428 ANNUAL TvEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
cause, the children of the woodland cradle were compelled to seek 
their fortunes in the open, and the real struggle of existence began, 
the struggle that perfected the man. The grasping hands, freed from 
the forest and free to act independently of locomotion, led to the use 
of improvised implements in meeting foes, in preparing food, in 
constructing defenses and shelters, and finally to the shaping of 
tools, the initial step in the evolution of art, while the feet enabled 
their possessor to move with freedom in the pursuit of varied call- 
ings. Thus the hands, with the aid of the feet, directed by the 
rapidly developing brain, conquered the world. 
SPECIALIZATION OF THE RACES. 
Prolonged study of the available traces of man's origin and early 
movements as recorded in the book of books — the geologic strata — 
has led to the view that the natal place of the race must be sought 
someAvhere in southern Asia or on the great islands of the southern 
seas. As conceived to-day, the outward movements of the human pio- 
neer from the primeval home were at first and for a long time hesitat- 
ing and slow. New conditions had to be met and diversified obstacles 
overcome, the exigencies of existence tending to develop the capaci- 
ties of both brain and hand, and new environments to modify and 
emphasize the physical type of the isolated groups. We may think, for 
example, of certain groups of pioneers as they ventured into the open 
turning their faces to the west, occupying the valleys, skirting the 
shores of the inland seas, and climbing the intervening ranges until, 
in the fullness of time, the shores of the Atlantic were reached. 
Centers of population would develop at many points, and in western 
Europe traces of occupation recently uncovered date back to remote 
periods. From these centers expansion would take place in many direc- 
tions. Not finding a passage to the western world beyond the shores 
of Britain, the populations would from necessity spread to the east, 
where they would encounter other currents spreading to the north 
from the primeval home over the vast expanse of central Asia, these 
latter representing the great Mongol race which to-day comprises, 
with its many blends, the majority of the human kind. Other cur- 
rents from the southern home would pass to the east, occupying the 
shores of the chain of seas bordering the Pacific, peopling the count- 
less islands that dot the waters, reaching in due course the far ^orth- 
east, where further progress would be arrested by the broad expanse 
of open sea now known as Bering Strait. The differentiations of 
types gradually produced by early isolations would, as populations 
increased, be lessened by constant blending along the borders, and 
to-day the process of obliteration of race distinctions is progressing 
in ever-increasing ratio. 
