RACIAL ORIGIN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 27, 13 November 1935, Page 7

RACIAL ORIGIN

THE AMERICAN: INCIDENT

LONG-STANDING THEORY ATTACKED. (United Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, November 11. The long-standing theory of the Melanesian or Australoid origin ol the American Indians was attacked to-day by Dr. Ales Hrdlieka, the noted anthropologist, of the Smithsonian Institute, after a critical examination of all available evidence.

Dr. Hrdlieka said the examination of 10,000 crania of North and ‘ South. American Indians had failed to reveal anything representing true Melanesian or Australoid origin. He further contended that the theory of Melanesian settlement of the new world was selfcontradictory. “According to' various indications the spread of Melanesians into tlie South Seas, belonged essentially to the last millenium before the Christian era. By that time the New World had been populated several thousand years. Judging from the reception given the first contingent of whites, what chance would there have been for a small stray group of any other people, especially one not superior to the native Americans?”

He said that the idea of colonisation from Australia was even more absurd. “There is reason to doubt whether Australia itself was peopled at the time of the earliest Asiatic colonisation of America. If they came, how did they get here? It has been suggested that they came along the shores of the Antarctic at a time when that land was much warmer than at present,-but to have done so they would have had to come to America before, there was the slightest trace on earth of human beings.”