58 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP, n 



in use in some parts of the continent ; and this study has 

 resulted in the formation of two schools of American 

 anthropologists. The one school, impressed by the very 

 numerous resemblances to be found between existing 

 Indians and the mound-builders, maintain the practical 

 identity of race and continuity of habitation from the 

 epoch of the earliest prehistoric remains down to the date 

 of the European discovery. The other school, laying 

 more stress on the differences between the remains left 

 by the mound-builders and other prehistoric races and 

 the works of modern Indians, and being convinced, 

 further, that there are indications of great antiquity and 

 successive occupation in many areas, believe that there 

 has been a long series of changes in America as in the 

 old world, that each group of remains and each area has 

 its characteristic features, that there have been higher 

 grades of civilisation succeeded by lower as well as lower 

 by higher, and that the facts, no less than the proba- 

 bilities, are all in favour of successive displacements of 

 tribes or races, of which the displacement of the mound- 

 builders by the ancestors of the historic " red men " was 

 perhaps the latest. 



This divergence of opinion is probably the very best 

 security for the ultimate discovery of the truth, since it 

 assures us that no important evidence on either side will 

 be neglected. The whole inquiry is in good hands ; fresh 

 material is continually being obtained and elaborated ; 

 and we may look forward with some confidence to a final 

 consensus of opinion which shall disperse, by the light of 

 accurate knowledge, some portion at least of the obscurity 

 which has hitherto overshadowed the early history of the 

 American continent. 



