hkdliCka] skeletal EEMAINS OF EAELY MAN 183 



As to the actual anthropologic data on the remains, a summary of 

 which has been given in preceding pages, it may be stated that 

 notwithstanding the before-mentioned differences in the published 

 records, the cranial type of the Lagoa Santa caves may be regarded 

 as in general fairly well known ; and this type agrees in every point 

 of importance with what may be considered the fundamental traits 

 of the American race, more particularly in the dolichocephalic strain of 

 that race. The opinions to this effect of Lund, Kollmann, Hansen, 

 as well as of ten Kate and Rivet, will doubtless stand without 

 material alteration. The objection of ten Kate that there is no 

 general American type, and his inclination toward regarding the 

 American natives as racially heterogeneous, views entertained also by 

 Rivet and many other authors, when the mass of present evidence 

 is carefully considered can be admitted asr true only to a certain 

 rather limited extent. The fact is that the American stem or 

 homotype is not homogeneous; it presents in different tribes and 

 localities the extremes of head form and also numerous other 

 pronounced differences. Yet, the living Indian, as well as liis 

 skeletal remains, are characterized throughout America, from Canada 

 to the limits of Tierra del Fuego, by certain fundamental traits 

 that indicate unity in a more general sense of the word. This 

 is not the place, however, to go into detailed enumeration and 

 discussion of these traits.^ It may suffice to say that they apply 

 especially to the facial features, the nasal aperture, the malar bones, 

 the maxillae, the base of the skull, the teeth; but they extend also 

 to certain characteristics of the vault itself, and beyond that to the 

 forms and relative dimensions of numerous parts of the skeleton. 

 This general American type is more or less related to that of the 

 yellow-brown peoples, wherever these are found without decided 

 admixture with other strains. These yellow-brown people, includ- 

 ing the American, represent one great stream of humanity. In this 

 way it is explainable how the crania from Brazil, and again those of 

 southern California, with still others, have been found to present 

 resemblances to the Polynesians, or even to some of the less negroid 

 Melanesians; it is a basal or souche relation, and the Americans 

 may well be wholly free of any connection, except the ancient 

 parental contact, with these branches. 



f Besides agreeing closely with the dolichocephalic American type, 

 which had an extensive representation throughout Brazil, including 

 the Province of Minas Geraes, and in many other parts of South 

 America, it is the same type which is met with farther north, among 

 the Aztec, Tarasco, Otomi, Tarahumare, Pima, Californians, ancient 

 Utah cliff-dwellers, ancient northeastern Pueblos, Shoshoni, many 

 of the Plains Tribes, Iroquois, Eastern Siouan, and Algonquian. 



' See symposium on origin of American aborigines, in Amer. AntJir., n. s., xiv, No. I, 1912. 



