THE ARCHEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK 2^ 



eastern Asia. Of even greater importance must be the understand- 

 ing that the journey from the hypothetical race cradle in the south 

 was not a deliberate journey made by one single tribe. The move- 

 ments of groups to the north were by slow stages, and in entering 

 each new northward area, the different requirements for meeting 

 the new environment would cause a considerable change in the 

 customs and the material culture of the group. The group that 

 reached rigorous north would have no tradition that its remote 

 ancestors to the south, thousands of years before, lived from the 

 fruits of the trees and vines. It would only know that every attempt 

 to reach the south was resisted by fighting men. In time, therefore, 

 the group would become accustomed to its environment and believe 

 itself the most favored of all. Then, as stronger and more southern 

 or western bands pressed upon it, it would again give way and escape 

 to the farther north. 



By a theory similar to this anthropologists, taking full account 

 of all that geological science says concerning the subject, point out 

 the probable route of man into America. The subsequent distribu- 

 tion of the various bands of mankind throughout the continent is 

 another question, perhaps easier to deal with, but yet fraught with 

 many difficulties. 



The wide distribution of the aboriginal American race and its 

 fairly uniform physical characteristics indicate its essential uni- 

 formity. It is one race. The difference between the American race 

 and the nearest true Asiatics also has much significance. The Ameri- 

 can race has developed as such in America though it took root in 

 Asia. No longer is it Asiatic so far as trunk and branch are affected. 

 The only possible vestiges may be the intensification of the pigmenta- 

 tion of the skin, giving the red-brown hue, and certain mental traits. 

 None of the American languages is like the Asiatic, except remotely, 

 as any language might be. 



The ancient period when the distribution of the race was complete, 

 from the icy northlands of Alaska through the Central and South 

 American tropics to the bleak snow-covered tundras of Patagonia, 

 was one far back in point of time, and, it may be, followed the 

 subsidence of the last glaciation in the north. Again there must 

 have been cradle lands in which, aifected by food, climate and the 

 changed surroundings, the descendents of the wanderers from Asia 

 developed distinct racial traits, both mental and physical. With the 

 increase of the populations there would be another spreading, the 

 currents being deflected by mountain ranges, great bodies of water, 



