THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE AMERICAN 



INDIAN 1 



Bv Ales Hrdlicka 



[With 17 plates] 



The great problem of American prehistory is that of the 

 genesis of the Indians, who when first seen by white men were al- 

 ready spread over the entire American continent as well as all its 

 habitable islands. 



Without discussing the many older speculations on the subject, 

 we will approach directly the several concrete questions into which 

 this problem resolves itself. The foremost of these is that of the 

 race unity or plurality of the Indians. 



It is known that the aboriginal population of America was divided 

 into many tribes, and even a number of what might be called nations, 

 often hostile to one another ; we have learned that there were many dif- 

 ferent languages and dialects, remarkable differences in culture and 

 the material results of culture, and also marked differences in the 

 physiognomy, color, stature, head form, details of physique, and in 

 the general behavior of the different groups of Indians — all of which 

 would seem to indicate that there might have existed here some, if not 

 considerable, racial diversity. 



But if these matters are subjected to careful and comprehensive 

 scrutiny, we find that the various differences presented by the In- 

 dians are often more apparent than real ; that actual and important 

 differences are in no case of sufficient weight to permit of any radical 

 dissociation on that basis; and that the more substantial differences 

 which exist between the tribes are everywhere underlaid by funda- 

 mental similarities and identities that outweigh them and that speak 

 strongly not only against any plurality of race on the American con- 

 tinent, taking the term race in its fullest meaning, but for the general 

 original unity of the Indians. 



We thus see that the American languages, while not infrequently 

 differing greatly in phonetics, vocabulary, and even structure, be- 

 long nevertheless to one fundamental large class — the polysyn- 

 thetic — and present other important resemblances in their com- 



1 Rewritten for the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution from " The Genesis 

 of the American Indian," Proc. XIX Intern. Cong. Americanists, Washington, 1917, 

 559-568. 



481 



