656 



THE AMEBIC AN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



NEANDERTHAL 



CRO-MAGNON 



TASMANIAN 



FUEGIAN 



COMMON ORIGIN OF AMERICAN NATIVES 



S]ioirn <»i 1)1(1 p of i/ciicral (Hsperi<io)i of manlhid from a center in Jsia 

 { hrokvii Hues represent most reeent morements) 



From the great resemblance of all the peoples of the New World to one another, we may assume that they 

 are of cue stock. This common stock shows affinity with the yellow-brown Mongolian race of Asia. It 

 entered the New World through the narrow northwestern route and spread out over the two continents, 

 eventually becoming isolated in inbreeding groups, undisturbed until the occupation by the white population. 



Dr. Wissler presents the question of the American native relative to the action of the polar ice cap which 

 four times at least is known to have crept down from the north to cover the Asian bridge into the New 

 World. He considers it reasonable that the peopling of the New World was interglacial and contemporane- 

 ous with the peopling of the Old World and not entirely postglacial (with an estimated age for the American 

 culture of 20,000 years only), and that the return of the ice in the "Glacial Period" cut off the hemispheres 

 from each other, leaving the diverged branches of stock to develop independently. The indirectness and nar- 

 rowness of the bridge from Asia, added to the accumulations of ice which still hover about it, probably 

 prevented the entrance of wave after wave of peoples such as poured over Europe. 



The map indicates the dispersion of the branches of mankind other than this Asian-American, classified by 

 certain anthropologists into two great groups : the Polynesian-European with fair skin and straight or wavy 

 hair, and the Australian-African with black skin and woolly hair. Some regard the former as the main 

 stem from which the Asian-American and African- Australian diverged and specialized. 



A later classification designates almost the entire original population of Europe, Asia, and the New World 

 as the generalized type, "Eurasiatie," with the variants from this type occupying the outskirts of land 

 farthest from the swarming center in Asia, namely, Patagonia, Greenland, Cape Colony, Ceylon, and 

 Tasmania, the British Isles, and Canaries. This theory seems to correspond with facts of distribution and 

 culture in the New World; outlying regions must have proved veritable blind alleys where primitive man. 

 was brought up short and where in some cases his descendants are still marking time 



