177. Racial Origin of the American Indians
The American race can hardly have come from anywhere else than Asia: it entered the New World perhaps ten thousand years ago. Its affiliations, as previously set forth (§ [23], [25]) are generically Mongoloid. This statement does not mean that the American Indians are descended from the Chinese or Japanese, any more than the fact that these are denominated Mongolians implies belief in their descent from the particular modern people known as the Mongols. We call ourselves Caucasians without any intimation that our ancestors lived in the Caucasus mountains or that the present inhabitants of the Caucasus are a purer and more representative stock than we. So the Mongolians are that group of “yellow” peoples of eastern Asia of whom the Mongols form part; and the Mongoloids are the larger group that takes in Mongolians, East Indians, and Americans. From the original proto-Mongoloid stem, all three divisions and their subdivisions have sprung and differentiated. The American Indians have probably remained closer to it than the Chinese. It would be more correct to say that the Chinese have developed out of an ancient Indian-like stock, acquiring slant eyes rather late.
The proto-Mongoloid stem must be ten thousand years old. It is probably much older. In the Aurignacian period, the third from the last in the Old Stone Age, twenty-five thousand or so years ago, possibly longer, the two other great types of living men were already rather well characterized. The fossil Grimaldi race of this period shows pretty clear Negroid affinities; the contemporary Cro-Magnon race can probably be reckoned as proto-Caucasian. It is therefore probable, although as yet unproved by discoveries, that the proto-Mongoloids were also already in existence.