Excerpt from Early Man in South America

Between the years 1899 and 1907 the writer carried on a series of investigations with regard to the various skeletal remains which suggested or were attributed to ancient man in North America. These studies resulted in a number of publications,1 culminating in a general treatise comprehending the whole subject, which appeared as Bulletin 33 of the Bureau of American Ethnology. The results of the investigations seemed at first to lend support to the theory of considerable antiquity for some of the remains presented as evidence, as, for example, the two low skulls discovered at Trenton, New Jersey. Subsequent researches however, cleared up most of the uncertain points and the entire inquiry appeared to establish the fact that no specimen had come to light in the northern continent, which, from the standpoint of physical anthropology, represented other than a relatively modern man.

The possibility of discovering osseous remains of man of geologic antiquity in North America still exists, but, as was brought out in the studies referred to, any find to be accepted as establishing the existence of such man would have to be unequivocally authenticated by the anthropologist and the geologist working in cooperation. The various conclusions reached in these studies seem to have been quite generally accepted and no further discoveries of osseous remains pointing to the presence of early man in this part of the world have been made.

While occupied with the subject of man's antiquity in North Amer ica, the writer became more directly interested in the reports of re lated discoveries in South America, particularly in Argentina. It was soon found, however, that these reports, or at least those dealing with the finds of human remains up to 1907, were singularly incomplete and unsatisfactory. The records of the many cases were full of defects and uncertainties which, owing to the distance of the field and other difficulties, seemed insurmountable obstacles preventing the formation of a definite Opinion as to the merit of any of the finds.

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