42 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
side and soon reached Santiago. The three weeks spent in Santiago were taken 
up largely with affairs of the delegation, including official duties and attend- 
ance on meetings of the Congress. The section of the natural sciences, includ- — 
ing anthropology, met daily, and on December 28 the chief acted as chairman 
of the section. His contribution to the programme of the congress was a 
paper on “ The peopling of America,” an abstract of which follows: 
Discussion of the problem of the origin of the American aborigines involves 
consideration of several important questions, as follows: 
(1) Evolution of the human species from lower forms. 
(2) Geographical location of the original home of the race. 
(8) Dispersal to the different land areas of the globe. 
(4) Differentiation of the subraces physically and culturally. 
(5) Chronology of the racial history. 
In the present state of our knowledge we can not assume to dispose finally 
of these several questions. It is most important, however, that the whole sub- 
ject should be passed under review at frequent intervals, and the data as- 
sembled, classified, and critically examined. The writer’s views, formulated 
after careful consideration of the various phases of the subject presented, con- 
sidering more especially the North American evidence, are expressed in the 
following summary of probabilities: 
(1) That the human family is monogenetic; that is to say, the present sub- 
races have been derived by differentiation from a common stock. 
(2) That the precursor—that is to say, man before he reached the human 
status—occupied a limited area. 
(3) That this area was tropical or subtropical and was situated in the Old 
World rather than in the New. 
(4) That multiplication of numbers led to wide distribution, and that isola- 
tion on distinct land areas finally led to the differentiation of the subraces. 
(5) That the separation into distinct groups began at an early period, but 
not until after the typical human characters had been developed. 
(6) That the human characters were acquired in Tertiary time, and that 
dissemination extended to distant continents, mainly in Quaternary time. 
(7) That the pioneers of the present American race belonged to the well- 
differentiated Asiatic subrace and that they reached America by way of Bering 
Strait. : 
(8) That the early migrations included few individuals and occurred at 
widely separated periods; that the movements were slow and by means of the 
ice bridge in winter or by skin boats in summer. 
(9) That the culture of the immigrants in all cases was very primitive, not 
rising above the hunter-fisher stage. 
(10) That successive migrations involved numerous distinct groups or tribes, 
so that the American race is a composite of diversified Asiatic elements more 
or less completely amalgamated. 
(11) That the result was a new people and a new culture, essentially 
American. 
(12) That the Eskimo—forming a widely distributed ethnic group occupying 
the northern shores of both continents—acquired their physical characteristics 
and peculiar culture under the influence of Arctic conditions, and that they are 
the descendants of marginal tribes early forced to the northward from southern 
Eurasian sources of population. Y 
(18) That occasional accessions of population may have resulted from the 
accidental arrival of voyagers from other lands, though not in numbers large 
enough to affect the race perceptibly. 
(14) That in the present period prior to the Columbian discovery occasional 
voyagers from southern Asiatic culture centers or from Japan or China may 
have reached American shores and left an impress on the culture of middle 
America. ; ' 
(15) That the peopling of America with the present race was accomplished 
in late Glacial or post-Glacial time rather than in early Glacial or Tertiary 
time. 
(16) That much of the recorded geological evidence of great human antiquity 
in America is unreliable and requires critical revision. 
(17) That the aboriginal peoples will soon disappear as the result of inter- 
minglings with other races and failure to accommodate themselves to new con- 
ditions; that America will be fully occupied by a cosmopolitan people embody- 
