ORTGIN OF AMERICAN INDIAN HRDLICKA 491 



Archeological researches in northern Asia, including Japan and 

 China, are still in their beginning, nevertheless they indicate the 

 presence, over a wide territory, of many remains of human occupancy, 

 in the form of burial mounds and of ruins, with other signs of man's 

 activity. The great majority of these remains are known to be of 

 no great antiquity, dating from historic or late prehistoric times; 

 but there are also older mounds, cave remains, and dwelling sites 

 which yield only stone and bone implements, and primitive pottery. 

 These latter remains are the earliest in eastern and northeastern 

 Asia thus far discovered, and the culture they represent corresponds 

 generally to that of parts of the Neolithic epoch of Europe. And what 

 is true of cultural applies also to the skeletal remains from these 

 sites— they show relatively modern forms, much like those that 

 existed in the Old World during the neolithic age. We have there- 

 fore no evidence, or even a promise of evidence, so far, that these 

 farther portions of the Asiatic continent were peopled except at a 

 relatively recent period. It is true that Paleolithic implements occur 

 in a certain region along the Yenisei River in Siberia, and that 

 others have been found lately in northwestern China, but these finds, 

 even if they should prove to represent a fairly ancient man, are 

 thousands of miles away from whp.re man could have eventually 

 crossed over to America. All this leads to the strong presumption 

 that the beginning of migration into America did not take place be- 

 fore the time of the European late Paleolithic or earlier Neolithic 

 period, which, reduced to years, would be somewhere between pos- 

 sibly ten or at most fifteen thousands of years ago and the dawn of 

 the proto-historic period in.the Old World. 



Here, however, the claim might be urged that perhaps northern 

 Asiatic man had a different origin from the European Neolithic 

 population, and may have reached the northern confines of Asia be- 

 fore the more westerly branch or branches of humanity peopled most 

 of Europe. To this it may be answered that it would be merely a 

 hypothesis unsupported by any material evidence. The northern 

 Asiatic man of all periods' is too near in every important respect to 

 the white man to be regarded as a distant relative, much less as a 

 different species, as he would necessarily be if he had a separate 

 origin ; and there is nothing that would even suggest his presence 

 in northeastern Asia before the existence of late Paleolithic or Neo- 

 lithic man of Europe. It seems much more justifiable to accept the 

 view that he was derived from the same stock as the European Pre- 

 neolithic and Neolithic population, and that he peopled Asia through 

 migration by the central and southern routes. But granting, for 

 the sake of argument, the wholly improbable supposition that he had 

 developed apart in or to the south of Asia, we would still have to as- 



