HOLMES] ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I 39 



discovery and conquest, reached far lands, it should not surprise 

 us if primitive man, without boats or with craft of the simplest 

 kind only and without far-reaching ambitions of any kind, left 

 some of the remoter regions of the world, as, for example, America, 

 for a long time undiscovered. The 10,000 miles of coast connecting 

 tropical Asia with tropical America could be trav- 



Migratiou Not a „,. ' i i £ i. - £ £ i.- 



Journey crsctl bv men aioot in a tew years or continuous 



progress, but for reasons already given we should not 

 think of the movements that led to the peo])ling of America from the 

 cradle in the Old World in the light of an ordinary journey. ( Fig. 19. ) 

 The precursor of man at the period of his specialization as man 

 probably occupied a limited area — possibly a single homogeneous 

 environment — as do his nearest congeners, the African anthropoids, 

 to-day, and variations of race doubtless took place as a result of dis- 

 persal and conseciuent group isolation in unlike environments. We 

 may fairly assume that the precursor, during the stage of develop- 

 ment corresponding, say, to that of Pithecanthropus erectus^ occupied 

 some area in southern or southeastern Asia not larger, perhaps, than 

 that occupied by the gibbon or the orang to-day. Can we imagine, 

 under climatic conditions at all resembling those of the present 

 period, agencies sufficiently potent to have sent such a creature in 

 haste northward a thousand miles, from tropical Java, for example, 

 to the subtropical Irrawaddy, thence, later, 500 miles into the tem- 

 perate Yellow River region, thence a thousand miles or more into 

 the Amur Valley, and thence again 2,000 miles over the icy plateaus 

 and ranges into Siberia, across the chill and barren tundra to the 

 Anadyr, and finally to the Arctic Cape East? Almost eciually dis- 

 couraging Avould be the coastal route, where the tortuous outline of the 

 land or the wide separation of the chains of islands would tend con- 

 stantly to retard and defeat advance. A tendency to 

 Movements Due to ^^.^j^j^^. ^my be assumed, but pressure of multiply- 



Pressure -^ ' ^ ^ ^ 



ing numbers would seem to be the only adequate 

 agency in driving peoples from a land of Varmth and plenty to 

 the inhospitable regions of the north. At best a vast amount of 

 time necessarily would be consumed with each of these great steps. 

 In fact, the changes would be so profound in respect to climate 

 and food supply that the wonder is that a tropical creature should 

 ever succeed in accomplishing the feat. 



It is reasonable, then, to assume that the movements would be 

 made gradually, that in temperate climes the elements of culture 

 would be acquired through repeated struggles with unfriendly con- 

 ditions, and that great increase in population would take place 

 before the farther north would be penetrated. We can not conceive 

 of men under any combination of climatic and geographic condi- 

 tions known to have prevailed since the closing stages of the Pliocene 



