Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/605

Rh paleontologists should not interest themselves to some extent in investigations now in progress in Europe and Asia, just as American archeologists have contributed to the success of work on the later history of man. Whether American paleontologsitspaleontologists [sic], working in their own field, are to have a part in interpreting the Pleistocene history of man is a burning question at the present time.

Whether we find that man was in North America in Pleistocene time or not, it is certainly true that one of the most important problems in the general history of the human race concerns the date of occupation of the western hemisphere by the human family. Discussion of the numerous finds reported to represent Pleistocene man in North America are too well known to every one to require particular mention. It should only be noted in passing, that as yet no specimens representing either skeletal remains or implements of man found in North America are generally recognized by geologists and paleontologists as of Pleistocene age. A careful search through the literature, and the investigation of many of the actual occurrences, lead the writer to the conclusion that we have, as yet, nothing in North America which can be considered as unquestionably representing Pleistocene man.

Also in South America there has been serious discussion of many interesting finds. The evidence on the whole seems to be more distinctly in favor of Pleistocene occupation there than is the case in North America. The discoveries made in recent years in the cave at Last Hope Inlet, and the numerous remains found in the Pampean formation at levels very far below the surface, seem difficult to interpret excepting on the supposition that man was present in South America before the beginning of the recent epoch.

It is to be presumed that any occupation of South America would necessarily be through migration by way of the northern continent, and proof of the presence of man in South America in Pleistocene time would be tantamount to proof that he was in North America at least as early. This suggestion does not, of course, take into account the theories of Ameghino to the effect that man is possibly derived from some of the South American monkey forms. Another suggestion made by Ameghino would give us an immigration of old world forms, possibly with ancestral man, coming into the southern continent in comparatively late time, by some other route than North America.

In the consideration of man's history in America, it is particularly important to notice the probable relation of migrations of the human family to migrations of other groups of mammals. The presumption is that the migrations of primitive man were caused or occasioned largely by influences of the same sort as have produced the spreading out or migration of many other mammalian types. It becomes then particularly necessary to discover exactly when the more recent