752 PRIMATES 
greater than those between different nations of Europe, as Gauls and 
Germans on the one hand, and Greeks and Romans on the other, in 
the time of Julius Casar. Yet all these were Aryans, and in treat- 
ing the Americans as one race it is not intended to imply that they 
are more closely allied than the different Aryan peoples of Europe 
and Asia. The best argument that can be used for the unity of 
the American race—using the word in a broad sense—is the great 
difficulty of forming any natural divisions in it founded upon physical 
characters. Thus there is no difference throughout the whole con- 
tinent in the important character of the hair, this beingalways straight 
and lank, long and abundant on the scalp, but sparse elsewhere. 
The colour of the skin, notwithstanding the enormous differences of 
climate under which many members of the group exist, varies but 
little. It is true that in the features and cranium certain special 
modifications prevail in different districts, but the same forms 
reappear at widely separated parts of the continent. Thus skulls 
almost undistinguishable from one another may be met with from 
Vancouver's Island, from Peru, and from Patagonia. 
Naturalists who have admitted but three primary types of the 
human species have always found a difficulty with the Americans, 
hesitating between placing them with the Mongolian or so-called 
“yellow” races, or elevating them to the rank of a primary group. 
Cuvier, indeed, does not seem to have been able to settle this point 
to his own satisfaction, and leaves it an open question. Although 
the large majority of Americans have in the special form of the 
nasal bones, leading to the characteristic high bridge of the nose of 
the living face, in the well-developed superciliary ridge and retreat- 
ing forehead, characters which distinguish them from the typical 
Asiatic Mongol, yet in many other respects they resemble them so 
closely that, while still admitting the difficulties of the case, we are 
inclined to include them as aberrant members of the Mongolian 
type! It is, however, quite open to any one adopting the Negro, 
Mongolian, and Caucasian groups as primary divisions to place the 
Americans apart as a fourth. 
Now that the high antiquity of man in America—perhaps as 
high as that which he has in Europe—has been discovered, the 
puzzling problem, from which part of the Old World the people of 
America have sprung, has lost its significance. It is, indeed, quite 
as likely that the people of Asia may have been derived from 
America as the reverse. However this may be, the population of 
America, except at the extreme north, was, before the time of 
Columbus, practically isolated from the rest of the world. Such 
visits as those of the early Norsemen to the coasts of Greenland, 
1 No one can have seen a group of Botocudos from Brazil or of natives of 
Tierra del Fuego without being struck by their markedly Mongolian external 
characteristics. 
