CHAPTER XVI 
DISCOVERIES OF REMAINS OF ANCIENT MAN IN 
NORTH AMERICA 
Our survey of the " old " world revealed two ancient, 
extinct, and interesting human types — Neanderthal man 
and Pithecanthropus — but the evolutionary stages of 
modern man we did not discover. When we come 
across him first, in mid-Pleistocene times, modern man 
is already fully evolved. If the modern man was already 
in existence soon after the close of the Pliocene period, 
as the evidence given in former chapters leads one to 
suppose, then we ought to find traces of him at an early 
Pleistocene date in the " new " world. All geologists 
are agreed that America and Asia were not separated by 
Bering Strait in the earlier part of the Pleistocene period, 
nor in the Pliocene period, and that man could then 
have obtained easy access to the new world from the old. 
Anthropologists are also agreed that the pre-Columbian 
population of America did enter America from the Asiatic 
side.^ They are also agreed that the native peoples of 
America, from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn, are descended 
from the same human stock as has populated the eastern 
regions of Asia and many of the islands of the Pacific. 
The American Indian, in all his varieties, is a descendant 
from a primitive Mongolian type of man. If, however, 
we ask : How long ago is it since the Mongolian type of 
modern man was evolved ? When did the American 
1 See an excellent summary by Dr Ales Hrdlicka, " The Derivation 
and Probable Place of Origin of the North American Indian," Proc. 
Internat. Congress of Americanisis, London, 1912, p. 57. 
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