108 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science 



the deserts of Australia by hundreds, some armed with a stone hatchet, 

 a club, a short spear with hardwood point, or a long spear 'with stone 

 point. What such a life would be like at the close of the Paleolithic 

 period can be inferred by an experience of Miller and Furness among 

 the "Village Veddahs" of Ceylon, as reported by a University of Pennsyl- 

 vania bulletin a few years ago. They say: "We followed the jungle 

 path along the eastern shore of the reservoir, dammed for the purpose 

 of irrigating the Singhalese rice fields; this path led close to the big 

 pads of yellow lotus, and through thick undergrowths, until we came to a 

 cleared space where there was the merest excuse for a hut, and beside 

 it a man and woman squatted side by side and were cooking something 

 in a blackened earthen pot. They had between them scarcely a yard 

 of coarse cloth for clothing. Although they had never before seen white 

 people, nevertheless neither of them showed the slightest astonishment 

 or interest in our appeai-ance; both glanced up for a second, and then 

 continued silently shelling the seeds out of the lotus pods beside them, 

 and stirring the simmering pot over the fire. The most impressive thing 

 about them was their inhuman apathy and lack of interest, a peculiarity 

 of the lowest type of man. The iris of the eye seems to merge indis- 

 tinctly into the white, and the Singhalese say that the Veddahs have eyes 

 like monkeys, because they are red, and they always look down or stare 

 straight before them; this seems to be true as at such times their 

 faces are utterly expressionless. Near them were five other shelters or 

 huts, about eight feet square, with scant walls and dirt floors. The 

 women and children were occupied in shelling the seeds out of the lotus 

 pods and the chief when asked by our guide if there were special 

 times during the day when they ate replied: They crack one nut and eat 

 it, then crack another and eat it, until their supply is gone, and they 

 sleep wherever they happen to be. Although they live near the lakes, 

 abounding in fish, they are not fishermen, as far as we could learn." 



This, then, is the childlike stage in man's development, and the 

 question comes, — Was there such a period in the existence of man in 

 America? If primitive man here was autochthonous then as a matter 

 of course there was such a beginning. Agassiz and Dana have stated 

 again and again that North America was the original home of man 

 and the oldest area known. Prominent authorities have even suggested 

 that the tide of emigration may have set the other way — from America 

 to Asia. 



Belief in the emigration plan of peopling the so-called new-world 

 from a "dispersal center" in Asia still obtains. The Smithsonian In- 

 stitution in their Handbook of American Indians says: "The fact that 

 the American Indians have acquired such marked physical characteristics 

 as to be regarded as a separate race of very considerable homogenity, 

 from Alaska to Patagonia, is regarded as indicating a long and com- 

 plete separation from their parental peoples." And it is further stated: 

 "The term Paleolithic is applied to implements, usually of stone, be- 

 longing to the Paleolithic age as first defined in Europe and afterward 

 identified in other countries. In America the Paleolithic, as chronolog- 

 ically distinct from the Neolithic age, is not established, and the more 



