COMING OF MAN FROM ASIA — HRDLICKA 469 



can developments, according to differing needs and opportunities, 

 could readily have taken place in different locations. 



As to the Old World ancestry of the American Indian it is ever 

 more strongly indicated by the accumulating evidence that this con- 

 nects with the earlier neolithic man of Asia and through him with 

 the Magdalenian and Aurignacian man of northern Asia and Europe. 



A word, finally, as to the present aspects of the problem of the 

 genetic relations of the Eskimo to the Indian. The Eskimo appears 

 to be a later offshoot from the same old stock that gave us the Indian. 

 He came later and in two subtypes, one nearer to, the other farther 

 from, the Indian. The relation of the Indian and the Eskimo may 

 best perhaps be represented by a hand with outstretched fingers. 

 The diverging fingers are the different types of the Indian: the 

 thumb, Avhich should be double, represents the Eskimo. The 

 thumb is farther apart but originates from the same hand, which 

 is the old or paleo-Asiatic yellow-brown strain, a strain that gave 

 us the ancestry of all the aboriginal Americans. 



The Smithsonian explorations in the far Northwest will continue. 

 There is ahead still an enormous amount of labor. But the "prin- 

 ciples" of the region are already appearing, and they promise to 

 place, before long, many of our problems of American origins on a 

 firm scientific foundation. 



SUMMARY 



Since 1926 the Smithsonian Institution has carried on renewed 

 explorations and studies in Alaska relative to the origin of the 

 American aborigines. 



These explorations, partly somatological and partly archeological, 

 have thrown new and important light on the problems of the coming 

 of man from Asia. 



The main indications are that man came over very gradually and 

 disconnectedly over a long period of time ; that he brought with him 

 differences in type, language, and culture; that at least some of the 

 culture he carried was already far advanced; that according to all 

 indications he did not proceed to people America across the main- 

 land, but by skirting the western and southern coasts of Alaska ; and 

 that the Eskimo, the last comer, in his two types is a blood relation 

 of the Indian. 



The material evidences of the early comers may never be recovered 

 in western Alaska, which has suffered important geotechnic changes 

 since man's arrival, and where, moreover, most of the ground, with its 

 contents, is perpetually frozen. There is more hope along the Gulf, 

 but especially along the western coasts of the continent, from British 

 Columbia to California and Mexico. 



