THEORY EXPLODED

Grey River Argus, 13 November 1935, Page 5

THEORY EXPLODED

ORIGIN OF AMERICAN INDIANS. (Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assn.) (Received November 13, at 10.15 p.m.) WASHINGTON, November 11. A long-standing theory of the Mela riOsinn, or Australoid origin of American Indians was blasted to-day, by Doctor Ales Hrcllicka, anthropologist of the Smithsonian Institution when, after a critical examination of all available evidence, he said the examination of ten thousand crania of North and South American Indians, tailed to reveal anything representing the true Melanesian Australoid.

He further contended that the theory of Melanesian settlement of the new world was self-contradictory.. According to various indications, the spread of Melanesians into the South Seas, belonged essentially t'o the last millenium before the Christian era. By that time, the new world had been populated for several thousand years and judging from the reception given to the first contingent of whites what chance would there have been for a small stray group of any other people, e|ipeeially one not superior to tlio native America.nsJ”

He added that the idea of the Australian colonisation was even more a-bsurd. There was reason to doubt whether Australia itself was peopled at the time of the earliest Asiatic colonisation of America., and if they came, how did they get here? It had been proposed that they came along the shores of the Antarctic at a time ■raen the land wa 3 much warmer than at present ,but if they had done so they would have to come to America before there was the slightest' trace on the earth of human beings. >r