The Puzzle of the Skulls
We have quite a few skulls that may have belonged to early man. On the whole, they do not look as Mongoloid as good Indian skulls should. Except for two—Minnesota man and Tepexpan man—they are long-headed instead of round-headed, and those exceptions lie between the two extremes. The skulls have heavy brow ridges. Most of them have keeled vaults like the Australoid-Melanesians of today. Many have retreating foreheads. It is true that skulls like these can be found in the variegated ranks of what is supposed to be the homogeneous “Indian race”; but they are far from plentiful. For instance, Hrdlička’s catalogue of Indian craniums shows only a small percentage that are long-headed. If early man was indeed more Australoid-Melanesian in type than pure Mongoloid, it would be only natural to find some reflection in the descendants of the Mongoloid immigrants with whom early man may be presumed to have bred.
There is no agreement as to the racial affinities of the earliest migrants. Most anthropologists still believe they were Mongoloids and therefore what they call Indians. Some go to the other extreme and declare they were Australoid, Negroid, and/or Caucasoid. Some, like Hooton, say the stock was drawn from a mingling of the three races in Asia. He thinks they “may have received some Mongoloid admixture before reaching the New World, but this is doubtful.”[3]
Many of the skulls of early man resemble in certain respects those of that late arrival, the Eskimo, just as the Eskimo resembles some specimens of Magdalenian man. The skulls of the Eskimo are long-headed, and have keeled vaults and prominent cheekbones. But most early craniums have three features that are lacking in the Eskimo—receding chins, slanting foreheads and heavy brow ridges—all stigmata of the Australoid-Melanesian.
It is rather puzzling to note that these early skulls are found with the bones of extinct animals in South America, but seldom with such fossils in North America, while they are not found with Folsom or Sandia or any form of ancient point. (There seem few points of definite-early type in South America.) It is possible, as Howard suggested, that the North American hunters practiced exposure of the dead instead of burial, while early man to the south left more burials for us than the few that have been found.