THE 'MELTING POT" A MYTH 



Study of Members of Oldest American Families Shows that the Type is Still Very 

 Diverse — No Amalgamation Going on to Produce a Strictly American 

 Sub-Type — Characteristics of the Old American Stock 



AMERICA as "The Melting Pot" of 



/\ peoples is a picture often drawn 



X \. by writers who do not trouble 



themselves as to the precision of 



their figures of speech. 



Dr. Ales Hrdlicka has been investi- 

 gating the older contents of this pot, 

 and finds that even the material which 

 went into it first has not yet so melted.^ 



Several hundred members of the old, 

 white, American stock have been most 

 carefully measured and examined in 

 many ways, to find whether the people 

 making up this stock are tending to 

 become alike — whether a new sub-type 

 of the himian race is being formed here 

 in America, with intermarriage, en- 

 vironment, and under the pressure of 

 outward circvunstances. 



Dr. Hrdlicka finds very definitely 

 that as yet such is not the case. The 

 force of heredity is too strong to be 

 radically altered in a century or two, 

 and even the descendants of the Pilgrim 

 Fathers, the Virginia cavaliers, the 

 Pennsylvania Dutch and the Huguenots, 

 while possibly not as much unlike as 

 their ancestors probably were, are still 

 far from a real blend. 



"The Melting Pot" is a figure of 

 speech; and, as far as physical anthro- 

 pology is concerned, it will not be 

 anything more in this country, at least 

 for many centuries. 



Dr. Hrdlicka, who is curator of the 

 division of physical anthropology of the 

 United States National Museum at 

 Washington, has had this investigation 

 under way for four years,- and it has 



been completed only within the 

 last month — for Americans of un- 

 broken American ancestry for even 

 three generations are much scarcer 

 than was supposed when the work was 

 undertaken. Even the proud "May- 

 flower Descendant" is more likely than 

 not, it would seem, to have at least 

 one grandfather or grandmother who 

 was born abroad. The conclusions 

 here announced were reached a year 

 ago, and must be regarded as not 

 wholly final, yet doubtless reflecting 

 the real conditions. With this under- 

 standing, some of the more remarkable 

 of the preliminary results, based on the 

 first 100 men and 100 women measured, 

 may be cited. 



GREAT RANGE OF VARIATION 



"The most striking result of the 

 examinations," Dr. Hrdlicka says, "is 

 the great range of variation among 

 Old Americans in nearly all the impor- 

 tant measurements . The range of varia- 

 tion is such that in some of the most 

 significant determinations it equals not 

 only the variation of any one group, 

 but the combined variations of all the 

 groups that enter into the composition 

 of the Americans." This fact would be 

 interpreted by the geneticist as an 

 evidence of hybridity. It is clear that, 

 at the very beginning, a number of 

 diverse, although not widely differing, 

 stocks must have made up the colonial 

 population; and intermarriage and the 

 influence of the environment have not 

 welded these stocks into one blend, but 



1 Some of the facts in this review were got from the oral communication of Dr. Hrdlicka to 

 the XIX International Congress of Americanists, at Washington, December 28, 1915; others 

 were given by Dr. Hrdlicka in conversation ; much is taken verbatim from an advance copy of the 

 paper to be published in the Proceedings of the Americanists at about the time the present review 

 appears in print. 



2 See "Study of Old Americans," by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, Journal of Heredity, Vol. VI, 

 No. 11, p. 509 .November, 1914. 



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