484 A PROBLEM IN AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGY. 



there is some evidence that in our Southern States, in comparatively 

 recent times, there were a few remnants of this old people. It seems 

 to me, therefore, that we must regard the culture of the builders of 

 the ancient earthworks as one and the same with that of ancient Mexico, 

 although modified by environment. 



Our Northern and Eastern tribes came in contact with this people 

 when they pushed their way southward and westward, and many arts 

 and customs were doubtless adopted by the invaders, as shown by 

 customs still lingering among some of our Indian tribes. It is this 

 absorption and admixture of the peoples that has in the course of 

 thousands of years brought all our American peoples into a certain 

 conformit}^ This does not, however, prove a unity of race. 



It is convenient to group the living tribes by their languages. The 

 existence of more than a hundred and fifty diti'erent languages in 

 America, howfever, does not prove a common origin, but rather a 

 diversitj^ of origin as well as a great antiquity of man in America. 



That man was on the American continent in quaternary times, and 

 possibh' still earlier, seems to me as certain as that he was on the Old 

 World during the same period. The Calaveras skull, that bone of 

 contention, is not the only evidence of his early occupation of the 

 Pacific coast. On the Atlantic side the recent extensive explorations 

 of the glacial and immediately following deposits at Trenton are con- 

 firmator}" of the occupation of the Delaware Valley during the closing- 

 centuries of the glacial period and possibly also of the interglacial 

 time. The discoveries in Ohio, in Florida, and in various parts of 

 Central and South America all go to prove man's antiquity in America. 

 Admitting the great antiquity of one or more of the earh' groups of 

 man on the continent, and that he spread widely over it while in the 

 palaeolithic and early neolithic stages of culture, I can not see any rea- 

 son for doul)ting that there were also later accessions during neolithic 

 times and even when social institutions were well advanced. While 

 these culture epochs mark certain phases in the development of a 

 people, they can not be considered as marking special periods of time. 

 In America we certainly do not find that correlation with the Old 

 World periods which we are so wont to take for granted. 



We have now reached the epoch of careful and thorough exploration 

 and of conscientious arrangement of collections in our scientific 

 musemns. It is no longer considered sacrilegious to exhibit skulls, 

 skeletons, and mummies in connection with the works of the same 

 peoples. Museums devoted primarily to the education of the public 

 in the esthetic arts are clearing their cases of heterogeneous collec- 

 tions of ethnological and archaeological objects. Museums of natural 

 history are being arranged to show the histor}^ and distribution of 

 animal and vegetable life and the structure of the earth itself. An- 

 thropological museums should be similarly arranged and, with certain 



