FINAI, ACT OF SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 53 



and characteristics of the human race. Beginning with the present 

 period, researches in anthropology extend backward in an almost endless 

 perspective to the birth of the race. Slowly but surely they are pene- 

 trating the shadows of the past, and in good time the veil which has 

 obscured the story of man's origin and becoming will be lifted, and those 

 who will may know the truth. Science does not stop, however, with 

 the work of unveiling the past. It seeks to know and to understand the 

 present man and to apply that knowledge to his betterment. Its activi- 

 ties extend thus to a consideration of the problems of education and to 

 a determination of the most effectual means of applying the principles 

 of eugenics to the further evolution of the race. 



It was with the view of bringing together the many devotees of this 

 great branch of research that the Section of Anthropology was organized 

 and the program formulated, and the results have justified the most 

 sanguine expectations. Joint sessions were arranged with five kindred 

 organizations whose activities come within the field of anthropology, and 

 the papers and discussions had a wide range. The body of students of 

 the science thus brought together is believed to have exceeded in number 

 and importance any previous assemblage of its kind, at least on this side 

 of the Atlantic. 



Necessarily the papers presented and discussed 162 in number 

 touch upon but a limited number of the salient features of the extensive 

 and much diversified subject-matter. Chief attention was given to the 

 results of recent researches in the Pan American Republics, studies 

 relating to man himself as the most important biologic unit, to living 

 stocks and tribes and their extremely varied cultures, and to the vast 

 body of material traces of the prehistoric occupancy of the continent. 



The physical man, and more especially the aboriginal American man, 

 received the attention which his position as the original proprietor of the 

 continent and as one of the principal races of men would suggest and ren- 

 der appropriate. The problems of the origin of the American race have 

 occupied many minds since the discovery of the continent, but it is only 

 within recent years that anything like real scientific deductions have 

 become possible. It was made apparent that there is but one American 

 race, and that no trace has ever been found of any other than the Indian 

 race on the continent. It was shown that this people represents phys- 

 ically an advanced and hence a relatively late form of humanity; that it 

 connects in its physical and physiological characteristics with the yellow- 

 born people of eastern Asia, and more remotely, in all probability, with 

 the latest paleolithic or early neolithic peoples of the Old World. 



