Many of the skulls of early man resemble in certain respects those of that late arrival, the Eskimo, just as the Eskimo resembles some specimens of Magdalenian man. The skulls of the Eskimo are long-headed, and have keeled vaults and prominent cheekbones. But most early craniums have three features that are lacking in the Eskimo—receding chins, slanting foreheads and heavy brow ridges—all stigmata of the Australoid-Melanesian.
It is rather puzzling to note that these early skulls are found with the bones of extinct animals in South America, but seldom with such fossils in North America, while they are not found with Folsom or Sandia or any form of ancient point. (There seem few points of definite-early type in South America.) It is possible, as Howard suggested, that the North American hunters practiced exposure of the dead instead of burial, while early man to the south left more burials for us than the few that have been found.
The next puzzle lies in the milling stones. Man in America not only starts off with an exceptionally fine type of spear point to thrust into elephant or bison, and uses pressure flaking far more extensively than man in the Old World; in addition, he develops the type of milling stone, or quern, that does not appear in Europe until man is coming out of the Old Stone Age and entering the neolithic period of agriculture. Milling stones might be used as an argument against the early appearance of man in America if it could be proved that they were made to grind agricultural products; but no kernels of corn or other cultivated seeds have been found with these querns.
Except for milling stones that seem to have been used to grind paint in Chile,[4] the preagricultural querns occur mainly in the area of California, the Southwest, and upper Mexico. Through California, from Borax Lake and the Mohave Desert, to the Cochise area of southeastern Arizona and the Edwards Plateau of central Texas, and on into northwestern Mexico, these grinding tools turn up with artifacts and in geological strata that may be from 6,000 to 25,000 years old. If those dates are correct, then we have milling stones in the New World many years before there was any agriculture. The explanation must be that some of the earliest of the Americans were food gatherers and grinders of nuts and seeds as well as hunters. In addition to their querns, they have left us hearths on beds of collected stones, rude knives, rough percussion tools such as scrapers and choppers, but very few spear points. There is no early culture of this sort now known in Asia or Africa. It is not Folsom. Is it Australoid? Does it go back to a type of people who, in some hybrid and degenerate form, settled Australia? At least we know that the culture of the Australians is a curious mixture of very primitive traits with some elements of the polished stone work of the New Stone Age and milling stones. They are nearer being food gatherers than hunters.