ON LIMITATIONS TO THE USE OF SOME ANTHROPOLOGIC DATA, 
By J. W. POWELL. 
ARCH HZOLOGY. 
Investigations in this department are of great interest, and have at- 
tracted to the field a host of workers ; but a general review of the mass 
of published matter exhibits the fact that the uses to which the mate- 
rial has been put have not always been wise. 
In the monuments of antiquity found throughout North America, in 
camp and village sites, graves, mounds, ruins, and scattered works of 
art, the origin and development of art in savage and barbaric life may 
be satisfactorily studied. Incidentally, too, hints of customs may be 
discovered, but outside of this, the discoveries made have often been 
illegitimately used, especially for the purpose of connecting the tribes 
of North America with peoples or so-called races of antiquity in other 
portions of the world. A brief review of some conclusions that must 
be accepted in the present status of the science will exhibit the futility 
of these attempts. 
It is now an established fact that man was widely scattered over the 
earth at least as early as the beginning of the quaternary period, and, 
perhaps, in pliocene time. 
If we accept the conclusion that there is but one species of man, as_ 
species are now defined by biologists, we may reasonably conclude that 
the species has been dispersed from some common center, as the ability 
to successfully carry on the battle of life in all climes belongs only to a 
highly developed being ; but this original home has not yet been ascer- 
tained with certainty, and when discovered, lines of migration there- 
from cannot be mapped until the changes in the physical geography of 
the earth from that early time to the present have been discovered, and 
these must be settled upon purely geologic and paleontologic evidence. 
The migrations of mankind from that original home cannot be intelli- 
gently discussed until that home has been discovered, and, further, until 
the geology of the globe isso thoroughly known that the different phases 
of its geography can be presented. 
The dispersion of man must have been anterior to the development 
of any but the rudest arts. Since that time the surface of the earth 
73 
