OCR Text |
Show ANTIQUITY OP MAN 87 Hand- in- hand with the question of the antiquity of man onvthe continent goes the problem of whence he came. Unfortunately, this important question must be answered by the admission that the only conservative and defensible position at the present day is one of frank ignorance. Theories of Asiatic, European, African, or Polynesian origin are all equally dangerous and weak. Geological solutions by lost Atlantises and former land bridges from the Old World may be invoked, but convince nobody except their proposer^. The thorough ethnological studies which are now tinder way may at some time in the future throw light upon the problem; and we have arrived at the point of assurance that, in the past, northwestern America and northeastern Asia formed one area of culture, v Whether that of the west came from the east, or that of the east was derived from the west, it is as yet impossible to say. 1 1 Bogoras, in American Anthropologist, N. S. t IV. ( 1902), 577. Cf. also the Jesup North Pacific Expedition Reports ( Am. Mus. of Nat. Hist., Memoirs, 1898- 1904). |