XXVI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas

- 326­
~I;¡ c quarie Islanc! lies some rooo miles from Tasmania (where presumably
ihe hypothetical wanderers did not embark since the Tasmanians had
neither sewn bark canoes nor half-hitch coiled baskets). The next
nearest land are the Bellamy Islands, adjacent to Antarctica, 800 miles
from Macquarie Islands. These distances al! surpass the known limits
oí navigation of al! primitive peoples including even the early Norsemen
but excluding the Polynesians. Furthermore the southern polar continent
is separated from the more northern latitudes by the Roaring
Forties through which modern steamers find headway difficult. That
any group of primitive navigators in any type of early craft, and even
with the will to explore, could or would push on through hundreds of
miles of rough, perilous seas, into constantly colder weather, to successfully
navigate the Roaring Forties, and find the only bits of land in
thousands of miles of ocean seems beyond even the realm of fantasy.
But perhaps th e ocean difficulties and haza rds were fevv'er in those
times. In addition we may wonder how such navigators could have
missed complete!y Tasmania and southeastern Australia or if they called
there why the local inhabitants, in recent times so anxious to obtain
improved watercraft, ignored entire!y their opportunity to acquire sewn
bark canoes.
The theory of Koppers in our estimation is quite plausible in concept,
but it cannot be admittecl that the evidence submitted has substantiated
the claims made. Certainly everyone will agree that the various ancestors
of the Australians and the American Indians hail from Asia. It follows,
therefore, that if some earl)' migrating Australoid population with
cultural unity broke into two groups, one going to Australia, the other
to America, and that subsequently they were followed by other peoples
with different cultures who succeeded them in the nearer regions, that
the places, lf any, where we should expect to find evidences of the surviving
primitive culture, would be in the peripheral areas such as Fuegia
and Australia and in various isolated places along the migration routes.
However, it does not follow necessarily that the finding of similarity of
culture in the two peripheral regions proves the original assumptions of
racial unity of the migrating peoples or of unit)' of their original cultures.
Diffusion of culture among ancient as well as among modern populations
must be allowed as a possibility and we must also make provision
for local developments in each region as the result of environmental
comlitions and the tendency of all peoples over a period of time
to produce new elements in culture. It cannot be admitted, therefore,
that similarities in the modern cultures of peoples Iwho sho,w some Austrajoid
characteristics necessarily imply that all Australoids possesed the
same culture. Nor can it be allowed that the presence of some general
reseniblances in two modern widely-separated cultures necessarily certi­