PREFACE 



Between the years 1899 and 1.907 the writer carried on a series of 

 investigations with regard to the various skeletal remains which 

 suggested or were attributed to ancient man in North America. 

 These studies resulted in a number of publications,^ culminating in a 

 general treatise comprehending the whole subject, which appeared as 

 Bulletin 33 of the Bureau of American Ethnology. The results of 

 the investigations seemed at first to lend support to the theory of 

 considerable antiquity for some of the remains presented as evidence, 

 as, for example, the two low skulls discovered at Trenton, New Jersey, 

 Subsequent researches however, cleared up most of the uncertain 

 points and the entire inquiry appeared to establish the fact that no 

 specimen had come to light in the northern continent, which, from 

 the standpoint of physical anthropology, represented other than a 

 relatively modern man. 



The possibility of discovering osseous remains of man of geologic 

 antiquity in North America still exists, but, as was brought out in 

 the studies referred to, any find to be accepted as establishing the 

 existence of such man would have to be unequivocally authenticated 

 by the anthropologist and the geologist working in cooperation. The 

 various conclusions reached in these studies seem to have been quite 

 generally accepted and no further discoveries of osseous remains 

 pointing to the presence of early man in this part of the world have 

 been made. 



While occupied with the subject of man's antiquity in North Amer- 

 ica, the writer became more directly interested in the reports of re- 

 lated discoveries in South America, particularly in Argentina. It was 

 soon found, however, that these reports, or at least those dealing with 

 the finds of human remains up to 1907, were singularly incomplete 

 and unsatisfactory. The records of the many cases were full of 

 defects and uncertainties wliich, owing to the distance of the field and 

 other difficulties, seemed insurmountable obstacles preventing the 

 formation of a definite opinion as to the merit of any of the finds. 



1 The Crania of Trenton, N. J., and their Bearing upon the Antiquity of Man in that Region; in Bulletin 

 of the American Museum of Natural History, xvi, pp. 23-62, New York, 1902. 



The Lansing Slceleton; in American Anthropologist, n. s., v, 323-330, Lancaster, Pa., June, 1903. 



A Report on the Trenton Femur (written in 1902), published with E.Vollt's The Archaeology of the Del- 

 aware Valley; Papers of the Peabody Museum, v, Cambridge, Mass., 1911. 



Skeletal Remains Suggesting or Attributed to Early Man in North America; Bulletin S3 of the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology, pp. 1-113, pis. l-xxi, figs. 1-16, Washington, 1907. 



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