ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA — NELSON 479 



the linguistic and somatic classifications is not clear. It is a matter 

 of t'ommon knowledge, however, that group control, both temporal 

 and spiritual — if separable — varied from the simplest imaginable 

 to the highly complicated, from a barely recognized leader or chief 

 to hierarchical authority, with corresponding states of organization 

 ranging from practical anarchy among the Eskimo through such 

 intertribal affiliations as the League of the Iroquois in northeastern 

 North America and the military theocracies in Middle America to 

 something like communistic despotism in Peru. 



In reference to American linguistics it is necessary to defer to the 

 specialists on practically all points. These investigators would ap- 

 pear to have held for some time the view that the Indian as a group 

 has not only been so long removed from the Old World that his 

 speech affinities in that quarter are no longer recognizable, but also 

 that he has been at home in the New World long enough to have 

 evolved about 160 linguistic stocks or language families, with 1,200 

 or more dialectic subdivisions. Presumably, however, some of this 

 language diversity may be due to migrations from different linguistic 

 areas of the Old World. 



Under the heading, finally, of somatics, it may be mentioned that 

 the native population of the New World has been variously estimated 

 at figures ranging all the way from 5 millions (Thomas Wilson) to 

 50 millions (Kroeber). Some groups being practically out of reach, 

 as, e. g., in the Amazon region, and, therefore, not adequately studied, 

 the precise number of distinguishable physical types can scarcely be 

 given, but the general conditions pertaining to physical character- 

 istics are similar to those obtaining with respect to linguistics: the 

 Indian type is distinguishable in one way or another from its 

 nearest Mongoloid relations and at the same time is separable, accord- 

 ing to some authorities, into about 10 more or less distinct varieties, 

 which, as in the case of languages, may or may not have developed 

 since immigration took place. 



All of these more or less indisputable facts, regarded as phases of 

 the normal cultural and biological processes, are uniformly held to 

 have required a long period of time for their accomplishment. With 

 this assumption no issue need be taken ; but the question may prop- 

 erly be asked — how much time ? This is not the occasion for arguing 

 the point, still it is tempting to remark in passing that if the glory 

 which was Egypt's arose and fell in about 3,500 years — and we have 

 very similar histories for Mesopotamia, China, and perhaps India — 

 then there is at least some ground for the supposition that the ad- 

 vanced cultural developments exhibited by Peru and Middle America 

 may not much antedate 2000 B. C. And as for the entire known 



