552 A. HrcUidka — Early Man in America. 



which they presented in consequence, to morphological inferi- 

 ority ; in giving undue weight to various actual features which, 

 with a more extensive view, would have been seen to be well 

 within the limits of variation of the same parts in man and 

 particularly in the Indian of the present day ; and above all, 

 in the failure in numerous cases to recognize an artificial defor- 

 mation of the skull, with the mistake of taking the results of 

 such deformation, particularly the lowered forehead, for marks 

 of anthropological inferiority of the specimen, and even regard- 

 ing them as species characters. 



In conclusion it cannot be denied that in at least some cases 

 the part of a proper critical analysis has been taken by the more 

 enticing and less difficult task of enthusiastic theorization, one 

 of the most striking examples of this being Aineghino's 

 hypotheses about the various " Precursors." 



All the above points are dealt with in detail in the main 

 report of the writer and his collaborators on this subject and 

 therefore a further discussion of them in this place would be 

 quite superfluous ; but it may not be amiss to give here just a 

 few concrete instances illustrating the conditions. 



The Argentinian writers did not hitherto clearly distinguish 

 the holocene and the Quaternary in the pampas deposits ; most 

 often everything beneath the vegetal layer was regarded asa 

 part of the Pampean formation and as of definite geological 

 age ; yet the upper and sometimes large portions of the deposit 

 are evidently of a very recent origin, the paleontological 

 remains which the)' hold being of secondary inclusion. Many 

 uncertainties exist also in the recognition of the Tertiary as dis- 

 tinguished from the Quaternary Pampean deposits. 



One of the most important strata in relation to ancient man, 

 the so-called ''Interensenadean " of Ameghino, could not be 

 traced at all by the geologist of the Smithsonian Expedition, 

 and what was pointed to by Ameghino himself as representing 

 this layer, proved to be a modern sea shore agglomerate of 

 shell detritus and sand, containing remnants of molluscs of liv- 

 ing species only. And at Ovejero, what was represented as a 

 Quaternary Superior Pampean bed was found to be nothing 

 but a wind-blown deposit of no great age. 



In a number of instances, particularly at " Necochea " and 

 Arroyo del Moro, the human remains recovered represented 

 clearly burials and, hence, introductions into the earth ; yet 

 they were described as contemporaneous with the deposits 

 which they barely penetrated. 



Mineralization of the human bones was taken invariably as 

 proof of the great age of the specimen, notwithstanding the 

 well-established fact that it depends far more upon the environ- 

 ment than upon time. Actually not a single perceptibly min- 

 eralized human bone was seen by the Expedition in Argentina 



