THE NEW WORLD PALEO-INDIAN? 
By FRANK H. H. Roberts, Jr. 
Bureau of American Ethnology 
[With 12 plates] 
Scattered finds in North, Middle, and South America over a period 
of years have added materially to the growing body of evidence for an 
occupation of the Western Hemisphere in reasonably ancient times by 
peoples who, judging from their physical characteristics, migrated 
from northeastern Asia and became the basic aboriginal population 
of the New World. In comparison with the remains of later periods, 
traces of the early Indian are far from numerous. They are sufficient, 
however, to demonstrate that more than chance occurrences are in- 
volved and to justify the belief that further investigations will increase 
knowledge about this phase of the pre-Columbian history of the 
Americas. To name and describe all the discoveries pertaining to this 
subject (Sellards, 1940) is beyond the scope of the present paper. It is 
possible to discuss only a few of the recent and more important finds 
and to consider their bearing on the problems of age and general 
cultural status. 
NORTH AMERICA 
Beginning in 1926 and continuing through subsequent years a series 
of discoveries in North America yielded evidence, now generally ac- 
cepted, for a comparatively early occupancy. These finds consisted of 
associations between stone artifacts and the bones from extinct species 
of animals, of stone implements and hearths occurring in strata of 
identifiable geologic age, of camp sites located along old terraces and on 
the shores of lakes long since dry, and of human bones incorporated in 
deposits of geologic significance. The materials from several of these 
occurrences seem to be components of complexes from the same or 
related cultural groups. In other cases the collections are from single 
sites which appear, in the light of present information, to have no con- 
nection with those found elsewhere. The evidence derived from com- 
parable artifacts occurring under similar conditions at different loca- 
1 Revised, with the addition of some new material and illustrations, from the article 
“Bvidence for a Paleo-Indian in the New World,” in Acta Americana, vol. 1, No. 2, April— 
June 1943. 
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