Xll 
PREFACE 
Such immense rivers as the Amazon, and its porten¬ 
tous tributaries flowing from south to north, were also 
formed, perhaps at that time, great fissures caused by the 
sudden splitting and cooling of the earth’s crust becoming 
the river beds. So, perhaps, was formed the giant canon of 
Colorado and the immense fissures in the earth’s crust 
that occur in Central Asia, in Central Africa, and, as we 
shall see, on the central plateau of Brazil. 
Undoubtedly the Antarctic continent was once joined 
to South America, Australia, and Africa. During the 
last Antarctic expeditions it has been shown that the same 
geological formation exists in South America as in the 
Antarctic plateau. 
On perusing this book, the reader will be struck by 
the wonderful resemblance between the Indians of South 
America, the Malay races of Asia, and the tribes of 
Polynesia. I maintain that they not only resemble each 
other, but are actually the same people in different stages 
of development, and naturally influenced to a certain 
extent by climatic and other local conditions. Those 
people did not come there, as has been supposed, by 
marching up the entire Asiatic coast, crossing over the 
Behring Straits and then down the American coast, nor 
by means of any other migration. No, indeed: it is not 
they who have moved, but it is the country under them 
which has shifted and separated them, leaving members 
of the same race thousands of miles apart. 
I was able to notice among the Indians of Central 
Brazil many words of Malay origin, others closely re¬ 
sembling words of languages current among tribes of the 
Philippine Islands. The anthropometric measurements 
which I took of South American Indians corresponded 
almost exactly with those of natives of the Sulu Archi¬ 
pelago and the island of Mindanao. 
I hope some day to use the wealth of material I have 
collected among innumerable tribes on the Asiatic coast, 
