Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/607

Rh area for a long period, and we find several greatly differing human physical stocks in different geographic regions, just as we find differing stocks of mammals and birds.

With the lack of physical diversity among the people of the western hemisphere, there is also noticeable a resemblance of the whole group to the people of the adjacent region of Asia. Judged by the standards of differentiation which we obtain through a study of the history of geographical distribution of other mammalian groups, we have every reason to think that the people of America are immigrants who came from the Asiatic region and spread themselves over America after the period of the first great physical differentiation of the race, and so recently that a second stage of physical differentiation has not yet had time to develop. On the other hand, the time measured in years has been long enough so that linguistic differentiation could take place.

In as much as a large part of human history falls within the Quaternary period, the question naturally arises as to whether the principal migrations of man to the American continent occurred before, during or after the Glacial epoch.

As primates are naturally animals of a warm or temperate zone, it is hardly to be presumed that primitive man came to America during the ice age, though there is a possibility of immigration in some of the interglacial epochs. Judging from what is suggested through study of physical differentiation, it appears improbable that man came over as early as the epoch preceding the ice age. In other groups of animals spread over large areas, marked physical differentiation has ordinarily taken place in a space of time comparable to the Glacial epoch. Had man been present in America during this long period, widely differing physical types would almost certainly have developed. On the whole it seems most probable that he arrived after the end of the last division of glacial time, or very near the beginning of the present epoch. Whether his arrival is shown to have occurred just before or just after the beginning of this epoch remains to be determined.

In conclusion it seems desirable to call the attention of paleontologists once more to the important part which their work must play in obtaining the information which we need with reference to the history of man and his antecedents. Only a small beginning has been made, and the results which must come are of great importance in the large problem of man's relation to nature. It is necessary that paleontologists keep the subject before them, in order to make certain that all information bearing upon it may be recognized as it becomes available, and be given its proper place in relation to other evidence now at hand.