A PRIMEVAL MOTHER TONGUE 



is not many years since ethnologists were rack- 

 ing their brains to show how the North Ameri- 

 can Indians might have come over from Asia ; 

 and there was felt to be a sort of speculative 

 necessity for discovering points of resemblance 

 between American languages, myths, and social 

 observances and those of the Oriental world. 

 Now the Aborigines of this continent were made 

 out to be Kamtchatkans, and now Chinamen, 

 and again they were shown, with quaint erudi- 

 tion, to be remnants of the ten tribes of Israel. 

 Perhaps none of these theories have been ex- 

 actly disproved, but they have all been super- 

 seded, and have lost their interest. We now 

 know that in the earliest post-Pliocene times, if 

 not in the Pliocene age itself, at least four hun- 

 dred thousand years ago, the American conti- 

 nent was inhabited by human beings. The 

 primeval Californian skull, moreover, resembles 

 the modern American Indian type, and is not 

 to be confounded with Old World skulls. It 

 is probable, therefore, that far back in post- 

 Pliocene times, before the great glacial period, 

 the ancestors of the American Indians had al- 

 ready become distinguished from the races of 

 Asia. Now both before and since that time the 

 eastern and western continents have been re- 

 peatedly joined together at their northern ex- 

 tremities. In view of such facts, whatever opin- 

 ion we may ultimately adopt, we feel that all 

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