Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/714

694 some data toward a solution. Why the Old World apes, when differentiated, did not come to the land of their earlier ancestry, is readily explained by the then intervening oceans, which likewise were a barrier to the return of the horse and rhinoceros.

Man, however, came—doubtless first across Behring's Straits; and at his advent became part of our fauna, as a mammal and primate. In these relations alone it is my purpose here to treat him. The evidence, as it stands to-day, although not conclusive, seems to place the first appearance of man in this country in the Pliocene, and the best proof of this has been found on the Pacific coast. During several visits to that region, many facts were brought to my knowledge which render this more than probable. Man at this time was a savage, and was doubtless forced by the great volcanic outbreaks to continue his migration. This was at first to the south, since mountain-chains were barriers on the east. As the native horses of America were now all extinct, and as the early man did not bring the Old World animal with him, his migrations were slow. I believe, moreover, that his slow progress toward civilization was in no small degree due to this same cause, the absence of the horse.

It is far from my intention to add to the many theories extant in regard to the early civilizations in this country, and their connections with the primitive inhabitants, or the later Indians; but two or three facts have recently come to my knowledge which I think worth mentioning in this connection. On the Columbia River, I have found evidence of the former existence of inhabitants much superior to the Indians at present there, and of which no tradition remains. Among many stone carvings which I saw there, were a number of heads which so strongly resemble those of apes that the likeness at once suggests itself. Whence came these sculptures, and by whom were they made? Another fact that has interested me very much is the strong resemblance between the skulls of the typical mound-builders of the Mississippi Valley and those of the Pueblo Indians. I had long been familiar with the former; and, when I recently saw the latter, it required the positive assurance of a friend, who had himself collected them in New Mexico, to convince me that they were not from the mounds. A third fact, and I leave man to the archaeologists, on whose province I am even now trenching. In a large collection of mound-builders' pottery, over a thousand specimens, which I have recently examined with some care, I found many pieces of elaborate workmanship so nearly like the ancient water-jars from Peru, that no one could fairly doubt that some intercourse had taken place between the widely-separated people that made them.

The oldest known remains of man on this continent differ in no important characters from the bones of the typical Indian, although in some minor details they indicate a much more primitive race. These early remains, some of which are true fossils, resemble much more