REMAINS IN EASTERN ASIA OF THE RACE THAT PEOPLED AMERICA
(With Three Plates)
By DR. A. HRDLIČKA
curator of the division of physical anthropology, U. S. National Museum
During the summer of 1912 the writer visited, partly under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution and partly in the interest of the Panama-Californian Exposition of San Diego, certain portions of Siberia and Mongolia in search for possible remains of the race that peopled America, and whose home, according to all indications, was in eastern Asia. Upon the return of the writer from his journey in September this brief report was presented at the International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archeology at Geneva.
The journey extended to certain regions in southern Siberia, both west and east of Lake Baikal, and to Mongolia as far as Urga. It furnished an opportunity for a rapid survey, from the anthropological standpoint, of the field and conditions in those regions, and was made in connection with a prolonged research into the problems of the ethnic nature and origin of the American aborigines carried on by the writer on this continent.
The studies of American anthropologists and archeologists have for a long time been strengthening our opinion that the American native did not originate in America, but is the result of a comparatively recent, post-glacial, immigration into this country; that he is physically and otherwise most closely related to the yellow-brown peoples of eastern Asia and Polynesia; and that in all probability he represents, in the main at least, a gradual overflow from north-eastern Siberia.[1] If our views concerning the origin of the Indian and his comparatively late coming into America be correct, then it seems there ought to exist to this day, in some parts of eastern Asia, archeological remains, and possibly even survivals, of the physical stock from which our aborigines resulted. For it could have been no small people that
- ↑ For a summary of these opinions see “The Problems of the Unity or Plurality and the Probable Place of Origin of the American Aborigines” in The American Anthropologist, Vol. 14, No. 1, January-March, 1912.
Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol 60, No. 16
