Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/606

600 of mammals into the North American continent have taken place, and, so far as possible, the exact routes of migration. This problem is in a large part paleontological, requiring for its interpretation a satisfactory account of the paleontology of vertebrates, invertebrates and plants of North America and of Asia, with particular reference to the relations of adjacent areas. We must also have, associated with this information, a full statement of the crustal movements in these regions as interpreted by the stratigraphic geologists and the physiographers.

Through the accumulated efforts of paleontologists in this country particularly, we have already a considerable mass of evidence bearing on the general relationships of the faunas of North America and Asia in comparatively recent geological time, but the detail of the problem is, as yet, scarcely indicated. Particularly for Pleistocene and Pliocene time our knowledge of the faunal succession is exceedingly meager, and we can scarcely expect to know anything satisfactorily until the Pleistocene mammalian paleontology of America has been worked out in detail. This work must be followed or accompanied by similar studies of the mammalian faunas of western and southern Asia. When this is completed we shall know the time of the various migratory movements, the nature of the faunas which migrated, the character of the land areas over which they have passed, and the climatic conditions which obtained along the routes of migration. The presumption is, that when this is done we shall have actual evidence of the time of man's occupation of North America.

Viewed in the large, and without regard to the detail which has just been indicated, it seems possible to present several reasonable conclusions with reference to the probable period of migration of man to America. It is shown by study of a map of linguistic stocks of the western hemisphere that the northern and southern continents taken together may be divided into between one hundred and two hundred provinces, based on the number of stocks represented. These languages vary greatly in their structure, and are not similar to the languages of other parts of the world. There is every reason to believe that a large percentage of them have been developed by linguistic differentiation which occurred since man first occupied this continent, and that measured in years the time required for this differentiation has been long. On the other hand, considering the American continent as a whole, we find that the greatly differing physical environments are not reflected to any extent in different physical types of people occupying this region. That the human family is not exempt from physical differentiation, such as is almost universally indicated in mammals which have for some time been distributed over large areas with varying environments, is clearly shown by the map of the old world. In that region the human race is known to have been spread over a wide