The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-07-08
Man on the American Continent.

Professor Flowers, in arecent lecture
on the Anatomy of Man. before the Lon
don Royal College of Surgeons, discuss
es at some length the origin of man on
the American continent. The views
till lately held as to the peOpling of
America, may, he says, be grouped
under two heads: % That the inhab-
itants of that continent were distinct
Indigenous people, created in the coun-
try in which they were found, and
therefore not related to those of any
other land. This is the theory of the
polygenistic school, butts probably not
held by many scientific men Of the pres
ent day. ~ The monogenists mostly
believed that they are descended from
an Asiatic people, who in comparatively
recent times passed into America by
way of Behring's Straits, and thence
spread gradually over the whole CONT
nent, as far as Cape Horn, and that
their nearest allies must therefore be
looked for in the northeastern regions
of Asia. 1t has also been thought by
those who have held the same general
views, that ut all events a partial re-
peopling of the American continent
may have occurred from Southern Asia
by way of the POlynesian Islands, or
from North Africa, across the Atlantic.
The discovery of the great antiquity
of the human race in America, as well
as in the Old World, has led to an i'm
portant modification of these theories.
The proof Of a very considerable an
tiquity rests upon the high and indie
pendent state of civilization which had
been attained by the MeXicans and Pc
ruyians at the time of the Spanish con-
quest, and the evidence that that civil
cation had been preceded by several 9th
er stages Of culture, followed in success
sion through a great stretch of time.
But the antiquity Of the quasi-histOrical
period thus brought out, is entirely
thrown into the shade by the evidence
now accommodating from various parts Of
the United States, Central America and
the PampaS, that man existed in those
countries. and existed under much the
same conditions of life, using precisely
similar weapons ind tools as in Europe
during the pleistocene or quarternary
geological period, and perhaps even
further back in time. As in Europe his
works are found associated with the re-
mains of Elephas primigenius, and other
extinct mammals, so in America are
they found in contemporary deposits
with those of Elephas columbi. If the
inductiOns commonly made from these
discoveries be accepted, and the fact
admitted that men lived both in Europe
and America before the surface of the
earth had assumed its present geograph-
ical conformation, the data from which
the problem of the peopling of America
is to be solved are altogether changed.
Recent archaeological investigations,
especially those carried on with such
great success in the neighbOrhOod of the
Rocky Mountains, show that an i'm
mense number of forms of terrestrial
animals that were formerly supposed to
be peculiar to the Old World are album
dant in the New; indeed many, such as
the horses, rhinoceroses, camels, etc,
are more numerous in species and
varieties in the latter, and therefore the
means of land communication between
the two must have been very different
to what it is now. Taking all circum-
stances into consideration, it is quite as
likely that Asiatic man may have been
derived from America as the reverse,
or both may have had their source in a
common center, in some region Of the
earth now covered with sea.