NO. II MELANESIANS AND AUSTRALIANS HRDLICKA 25 



In 1926 in Scientia, Rivet, although not bringing any new evidence, 

 states his beHefs with especial emphasis. All the hypotheses that 

 endeavor to explain the coming of man to America over since-vanished 

 continents may now be eliminated, for such disappearances, in the 

 unanimous view of the geologists, were all anterior to the Quaternary 

 period. The American Indians are not autochthonous. They did 

 not have a unique [single] origin, but have suffered the dominant in- 

 fluence of a race which, in a certain measure, has produced uniformity 

 of their external aspect ; and they did not reach America before the 

 end of the paleolithic period. There were three main ethnic elements 

 that entered into the formation of the pre-Columbian American popu- 

 lation, namely : the Australian ; a group speaking a Malayo-Polynesian 

 language but physically connected with the Melanesians ; and, by 

 far the most important, an Asiatic element, in which may be dis- 

 tinguished two related groups, one Uralian (Eskimo) and the other 

 Sino-Tibetan (NaDene). The order of arrival of these elements on 

 the American continent appears to have been that in which they are 

 enumerated. 



In 1927 Rivet, basing his conclusions on the Lagoa Santa skulls, 

 on a collection of crania from limited localities in Ecuador and in 

 Lower California, and on certain ethnographic and linguistic data, 

 comes to a " renewed conception " of the peopling of America : 



Surely, the Asiatic element here plays the principal role, but henceforth a 



part must also be assigned to a Melanesian and an Australian element 



The American aborigine appears therefore as a product of very diverse ethnic 

 elements, among which the Asiatic was manifestly the dominant one.^^ 



Rivet reaches further interesting conclusions as to the times of 

 the immigration into America. Nothing to date, he believes, authorizes 

 us to suppose that the first occupants reached America before the 



^^ " De cet ensemble de fait decouverts en quelques mois, se degage une con- 

 ception renouvelee du peuplement de I'Amerique. 



" Certes, I'apport asiatique y joue toujours le role principal, mais une part 

 doit etre faite desormais a un apport melanesien et a un apport australien. En 

 outre, la notion assez vague d'une migration asiatique s'est precisee, au moins 

 en partie, puisque, dans la masse de ces emigrants, on pent maintenant discerner 

 des Sino-Thibetains et des Finno-Ougriens. 



" L'homme americain apparait done comme le produit d'elements ethniques 

 tres divers, parmi lesquel I'element asiatique a manifestement ete dominant. 

 C'est cet element qui a donne a I'lndien cette uniformite d'aspect tout exterieure, 

 sous laquelle une observation attentive decouvre un extreme polymorphisme, 

 manifeste non seulement dans le type physique, mais dans la civilisation et dans 

 le langage." (Pp. 22, 23.) 



