Hooton and Dixon on Early Invaders
Hooton’s pronouncement in 1930 against the pretensions of the Mongoloid Indian resulted from a study of a number of old skulls found at Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico. In terms of early man they were not so very aged; in fact, they were slightly younger than the Basket Makers of the first Christian centuries. But in these skulls Hooton found traces of seven types of men. They included, as one might expect, the Basket Makers, the Plains Indian, and a “large hybrid” type which was thoroughly Indian. In addition he listed a “Pseudo-Australoid,” a “Pseudo-Negroid,” a “Long-faced European,” and a “Pseudo-Alpine” type. From this analysis of skulls little more than a thousand years old, Hooton went on boldly to picture the kind of men that first discovered and invaded the Americas:
Briefly, then, my present opinion as to the peopling of the American continent is as follows: At a rather remote period, probably soon after the last glacial retreat, there straggled into the New World from Asia by way of the Bering Strait groups of dolichocephals in which were blended at least three strains: one very closely allied to the fundamental brunet European and African long-headed stock called “Mediterranean”; another, a more primitive form with heavy brow-ridges, low broad face and wide nose, which is probably to be identified with an archaic type represented today very strongly (although mixed with other elements) in the native Australians, and less strongly in the so-called “Pre-Dravidians” such as the Veddahs, and also in the Ainu; thirdly, an element certainly Negroid (not Negro). These people, already racially mixed, spread over the New World carrying with them a primitive fishing and hunting culture. Their coming must have preceded the occupation of eastern Asia by the present predominantly Mongoloid peoples, since the purer types of these dolichocephals do not show the characteristic Mongoloid features.
At a somewhat later period there began to arrive in the New World groups of Mongoloids coming by the same route as their predecessors. Many of these were probably purely Mongoloid in race, but others were mixed with some other racial element notable because of its high-bridged and often convex nose. This may have been either Armenoid or Proto-Nordic (or neither one). These later invaders were capable of higher cultural development than the early pioneers and were responsible for the development of agriculture and for the notable achievements of the New World civilization. In some places they may have driven out and supplanted the early long-heads, but often they seem to have interbred with them producing the multiple and varied types of the present American Indians—types which are Mongoloid to a varying extent, but never purely Mongoloid. Last of all came the Eskimo, a culturally primitive Mongoloid group, already mixed with some non-Mongoloid strain before their arrival in North America.[5]
In 1947 Hooton stated this in simpler terms: “I am fairly sure that the earliest arrivals here were non-Mongoloids carrying archaic White strains (‘Australoids,’ if you like) probably mixed with Negritic elements and with whatever else was kicking around in Asia before they crossed Bering Strait.”[6]
Dixon’s position, which he took in 1923, is in some ways a more radical one than Hooton’s. He introduces “Proto-Australoid,” “Proto-Negroid,” and Mediterranean elements, and also Caspian and Alpine; but, where Hooton recognizes a general stock in which Australoid, Negroid, and Mediterranean were blended before their arrival, Dixon brings in his races separate and pure, and he assigns them definite areas in the New World.
Dixon’s Proto-Australoid originated in tropical southeast Asia. It spread westward “through India and the Arabian coasts to Africa, and by way of the Mediterranean passed into western Europe, where it appeared in early Paleolithic times.... Another branch spread southeast into Australia, where its early presence is proved by the Talgai skull,” perhaps 150,000 years old. “A third branch drifted slowly northward up the eastern Asiatic littoral, and, crossing into America, spread thinly through the continents, and perhaps mainly along the western shores.... On the Pacific Coast in California and Lower California it appears to constitute the oldest stratum, characterizing as it does the crania from the lower layers of the shell-heaps, from the islands of Santa Catalina and San Clemente off the Coast, and from the extinct Pericue [now Pericú] isolated on the southern tip of the peninsula of Lower California.” Dixon places some of his Proto-Australoids among the ancestors of the Iroquois and the southern Algonquin tribes of the East. He puts most of his Proto-Negroids in that same eastern area and with the same tribes. He finds them generally east of the Rockies, but also among the Basket Makers in the Southwest and the peoples of the Coahuila Caves of northern Mexico, in the Lagoa Santa area in Brazil, and in Patagonia.[7]
Two of the White types—the Caspian and the Mediterranean—seem rather scattered and rather early. Dixon thinks that a Caspian strain may have appeared as soon as the Proto-Australoid, perhaps sooner. It crops up among the Eskimo and at spots in British Columbia, and widely in South America. The Mediterranean influence, Dixon says, is found also among the Eskimo and among Shoshonean and Siouan tribes.
Dixon does not think much of the Mongoloids. Believing they were a very old people that drifted into Europe in early paleolithic times, he says they “contributed little of value either to the sum of human achievements or the blood of existing races.” He gives them only scant space in North America. Instead he introduces two other round-headed peoples. They are first the Paleo-Alpines, and later the Alpines. These, who seem to take on the role played by the Mongoloids of Hooton and others, spread through to South America and “displayed striking ability.... To them seems to be attributable most of the higher achievements of the aboriginal American peoples.”[8]
Some theories are doubtless much too simple; also, they depend too much on other theories, such as the idea that all the races originated in southwestern Asia. R. Ruggles Gates, who writes of “American Neanderthaloids” and “pseudo-Australoids,” believes that the craniums of the men of Lagoa Santa and Punin—“the earliest wave of interglacial Americans”—“represent a parallel stage in skull development of a widely different race” from the one that began as the Neanderthal or the one that ended as the Australian.[9]