holmes] aboriginal AMERICAN" ANTIQUITIES PART I 19 



the beginning of the Quaternary period, hundreds of thousands of 

 years ago, and it is incumbent on those who hold to the tlieory of 

 American origin to establish an earlier occupancy of the New World. 

 Two regions only in America have furnished testimony worthy of 

 serious consideration in respect to this assumption — testimony which 

 implies an antiquity so remote as to give color to the autochthonic 

 assumption. These are the gold-bearing districts of California, where 

 relics of advanced neolithic art are reported to have been found 

 beneath vast flows of Quaternary lavas, and the pampas of Argen- 

 tina, where even a middle Tertiary man is thought by some to have 

 existed. The testimony in these cases is striking, and even pic- 

 turesque, and is supported with enthusiasm by a few students, who 

 are ready to stake their scientific reputations on the outcome. Re- 

 cent investigations relative to North American as well as South 

 American very early man show, however, that the testimony is 

 really open to most serious question, and it appears that if it is to 

 stand the test of criticism it must have much additional support.^ 



In view of these considerations the theory of an autochthonous 

 origin of the American race may be, for present 

 Sorrrovtd"""""^ purposes, set aside, and the problem of the arrival 

 in the New AVorld of racial and cultural elements 

 originating in the Old World alone be given consideration. Not 

 only does America furnish no tangible evidence of antiquity so great 

 as to give support to the theory of autochthonic origin of the Ameri- 

 can race, but, as just indicated, it has failed so far to afford satisfac- 

 tory evidence of the arrival of man on the continent in remote geo- 

 logic time. The problems pertaining to this subject are discussed in 

 some detail in a subsequent section devoted to chronology and may be 

 passed over here without further consideration. 



The student pursuing inquiries with regard to racial origins in 

 America turns to the known aborigines and their 

 Asiatic Orijdns somatic characteristics, historic and prehistoric, and 

 seeks to discover significant suggestions of relation- 

 ship with Old World races. Heretofore, knowledge of the peoples of 

 northeastern Asia has been so meager that satisfactory comparisons 

 with them could not be made, but recent researches have opened up 

 this field and have demonstrated the marked similarity of certain of 

 the northeastern Asiatic tribes to the American Indians. This fact, 

 taken in connection with the geographical proximity of northeastern 

 Asia and Arctic America, would seem to offer a satisfactory solution 

 of the question of origin. 



1 Holmes, Review of tlie Evidence Relating to xVuriferous Gravel Man In California ; 

 Hrdlifka, Skeletal Remains Suggesting- or Attriliuted to Early Man in North America; 

 Hrdlifka, Early Man in South America. 



