PREFATORY NOTE 
The Bureau of American Ethnology from its foundation has taken 
a deep interest in all researches relating to the antiquity of man in 
America, and its attitude in considering the various questions that 
have arisen has been conservative. In the earlier years of the investi- 
gation there existed a rather marked tendency on the part of students, 
and especially on the part of amateurs and the general public, hastily 
to accept any testimony that seemed to favor antiquity, and the con- 
servative attitude of the Bureau was emphasized by a desire to coun- 
teract and correct this tendency. Evidence of the great antiquity of 
man in the Old World is abundant and convincing, and the assump- 
tion that like conditions exist in America seemed reasonable and was 
perhaps justifiable, although it led to the general acceptance of much 
that was without satisfactory verification. 
It has been the practice of the Bureau when discoveries believed to 
have an important bearing on the question of human antiquity in 
North America have been announced to seek to determine their just 
value. In pursuance of this plan its representatives have been sent 
on oceasion to New Jersey, to the Ohio valley, to sites on the Potomac, 
to Minnesota, to California, to Florida, and to Kansas, to make the 
necessary investigations. On receipt of reports of the discovery in 
Nebraska of human crania of low type and possibly of great geolog- 
ical antiquity, prompt action was taken. Doctor Hrdlitka, an accom- 
plished student of human osseous remains, was sent to Lincoln to ex- 
amine the peculiar remains and to make such investigations regarding 
the conditions under which they were discovered as he might find 
possible at that season of the year. When this discovery was an- 
nounced, the Bureau was about to send to press a paper by Doctor 
Hrdlitka embodying descriptions of all the known American human 
remains for which geological antiquity had been claimed, This 
paper was withheld from publication, however, until the Nebraska 
specimens could be examined, so that the present bulletin includes 
descriptions of these as well as of all kindred remains brought to 
light in North America up to the present time. 
W. H. Hoimes, Chief. 
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