EARLY MAN VS. THE MONGOLOID
In this comparison, the Mongoloid skull—indicated by dotted lines—and the skulls of early man are not drawn to true scale, because the former is an abstraction, and the measurements of all the latter are not available. For comparison, the nose root and the back of the skull are made to agree in the profiles, and the other views are drawn from this relationship. (The Mongoloid skull, after Stibbe, 1938, and Hooton, 1931; the Early Sacramento, courtesy Robert F. Heizer; the Pericú, after ten Kate, 1884, and Woodbury, 1935; the Punin, after Sullivan and Hellman, 1925; the Lagoa Santa, after Hrdlička, 1912; the Central Texas, after Hooton, 1933.)
LAGOA SANTA Brazil Av. cephalic index 70.5 PUNIN Ecuador Cephalic index 71 MELBOURNE Florida Cephalic index 73.1 PERICU Lower California Cephalic index 65.62 CENTRAL TEXAS Jones County Cephalic Index 60.71 EARLY SACRAMENTO California Cephalic Index 72.5
Apart from long-headedness, our early skulls share a number of other peculiarities of the Australoid-Melanesian: the quite heavy brow ridges, the keeled vault, the straight sides, the retreating forehead, the low nose root, and the receding chin. Some have the round vault and the fuller forehead of White and Mongoloid peoples, but these are also a feature of the Negrito strain that united with the Australoid in Melanesia.
In one respect only do the skulls of early American man follow a Mongoloid pattern: almost all have prominent cheekbones. We must remember, however, that prominent cheekbones are found in other races—though not so commonly—and we must recognize that they cannot weigh too heavily against those un-Mongoloid peculiarities we have dwelt on.
The peculiarities of our early skulls must make us think twice about the Indian as the only pre-Columbian inhabitant of the Americas south of the Eskimo. They bear witness to another invader from the Old World. Such skulls—even if they were only a thousand years old—would tell us that the typical Mongoloid Indian was not the only arrival from Asia who left descendants. Since many of the skulls are definitely the oldest that have been found in the New World, we must recognize that early man bore some relationship to other peoples than the forebears of the noble red man.
Europe Recognizes the Australoid in America
The earliest recognition of non-Indian traits in the Americas came from scientists of the Old World—Mochi, Biasutti, Hansen, Quatrefages, ten Kate (who found the Pericú skulls in Lower California), Rivet, Gusinde, Lebzelter, Mendes Correâ, Hultkrantz. The first American and British students to accept the idea were Roland B. Dixon in 1923, A. C. Haddon in 1925, and Sir Arthur Keith and Earnest A. Hooton in 1930; the last two were physical anthropologists, and naturally knew more than archaeologists about the meaning of bones. Toward the end, even Hrdlička was diluting the Mongolism of the Indian with some Aurignacian and Magdalenian ancestry, though the Australoid and the Melanesian were too much for him.
In the English-speaking world the case for the Mongoloid Indian as the only type of early man was definitely and finally thrown out of court in 1930 by statements from two men eminent in their field—Keith and Hooton.