490 ANNUAL REPORT SMMCHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



of culture ; and finding that, outside of heterogeneous immigrants and 

 mixtures, the two regions are peopled to this day by radically the 

 same type of humanity, there is the strongest possible argument for 

 the unity of origin of the eastern Asiatics and the American Indians. 

 And as man can scarcely be assumed to have originated in America 

 and to have migrated to Asia, there remains the one possible conclu- 

 sion that the American aborigines were derived from the Asiatic 

 continent; and they must have come by the northern routes, which 

 were not only the most practicable but were the only ones that would 

 enable man in the earlier stages of culture to reach the New World. 

 The Pacific islands were not peopled until relatively recent times, 

 later than America itself, and hence need not be considered in this 

 connection any more than historic Europe or Africa. If any parties 

 of these islanders ever reached the American continent, which is not 

 impossible, they could have come only after the Indians had spread 

 over it and were well established, and while such parties could have 

 introduced perhaps a few cultural peculiarities, they could not ma- 

 terially have affected the population. 



Granting, on the basis of the above considerations, that the Ameri- 

 can aborigines came originally from Asia, we are still confronted by 

 the two important questions as to when and how this immigration 

 could have been effected. 



As to the ti?ne, there is no direct evidence and none can be hoped 

 for. Yet it seems that in an indirect way we may approach a solution 

 of this mooted question. 



It is self-evident that before man could have migrated from Asia 

 he must have peopled that continent; and he must have peopled it 

 in relatively large numbers, for only that would have enabled him to 

 overrun such an immense territory. Man does not migrate like 

 birds — he spreads. He is gregarious, and he is a creature of habits, 

 one of the strongest of which is attachment to his home, whether the 

 limited site of a sedentary community or the larger territory of a 

 nomad tribe. He will move only because of compulsion, such as 

 may be caused by enemies, some calamity, or the exhaustion of re- 

 sources; or because of better prospects ahead in the way of climate 

 or food. He can not be supposed to have reached the colder north- 

 eastern limits of Asia before the warmer, richer, or more available 

 parts of that continent were settled or hunted over ; and he could not 

 have reached America, of course, before all this took place. We are 

 able then to establish one definite landmark in reference to the time 

 of the beginning of the peopling of America; it could only have 

 followed that of Asia. 



This leads to the second step in our quest, namely, the peopling 

 of Asia itself, and more particularly of its northern portions. 



