48G ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



But there are other logical and decisive proofs that such origin 

 was impossible. The two main are as follows : 



1. The Indians, notwithstanding their diverse special character- 

 istics, are on the whole exceedingly like the rest of mankind in every 

 important feature, so that if we should accept the view that they 

 originated in America we would practically be obliged to conclude 

 that all mankind originated here — a theory that has actually been 

 advocated but which at the present time would probably seem mon- 

 strous even to those who would otherwise be disposed to believe in 

 an American origin of the Indians. For it is well known that all the 

 really known Primate species that come or ever came near to man 

 live or lived in parts of the Old World, and that the earliest known 

 forms of humanity belong equally to the Old World. It is to the 

 warmer regions of the Old World that the best scientific evidence 

 leads us to look for man's origin, and the rest of the earth could have 

 been peopled only through the gradual dispersion of mankind, or of a 

 form that eventually led to mankind, from the Old World center or 

 centers of development. 



2. Secondly, we know that a very early and physically as well as 

 culturally very primitive form of humanity had reached the central 

 part of western Europe somewhere before, probably much before, the 

 middle of the Quaternary or Glacial Epoch, and we would look in 

 vain for any feasible mode of bringing such primitive beings at that 

 time from America to what is now southwestern Germany, Belgium, 

 France, Spain, and England. 



All these reasonings, nevertheless, would perforce be subverted if, 

 as has happened so frequently within the last few decades in Europe, 

 there were discovered on the American continent unquestionable 

 skeletal or cultural remains of geologically ancient man. As might 

 be expected from the great interest in such remains aroused by the 

 European discoveries, with human credulity and especially the gen- 

 eral inclination of less disciplined or trained minds toward the won- 

 derful, with its dwarfs, giants, and beings of mysterious power or of 

 great antiquity, and also as a result the many possibilities of acci- 

 dental inclusion of human artifacts or remains in old strata, the 

 occasional rapid fossilization of human bones, and a possible com- 

 mingling of such bones or other vestiges of man with the bones of 

 ancient animals — claims to discoveries of skeletal or other remains 

 of early American man have not been wanting and will not be want- 

 ing as time goes on. Announcements of such discoveries have ap- 

 peared repeatedly both in North America and in South America, 

 and have given rise to much speculation. On being subjected to 

 thorough scientific scrutiny, however, the antiquity of the majority 

 of the finds on which the structure of man's antiquity in America 



