ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA — NELSON 499 



been adjudged plain frauds. Whatever the truth, the available pic- 

 torial evidence is insufficient as proof either of man's antiquity or 

 of the late survival of the animals in question, especially as no finds 

 seem to be extant of the actual human use of fresh ivory. 



But then, as if to reinstate all the foregoing weak claims, or at any 

 rate to confuse once more the entire issue, it must be mentioned that 

 several widely scattered paleontological discoveries agree in suggest- 

 ing the contemporaneous existence of man and of the great probosci- 

 dians, and that the latest exceptionally well-authenticated find, in 

 Ecuador, would seem to bring the survival of the mastodon, at least, 

 down to within two millenniums of our own day.°^ Something ap- 

 parently is wrong somewhere when we are asked to believe that the 

 American Indian, who more or less faithfully pictured the animal 

 life about him much as did his hunting kin in the Old World, was 

 little if at all impressed by his most unique and gigantic contempo- 

 raries. Moreover, if he saw or pursued such prey, it is strange that 

 our folklorists have not found tales of the adventure. 



Missing somatic features. — There is current among paleontologists 

 an old and seemingly well-founded opinion to the effect that America 

 was never the home of any anthropoid creatures from which a human 

 stock could have been derived. Moreover, barring Ameghino's hope- 

 less claims, there appears not to have been brought to light in the 

 Western Hemisphere a single fragment of evidence indicative of a 

 really primitive human type, comparable, for example, to Pithecan- 

 thropus erectus of Java, the Peking man of China, the Piltdown man 

 of England, the Heidelberg man of Germany, or even of the Nean- 

 derthal type of man, widely distributed in Europe and Africa, reach- 

 ing Asia and perhaps also far away Australia. In view of the appar- 

 ent wanderings of this primitive hunter, it seems more than strange 

 that he should not also have followed the game animals on which he 

 subsisted off into the Western Hemisphere, if the route was really 

 open. Nevertheless, American skeletal remains, and especially those 

 for which geologic antiquity has been claimed, have all been care- 

 fully studied, or restudied, by Hrdlicka,^* who finds in the lot of 70 

 or more specimens only modern types of men, closely resembling our 

 living Indians. It is true that so experienced an anatomist as Sir 

 Arthur Keith has sought to establish the contemporaneity of the 

 species Homo sapiens and Homo neandertalerisis, or, in other words, 

 to claim much greater antiquity than hitherto for modern man : ^' 

 but even if proved correct for the Old World, the outcome for the 

 New World would remain doubtful. The most extreme suggestions 



" Uhle, Max., Proc. 23d Int. Congr. Americanists, pp. 247-258, New Yorlc, 1930. 

 »*Hrdlifka, A., Bulls. 33, 52, 66, Bur. Amer. Etlinol. 

 "•Keith, Sir A., Antiquity of man, London, 1915. 



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