12 A^rNUAL EEPOBT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN SIBERIA AND MONGOLIA. 



With the view of securing further information as to the origin of 

 the race that peopled America, a visit was made to certain portions of 

 Siberia and Mongolia by Dr. Hrdlicka, of the National Museum, dur- 

 ing the summer of 1912. This work was undertaken partly under 

 the ausjDices of the Smithsonian Institution and partly in the interest 

 of the Panama-California Exposition of San Diego. 



Besides field observations made by Dr. Hrdlicka, an examination 

 was made of the anthropological collections in the various Siberian 

 museums in the region covered. He saw or was told of thousands 

 upon thousands of burial mounds, or " kourgans," dating from the 

 present time back to the period when nothing but stone implements 

 were used by man in those regions. And he saw and learned of 

 numerous large caverns, particularly in the mountains bordering the 

 Yenisei Eiver, which yield human remains and offer excellent oppor- 

 tunities for investigation. 



A brief account of Di\ Hrdlicka's studies is given by him in a 

 pamphlet published in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 

 in which he says : 



' In regard to the living people, the writer had the opportunity of seeing nu- 

 merous Buriats, representatives of a number of tribes on the Yenisei and Aba- 

 can Rivers, many thousands of Mongolians, a number of Tibetans, and many 

 Chinese, with a few Manchurians. * * * Among all these people there are 

 visible many and unmistakable traces of admixture or persistence of what 

 appears to have been the older population of these regions, pre-Mongolian and 

 especially pre-Chinese, as we know these nations at the present day. Those 

 representing these vestiges belong partly to the brachycephalic and in a smaller 

 extent to the dolichocephalic type, and resemble to the point of identity Amer- 

 ican Indians of corresponding head form. * * * 



The physical resemblances between these numerous outcroppings of the older 

 blood and tyi^es of northeastern Asia and the American Indian can not be re- 

 garded as accidental, for they are numerous as well as important, and can not 

 be found in parts of the world not peopled by the yellow-brown race ; nor can 

 they be taken as an indication of American migration to Asia, for emigration 

 of man follows the laws of least resistance or greatest advantage, and these 

 conditions surely lay more in the direction from Asia to America than the 

 reverse. 



In conclusion, it may be said that from what he learned in eastern Asia, and 

 weighing the evidence with due respect to other possible views, the writer feels 

 justified in advancing the opinion that there exist to-day over large parts of 

 eastern Siberia, and in Mongolia, Tibet, and other regions in that part of the 

 world, numerous remains, which now form constituent parts of more modern 

 tribes or nations, of a more ancient population ( related in origin, perhaps, with 

 the latest paleolithic European), which was physically identical with and in all 

 probability gave rise to the American Indian. 



BIOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE PANAMA CANAL ZONE. 



The biological survey of the Panama Canal Zone, organized by the 

 Institution in 1910, was brought to a close during the i^ast year as 



