Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

214 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY
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—"— POLITICAL BOUNDARIES
PLEISTOCENE SHORE LINE
FIGURE 35.—Locations of Asiatic archeological sites that are discussed in the text.
the New World population and that of Siberia
was at the early end of the Diuktai time scale
rather than at a later period. In fact, I think that
the initial tie may have been more in the nature
of a common cultural ancestor that moved into
Siberia from east Central Asia.
The basic assumptions in this paper are that
native American populations originated from a
generalized mongoloid racial stock that was developing
in Asia during the late Pleistocene. It is
assumed that these people were bands of hunters
and foragers who had adapted to the big game
hunting economy afforded by the steppe-tundra
biome. This biome existed in Central Asia and