20 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



anatomists, geologists and anthropologists, the general conclusion is 

 that America was without human occupants at the time when the 

 old world had a considerable population.^ 



Biologists take a similar stand in the conclusions they reach con- 

 cerning the advent of man in America. They point out that there 

 are no skeletal remains of the higher primates reported from either 

 continent. From this they conclude that the proto-human ancestors 

 of man did not develop in the new world, but that the Hominidae 

 attained the human type in the old world, very likely southern Asia 

 or the islands to the south. 



The problem of the coming of man to America is thus placed 

 before us for solution. This problem has occupied the attention of 

 thinkers from the time America was found to be a distinct land 

 area, and separated from the old world by vast expanses of water. 

 Various theories have been devised, some ingenious, some utterly 

 absurd. Writers have suggested that the peoples of the fabulous 

 Atlantis populated America ; others that the Indians are descendents 

 of the Ten Lost tribes of Israel, or the survivors of a Welsh ship- 

 wreck. Still others, ignoring discoveries, have sought to make us 

 believe that the original cradle of the human race was in America 

 itself. Against these arbitrary theories we may set forth definite 

 facts. There is no proof that Atlantis was a connecting continent 

 or that it existed in the accepted sense ; the ten " lost " tribes were 

 not lost until a time when America had a considerable population ; 

 and the lost tribes were never actually lost but number their 

 descendents in Asia today ; a shipload of Welsh men, if such a ship- 

 load ever reached America, could never populate two continents, and 

 for that matter, when Madoc was swallowed by the sea America 

 was already occupied by men of a ruddy hue ; and the belief that 

 America was the primitive cradle has to complicate it the inquiry, 

 why the old world then had so great a population that all the 

 aboriginal inhabitants of the two Americas scarcely constitute a 

 respectable fraction ; also how they built transports large enough to 

 cross the Pacific. If America was the primal cradle there would be 

 enough to prove such a belief, but as we have indicated, geology, 

 biology and anthrojxDlogy all deny that an\- sufficient proofs have 



^ For detailed studies of the problem of nidn's antiquity in America, see 

 the publications of George Grant McCurdy, the works of \V. H. Holmes 

 (e.g.. Some Problems of the American Race; American Anthropologist, 

 12:2), and Ales Hrdlicka (Skeletal Remains Suggesting or Attributed to 

 Early Man in North America; "Rurcau of Ethnology Bui. 33). 



