488 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



Having reached the only possible conclusions on the two important 

 questions thus far considered, namely, that the American aborigines 

 represent a single race, and that the presence of this race on this 

 continent is of no demonstrated geological antiquity, we reach the 

 third and final complex of questions involved in the problem of the 

 genesis of the American Indians — the whence, when, and how of his 

 occupancy of the New World. 



Considering the primitive means of transportation of prehistoric 

 man, it will be agreed, I think, that he could have come only from 

 those parts of the Old World that lie nearest to America. These 

 portions are the western coast of northern Africa, northwestern 

 Europe, and particularly the northeastern parts of Asia ; and geology 

 shows that there were no nearer lands or other than perhaps a far 

 northern (north of Bering Strait) Asiatic- American land connec- 

 tion, within the period that can be assigned to man's existence. 



Between Africa and South America, however, at their nearest 

 approach, there are nearly 2,000 miles of distance, and the separation 

 between the nearest points of North America and Europe is even 

 much greater. It is not at all likely, to say the least, that man 

 reached the American continent from either of these directions 

 except since protohistoric times, after he had sufficiently developed 

 a means of navigation, with those of prolonged self-sustenance ; and 

 this likelihood would hold equally true if he had come by way of Ice- 

 land, or Greenland, for even there the ocean stretches are very con- 

 siderable. 



But, turning to the Asiatic continent, we find no such insuperable 

 difficulties. Only about 30 miles separates the two continents at 

 Bering Strait, and in clear weather American land is visible from 

 the hills of the East Cape of Asia. North of Bering Strait there 

 may have existed until relatively recent times an actual land connec- 

 tion over which many animals possibly reached the New World and 

 which could have served as a direct bridge for man, but as yet no 

 direct evidence has been obtained that man could have come at that 

 time. The Bering Sea itself, however, could have been crossed, by 

 way of St. Lawrence Island or even over the open. And much far- 

 ther south there is the long semilunar chain of the Aleutians which 

 reach to within 400 miles of Kamchatka, and even that distance 

 is broken nearly into halves by the Commander Islands. It is true 

 that the sea here is rough, and fogs prevail, but from what we know 

 of the achievements in navigation by the natives of the northern 

 Pacific coasts, in skin boats, in recent times, it is within the range 

 of possibility that these conditions could have been overcome and 

 the distance covered by men of earlier times. Here, then, we have 

 several practicable routes by which the Asiatics could have reached 



