September 5, 1884.] 



SCIENCE 



217 



SOME AMERICAN ASPECTS OF 

 ANTHROPOLOGY. 1 



The term ' prehistoric ' stretches back from times 

 just outside the range of written history into the re- 

 motest ages where human relics justify the opinion 

 that man existed. Far back in these prehistoric pe- 

 riods,the problem of quaternary man turns on the pres- 

 ence of his rude stone implements in the drift-gravels 

 and in caves, associated with the remains of what may 

 be called the mammoth fauna. Not to recapitulate 

 details, the point to be insisted on is, how the effect of 

 a quarter of a century's research and criticism has 

 been to give quaternary man a more and more real 

 position. It is generally admitted, that, about the 

 close of the glacial period, savage man killed the huge 

 maned elephants, or fled from the great lions and 

 tigers on what was then forest-clad valley-bottom, in 

 ages before the later waterflow had cut out the 

 present wide valleys fifty or a hundred feet or more 

 lower, leaving the remains of the ancient drift-beds 

 exposed high on what are now the slopes. The evi- 

 dence of caverns such as those of Devonshire and 

 Perigord, with their revelations of early European 

 life and art, has been supplemented by many new 

 explorations, without shaking the conclusion arrived 

 at as to the age known as the reindeer period of the 

 northern half of Europe, when the mammoth and 

 cave bear and their contemporary mammals had not 

 yet disappeared, but the close of the glacial period 

 was merging into the times when, in England and 

 France, savages hunted the reindeer for food, as the 

 arctic tribes of America do still. The evidence in- 

 creases as to the wide range of paleolithic man. He 

 extended far into Asia, where his characteristic rude 

 stone implements are plentifully found in the caves 

 of Syria and the foot-hills of Madras. The question 

 with which this section may have especial means of 

 dealing is, whether man likewise inhabited America 

 with the great extinct animals of the quaternary pe- 

 riod, if not even earlier, — a question which leads at 

 once into the interesting argument, how far any ex- 

 isting people are the descendants and representa- 

 tives of man of the post-glacial period. The problem, 

 whether the present Eskimos are such a remnant of 

 an early race, is one which Professor Boyd Dawkins 

 has long worked at. Since he stated this view in his 

 work on cave-hunting, it has continually been cited, 

 whether by way of affirmation or denial, but always 

 with that gain to the subject which arises from a the- 

 ory based on distinct facts. To be mentioned as pre- 

 liminary are the questions, Were the natives met with 

 by the Scandinavian seafarers of the eleventh century 

 Eskimos ? and, Whereabouts on the coast were they 

 actually found? When the race of bold sea-rovers 

 who ruled Normandy, and invaded England, turned 

 their prows into the northern and western sea, they 

 passed from Iceland to yet more inclement Greenland ; 

 and thence, according to Icelandic records, which are 

 too consistent to be refused belief as to main facts, 



1 Abstract of an address to the section of anthropology of the 

 British association at Montreal, Aug. 28, 1884, by Edward B. 

 Tylob, D.C.L., F.R.S., president of the section. 



-ailed some way down the American coast. But 

 where are we to look for the most southerly points 

 which the sagas mention as reached in Yineland ? 

 Rafn confidently maps out these places about the 

 promontory of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts ; and this 

 has been repeated since, from book to book. Mr. 

 Tylor pleaded guilty to having cited Rafn's map, 

 but now felt bound to say that the voyages of the 

 Northmen ought to be reduced to more moderate 

 limits. It appears that they crossed from Greenland 

 to Labrador (Helluland), and thence, sailing more or 

 less south and west, in two stretches of two days 

 each, they came to a place near where wild grapes 

 grew, whence they called the country Vine-land. 

 This would therefore seem to have been somewhere 

 about the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and it would be an 

 interesting object for a yachting-cruise to try, down 

 from the east coast of Labrador, a fair four-days' sail 

 of a viking ship, and identify, if possible, the sound 

 between the island and the ness, the river running 

 out of the lake into the sea, the long stretches of 

 sand, and the other local features mentioned in the 

 sagas, thus throwing light on the southern limit of 

 the Eskimos. The skralings, who came on the sea 

 in skin canoes (hudhkeipr), and hurled their spears 

 with slings (valslongva), seem by these very facts to 

 have been probably Eskimos ; and the mention of their 

 being swarthy, with great eyes and broad cheeks, 

 agrees tolerably with this. If we may take it that 

 'Eskimos eight hundred years ago, before they had 

 ever found their way to Greenland, were hunting seals 

 on the coast of Newfoundland, and caribou in the 

 forest, their life need not have been very unlike what 

 it is now in their arctic home. Some day, perhaps, 

 the St. Lawrence and Newfoundland shores will be 

 searched for relics of Eskimo life, as has been done 

 with such success in the Aleutian Islands by Mr. 

 W. H. Dall; though on this side of the continent 

 we can hardly expect to find, as he does, traces of 

 long residence, and rise from a still lower condition. 



Surveying, now, the vast series of so-called native 

 or indigenous tribes of North and South America, 

 we may admit that the fundamental notion on which 

 American anthropology has to be treated is its rela- 

 tion to Asiatic. This kind of research is, as we 

 know, quite old ; but the recent advances of zoology 

 and geology have given it new breadth, as well as 

 facility. The theories which account for the wide- 

 lying American tribes, disconnected by language as 

 they are, as all descended from ancestors who came 

 by sea in boats, or across Bering Strait on the ice, 

 may be felt somewhat to strain the probabilities of 

 migration, and are likely to be remodelled under the 

 information now supplied by geology as to the dis- 

 tribution of animals. It has become a familiar fact, 

 that the Equidae, or horse-like animals, belong even 

 more remarkably to the new than to the old world. 

 There was plainly land-connection between America 

 and Asia, for the horses whose remains are fossil in 

 America to have been genetically connected with the 

 horses re-introduced from Europe. To realize this 

 ancient land-junction of Asia and America, — this 

 'tertiary-bridge,' to use Professor Marsh's expres- 



