarcely have been inferior to that of some, at least, of 
the aborigines of America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Probably the Aryan 
pioneers were fully equal to its first European immigrants. But if the ethnical character- 
istics of American man are simple, and the aspect of his social life appears to realize for us a 
living analogy to that of Europe’s Neolithic, if not in some respects to that of its Palæolithic 
era, the question of his antiquity acquires a new interest : for it thus becomes apparent that 
man may remain through countless ages in the wild hunter stage, as unprogressive as any 
other denizen of the wilderness propagating its species and hunting for its prey. But 
the whole question of the antiquity of man has undergone a marvellous revolution in 
very recent years. The literature of modern geology curiously illustrates its progress, 
from the date of the publication of Dean Buckland’s “ Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,” in 1823, to the 
final edition of Sir Charles Lyell’s “ Principles of Geology,” in 1872, and the embodiment 
of his ultimate conclusions on the special question involved in his “ Antiquity of Man.” 
The determination of a Paleolithic period for Europe, with its rude implements of 
flint or stone, chipped into shape without the aid of any grinding or polishing process, 
and belonging to an era when man was associated with animals either extinct or known 
only throughout the historic period in extreme northern latitudes, has naturally stimulated 
the research of American archeologists for corresponding traces on this continent. Nor is 
the anticipation of the possible recovery of the traces of man’s presence in post-glacial, or still 
earlier epochs in unhistoric areas, limited to either continent. If it be accepted as an 
established fact that man has existed in Europe for unnumbered ages, during which enor- 
mous physical changes have been wrought ; upheaval and denudation have revolutionized 
the face of the continent ; the deposition of the whole drift formation has been effected ; 
the river valleys of southern England and the north of France have been excavated, and 
the British Islands detached from the neighboring continent: it cannot be regarded as im- 
probable that evidence may yet be found of the early presence of man in any region of 
the globe. Nevertheless some of the elements already referred to tend to mark with a 
character of their own the investigations alike of the archeologist and the geologist into the 
earliest traces of human art in what we have learned habitually to speak of as the New 
World. In Europe the antiquary, familiar already with ancient historic remains, had 
passed by a natural transition to the study of ruder examples of primitive art in stone 
and bronze, as well as to the physical characteristics of races which appeared to have pre- 
ceeded the earliest historic nations. The occupation of the British Islands, for example, 
successively by Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Normans, was so familiar to the 
popular mind that the problem of a sequence of neolithic, bronze, and the ruder iron 
implements with their corelated personal ornaments, pottery, etc., was universally solved 
