54 FINAL, ACT OF SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 



It was also shown that the original inhabitants of America must have 

 come to this continent by the several northwestern routes; that this 

 advent could not have occurred before Asia itself was well peopled; and 

 that immigrants could not have arrived on this continent in any consid- 

 erable numbers at one time, but rather that arrivals were in relatively 

 small parties and extended over long periods of time. Among the 

 important subjects discussed were those of the racial elements entering 

 into the modern population of America, and the ethnic problems of 

 immigration. These diversified racial elements have united in varying 

 degrees with the native American population and are slowly developing 

 new ethnic variants, the study of which is of great interest and impor- 

 tance. 



The branch of anthropologic science known as ethnology deals mainly 

 with the problems of the present and historic populations, with their 

 physical and mental characteristics, and with every department of their 

 culture language, social institutions, religion, technology, esthetics, 

 traditions, and lore. There are upward of a thousand tribes, and each 

 presents an ethnic complex so intricate and so obscure that no single one 

 has as yet been exhaustively studied and placed upon record. 



In the conferences of the Section attention was given in certain meas- 

 ure (i) to the origin, development, characteristics, and relationships of 

 the 500 or more languages distributed over the continent from Alaska 

 to Patagonia; (2) to the problems of the social institutions which, when 

 mastered, will become available to the historian of the race in his efforts 

 to determine the processes and laws of the evolution of civilized institu- 

 tions; (3) to the problems of the diversified systems of belief which men 

 have devised to explain the mysteries of the cosmos and of their environ- 

 ment and their relations thereto, and to the endless array of devices the 

 rites and ceremonies by means of which primitive man has sought and 

 still seeks to influence the deities which he has created; (4) to the prob- 

 lems of technology, which involve the consideration of each and every 

 art and industry known to man, and the activities by means of which 

 he has advanced through a long series of experiments, inventions, and 

 adaptations to his present state; (5) to the problems of the esthetic arts 

 the embellishing and fine arts which take so prominent a place in the 

 history of civilization, for nowhere are these more readily and effectively 

 studied than in the primitive American field; (6) to the problems of 

 geography which relate to the original habitat and migrations and the 

 complicated course of distribution which has resulted in the present 

 geographical position of the tribes and nations. 



