biologists, we may reasonably conclude that
the species has been dispersed from some common center, as the ability
to successfully carry on the battle of life in all climes belongs only
to a highly developed being; but this original home has not yet been
ascertained with certainty, and when discovered, lines of migration
therefrom cannot be mapped until the changes in the physical geography
of the earth from that early time to the present have been discovered,
and these must be settled upon purely geologic and paleontologic
evidence. The migrations of mankind from that original home cannot be
intelligently discussed until that home has been discovered, and,
further, until the geology of the globe is so thoroughly known that the
different phases of its geography can be presented.

The dispersion of man must have been anterior to the development of any
but the rudest arts. Since that time the surface of the earth has
undergone many and important changes. All known camp and village sites,
graves, mounds, and ruins belong to that portion of geologic time known
as the present epoch, and are entirely subsequent to the period of the
original dispersion as shown by geologic evidence.

In the study of these antiquities, there has been much unnecessary
speculation in respect to the relation existing between the people to
whose existence they attest, and the tribes of Indians inhabiting the
country during the historic period.

It may be said that in the Pueblos discovered in the southwestern
portion of the United States and farther south through Mexico and
perhaps into Central America tribes are known having a culture quite as
far advanced as any exhibited in the discovered ruins. In this respect,
then, there is no need to search for an extra-limital origin through
lost tribes for any art there exhibited.

With regard to the mounds so widely scattered between the two oceans, it
may also be said that mound-building tribes were known in the early
history of discovery of this continent, and that the vestiges of art
discovered do not excel in any respect the arts of the Indian tribes
known to history. There is, therefore, no reason for us to search for an
extra-limital origin through lost tribes for the arts discovered in the
mounds of North America.

The tracing of the origin of these arts to the ancestors of known tribes
or stocks of tribes is more legitimate, but it has limitations which are
widely disregarded. The tribes whi