235 
nearly every part of the Old World, from England to China and from 
Siberia to South Africa, but in the New World few if any. We may 
reasonably infer, therefore, that if America was inhabited at all 
during the Ice Age, its population was exceedingly scanty. Again, 
no one can doubt that at least the majority of our Indian tribes so 
closely resemble the peoples of northeastern Asia that they must 
derive their ancestry from the same source, and the physiography of 
the two continents favours a migration eastward into x\merica, corre- 
sponding to the movement of so many Pleistocene mammals, rather 
than a migration westward out of America into AsiaA We may feel 
certain, then, that our aborigines are not autochthonous, but sprang 
from an older race or races that originated somewhere in the eastern 
hemisphere. 
Having now answered our first question we may pass on to the 
second; how long have the Indians occupied America? We stated 
in the last paragraph that we liave found few, if any, indications of 
their occupation during the Ice xVge. Scientists have indeed set up 
many claims for their presence during this period. They have reported 
the remains of Ideistocene man in the Argentine pampas. At Vero, 
Florida, workmen unearthed human skeletons that seemed to lie 
beside the bones of Elephas columbi, an animal that may have become 
extinct before or about the close of the Ice Age. In Colorado, Okla- 
homa, New Jersey, and elsewhere stone arrowheads and other imple- 
ments have been found in association with extinct animals in strata 
that appear to have been laid down during the Glacial period.- The 
number of such “ discoveries ” jn-obably reaches more than half a 
hundred. Many, however, have been definitely disproved by later 
researches, and others rendered doubtful. If a few have never been 
refuted, their very fewness, compared with Old World discoveries, 
makes us hesitate to accept their authenticity, knowing that it is 
often very difficult to detect disturbances in the soil, that some of 
1 Turkestan and Siberia, broadly siioaking, are iininense grasRlan<ls unbroken by high mountains 
hut with low ranges running east anrt west that might canalize to some extent, but hardly check! 
a drift of animals and their primitive hunter.s towards the Chukclii pcmnsnia. North America', on the 
other hand, has the formidable Rocky mountains that almost cut off the north Pacific coast and 
.\la.dia from the rest of tlie continent. A noitlnvard drift from the centre of the United States 
through gra.sslaml, sub-Arctic forests, rnonidaiiis, and tundra would rerinirc many radical and suc- 
cessive changes in fhe mode of life to meet conditions that grew more diflicnlt at every advance. This 
assumes, of course, that conditions at Ihc end of the Ice Age were not very dissimilar to those of 
to-day. 
2 C/. Hrdlicka, A.; “Early Man in iSniith America"; Bur. Am. Etlin., Bull, 52* (Washington 1912) 
“Skeletal Remains Suggesting or .Attributed to Early Man in North America”; Bur. Am. Ethn.’, Bull. 
33 (Washington, 1907); aiul the excellent riiscussion in Boule, M.: “ T.es Hommes Fossiles,'' np. 395-434 
(Paris, 1921). 
