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Show Science to Seek First American Dead Alaskan Villages Will Be Explored by the ! Hrdlicka Party. Washington. Locked among the frozen stretches of Alaska are deep secrets concerning the origin of man on this continent. With Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, curator of anthropology of the National museum, at its head, an expedition has set out from the Smithsonian institution for Alaska, to seek clews to the perplexing problem : "Whence did the first Americans come?" Many centuries before Columbus was born this hemisphere was populated. popu-lated. The Indians were scattered over both continents of the western world and the outlying habitable islands. is-lands. There were then, and are now, in Alaska and all along the coast of northern Canada, short pudgy folk whom we have come to know as Eskimos.. Es-kimos.. At the tip of South America there were savages of giant stature. In the Mississippi valley there lived other tribes, who existed by farming and who established their villages on enormous mounds and their temples on still greater mounds shaped like serpents. Along the Potomac and other Eastern rivers there were skilled hunters who grew corn and beans, and on the Florida coast were others who subsisted largely on fish ; and oysters and left behind them great piles of empty shells. In Mexico, Mexi-co, Central America, Ecuador and Peru there were highly developed civilizations; large cities built of stone and populations whose acquaintance acquain-tance with the fine arts rivaled that of ancient Greece. Racial Kinship Seen. Doctor Hrdlicka believes that all of these peoples were descendants of early immigrants from Asia, that they all were probably of the same yellow-brown racial stock, though of different dif-ferent tribes and even different nations. na-tions. The same stock is held to be widely distributed In some sections of China, Tibet, Japan and Siberia to this day. Its representatives may have "dribbled" slowly into America from Asia and made their way to inland in-land sections and to the jungles of what is now South America. Many scientists agree that in Asia there are many types resembling American Indians. Not all of these scientists, however, are ready to agree with Doctor Hrdlicka that this fact points to the conclusion that the origin ori-gin of man on this continent may be explained by Asiatic migration. With the aid of human remains, pottery fragments, weapons and relics of early settlements Doctor Hrdlicka hopes to obtain conclusive evidence to support the theory. If the first S Americans came here via the Bering sea, he thinks they must have left traces of that movement. "Dead" Villages on Yukon. Along the Yukon's picturesque shores the Eskimos and Indians have lived for uncounted generations the former in the lower valley, the latter in the upper. The first immigrants from Asia are thought to have placed their habitations in the same region. Along the stream down to the flats at Its mouth there are traces of numerous nu-merous "dead" villages. Found on and in the banks of the river, they show remains of pit dwellings ana yield stone implements, bones of animals, ani-mals, fragments of crude pottery, and now and then articles regarded by Doctor Hrdlicka as of Asiatic derivation. deri-vation. Human skeletons have also been found. Just how long the Yukon basin has been inhabited may be revealed by excavation. Nearly all the traces of human habitation found so far have been on the lower level of the Yukon. The flats are constantly being cut away in some parts and built up in others, by action of the river. It is almost impossible to know where the banks were several thousand years ago. An added difficulty confronting the scientists is the problem of excavation. excava-tion. Two or three feet below the surface the ground is frozen to unknown un-known depths. Special apparatus to melt the ground must be applied, a slow and tedious process. But no matter how painstaking the task, it will be eminently worthwhile If these "dead" sites reveal the relics for which science is eargeriy searching. search-ing. Skeletal remains, particularly, will be valued for the light they may throw on the origin of man in America. Amer-ica. The Asiatic differs from the European not only In outward appearance ap-pearance hut in the shape of his skull, his facial angles, and the formation for-mation of hips and legs. Obviously, then, if the bones found in these early graves in Alaska conform to Asiatic measurements, they will be proof of the Asiatic origin. Scouts Bridge Theory. The existence of a so-called "land-bridge" "land-bridge" between Alaska and Asia in ancient times is argued by some scientists sci-entists as an explanation of how man first arrived in America from Asia. Doctor Hrdlicka scouts the theory. A land-bridge, he says, was wholly unnecessary. un-necessary. Primitive boats made of the skins of animals, such as are still used by some Alaskan natives, would have been, he says, sufficient to cross the Bering sea. "The crossing from Asia to America Amer-ica by the early immigrants was easy, natural and inevitable," Doctor Hrdlicka explains. "Less than 40 miles separate the two continents at ' Bering strait. But the Asiatics un doubtedly had boats, and there was nothing to prevent them from crossing cross-ing Bering sea by way of St. Lawrence Law-rence island. "Much further to the south was the long chain of the Aleutian islands, which reaches to within 400 miles of the Kamchatkan shore, even that distance dis-tance being cut in half by the Commander Com-mander islands." But if it is so easy to get from Asia to America, why was it not equally easy to get from America to Asia? Why can it not be argued that the similarity of Indians and some Asiatics may be explained by American migration to Asia? The answer is simple. Human remains tens of thousands of years old have been found in Asia. No eager American Ameri-can scientist has ever found any remains re-mains more than several thousand years old at the most on this continent. |