34 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 94 



The spread of the Melanesians in the South Seas preceded, it is 

 known, that of the Polynesians, but was antedated by that of the 

 Negritos. According to various indications, the " Melanesian " sail- 

 ings belonged essentially to the last millennium before the Christian 

 era. But by that time America was already peopled ; furthermore, 

 judging from the reception given the first contingents of Whites, what 

 chance of survival would there have been for a small stray group of 

 any other people, and especially one not stronger than the native 

 Americans? Where the first Whites were not massacred or sacri- 

 ficed, they were soon provided with native wives, and their blood was 

 thus started on a progressive dilution until within a few generations 

 it practically disappeared ; and the same would have been the lot of 

 any isolated small parties of other strangers. 



To leave any traces of their type, and especially any plain traces, 

 the Oceanic blacks would either have had to reach America in re- 

 spectable numbers of both sexes — which, considering the distances 

 they would have had to cover and their means of transportation, ap- 

 pears impossible — or they would have had to reach the continent 

 before the Indians did, which borders on the fabulous. At this point 

 it is legitimate to ask whether there were as yet any *' Melanesians " 

 before the time of the peopling of the Americas from the far north. 

 They are a mixed people. They show to this day types that approach 

 now the Indonesian, now the Negrito, and not seldom even that of 

 the true Negro, all of which indicates as yet imperfectly assimilated 

 mixtures. These conditions differ, moreover, from group to group. 

 And to this day there is known no real antiquity of any of the groups. 

 Who then can venture to say just who were the forefathers of the 

 Melanesians far back of the historic period. There are serious diffi- 

 culties, it is evident, whichever way one turns. 



With the Australians matters are still worse. These people, too, 

 are badly mixed, and the strains differ from province to province. 

 (Hrdlicka, 1928.) Rivet suggests that they came to America some 

 6,000 years ago, and Mendez Correa's Antarctic theory would tend 

 to place the coming in a still more remote past ; but what and where 

 were the "Australians " of that time, and which of the strains of 

 today represents the ancestral strain that would have reached America ? 

 One might even ask whether 6,000 years ago Australia itself w^as as 

 yet peopled, for even with the Talgai skull there is no conclusive 

 evidence on that point. Added to this are the same difficulties con- 

 cerning the American preservation of the type as there were with the 

 Melanesians. 



