Early man in South America / by Aleš Hrdlička ; in collaboration with W.H. Holmes [and others].

  • Alex Hrdlicka
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Early man in South America / by Aleš Hrdlička ; in collaboration with W.H. Holmes [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that has given many examples of baked earth and other apparent evidences of man’s antiquity. Early in July Mr. Willis and the writer returned once more to Buenos Aires, completed as far as possi- ble the work of research there, and then started with Sr. de Carles for Ovejero, a locaUty in the northwestern jiart of Argentina, wliich in the last few years has yielded a relatively large quantity of fossil” human bones. Subsequently this trip was extended, for geologic as well as anthropologic purposes, to Tucuman, San Juan, and Mendoza. From the last-named place Mr. Wilhs returned to Buenos Aires, while the writer crossed the Andes on his way to Peru. The writer left Argentina feeling that the time at his disposal there, though utilized to the utmost, was all too brief. The country abounds in anthropologic problems and material and large sections as yet have not been explored. But the opportunities suggested by these considerations belong to the future. The writer and his colleague were not able to visit some of the places where remains of iiresumably ancient man were found, because, the discoveries having been made many years ago by men no longer among the living, the exact locaHties are not known. There was no time to conduct more extensive excavations, and even the examinations of some of the specimens could have been made with advantage more detailed. The main objects of the journey had been accomphshed, however, so that fur- ther particulars could not be expected to change or augment mate- rially the essentials of the evidence. Whatever doubts remain are of such nature that only by justifiable inference and strictly scientific field work can it be hoped to effect their final solution. Unfortunately the general results of the inquiry here outhned are not in harmony with the claims of the various authors who rej)orted the several finds. As will be seen by the details, the evidence is, up to the present time, unfavorable to the hypothesis of man’s great antiq- uity, and especially to the existence of man’s predecessors in South America; and it does not sustain the theories of the evolution of man in general, or even of that of the American man alone, in the southern continent. The facts gathered attest everywhere merely the presence of the already differentiated and relatively modern American Indian. A. H.
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