Ohio History Journal

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EDITORIALANA

EDITORIALANA.

THE ORIGINAL MAN FROM OHIO.

Remarks recently made by the Editor of this Quarterly in introduc-

ing a gentleman on the occasion of a lecture on Ohio Archaeology

before the William Morris Society of Columbus, led to much comment

both serious and humorous in the newspapers not only of this state

but of papers in various parts of the country. The Editor in his

remarks was simply "passing along" some well ventilated possible con-

clusions resulting from the explorations and valuable researches of

the Jessup expeditions. For the past ten or fifteen years Morris K.

Jessup, the millionaire philanthopist and until recently president of the

American Museum of Natural History, has been the main promoter of

many expeditions and elaborate investigations in various parts of the

world in search of possible or probable proof of the location of the cradle

or birthplace of the human race. The results of these scientific, archae-

ologic, ethnologic and anthropologic researches are being prepared for

publication in many large volumes in Leyden, Holland. These reports,

it is claimed, "will embody the first systematic and comprehensive treat-

ment of the problem of how the red man got here (America) and where

he probably came from." A brief resume of the conclusions, arrived at

in these reports, appeared sometime since in the Cosmopolitan Maga-

zine in an article by Daniel T. Pierce. The result is, says this writer,

that the evidence demonstrates "that the first American was not an

Asiatic emigrant." The investigations in America were carried on by Doc-

tor Franz Boas, Harland D. Smith, Livingston Ferrand, James Teit, George

Hunt, Roland B. Dixon, and others. For the work in Siberia Walde-

mar Jochelson and Waldemar Begoras, of the Imperial Academy of

Sciences in St. Petersburg, were secured.  Dr. Berthold Lanfer was

placed in charge of the operations in southeastern Siberia.  Says Mr.

Pierce, "from the study of both ethnological and archaeological condi-

tions in northwestern America and in northeastern Asia, it seems most

probable that man did not come from Asia at all but crossed over into

Asia by way of northwestern America." We cannot follow the article

of Mr. Pierce in detail. He gives a resume of the facts and reasons put

forth by the distinguished scholars who for years have given their time

and thought to this intensely interesting question. The conclusions are

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