In the twelve years since Early Man in the New World appeared, in 1950, a good deal of archaeological water has passed under the bridge—or over the land-bridge that led the first immigrants into the Americas. Because I had given most of these years to the founding and development of the Department of Theater Arts at U.C.L.A., I was in no position to revise and add to that book without the collaboration of an able and willing anthropologist, a man who had followed far more closely than I the new findings in American prehistory, and the new theories, or guesses, about their meanings. I was fortunate indeed to find such a man in Professor Joseph A. Hester, Jr., of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, San Jose State College, California. To him must go the fullest credit for the updating and the correcting, too, of a twelve-year-old book. Through him, Early Man in the New World is now able to present a great deal of information that was not in existence in 1950. Then, for example, the dating of wood and charcoal, bone, horn, and shell, through radiocarbon was hardly more than a gleam in the eye of Willard F. Libby. As I was reading page proof when he announced his first pre-Columbian date, I could mention this invaluable time clock only at the end of three chapters. A change, rather than an addition to the text, is the use of the word “Clovis” instead of “Generalized Folsom,” and “Eden” instead of “Yuma,” thus bringing our terminology in line with today’s practice.

In its first form, the book came about almost by accident. During 1941 and 1942, my work in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs included the preparation of some educational films upon archaeological work in Mexico and South America. As a result I came to know and esteem the Director of the University Museum, George C. Vaillant. To my surprise and pleasure, when he learned of my interest in American archaeology, he proposed that we collaborate on a prehistory of the New World. When the war prevented active work together by taking him to Peru, I prepared what would have been the first two chapters of our book—the place of early man in the story of pre-Columbian America. Upon Vaillant’s untimely death, I decided to study the subject more intensively, to add material on the Great Ice Age and early man in the Old World, and to expand the two chapters into a book that I might dedicate to the man who had done so much for American archaeology in the twenty years of his work—George C. Vaillant.

Since the book was not the result of personal work in the field, but rather the product of the kind of research that is nothing more than reading and talking, I was in the debt of many men and books, and a welter of papers, pamphlets, and periodicals. I found it hard to believe that in any other branch of science so many overworked men and women would be so ready to give their time to talk and correspondence with the amateur. I was deeply indebted to more than two score who had gone out of their way to answer questions, lend books, or give reprints of papers. In listing them I was more than certain that I had inadvertently omitted some: Edgar Anderson, Ernst Antevs, Ralph L. Beals, Junius Bird, Robert J. Braidwood, Henry J. Bruman, Kirk Bryan, George F. Carter, R. A. Daly, Helmut de Terra, Loren C. Eiseley, Richard F. Flint, James Gilluly, Harold S. Gladwin, M. R. Harrington, Frank C. Hibben, Frederick W. Hodge, Harry Hoijer, Earnest A. Hooton, W. W. Howells, Frederick R. Johnson, Arthur R. Kelly, G. H. R. von Koenigswald, Alex D. Krieger, Alfred L. Kroeber, M. M. Leighton, Theodore D. McCown, George G. MacCurdy, P. C. Mangelsdorf, Paul S. Martin, Hallam L. Movius, Jr., Raymond W. Murray, N. C. Nelson, Charles W. Phillips, Cyrus N. Ray, E. B. Renaud, Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., Alfred S. Romer, Irving Rouse, Curt Sachs, Carl O. Sauer, E. H. Sellards, Herbert J. Spinden, T. D. Stewart, Wm. Duncan Strong, Griffith Taylor, Bella Weitzner, H. M. Wormington, and Clark Wissler.

Next to the scientists who provide knowledge stand the librarians who help to preserve it and make it usable. I was peculiarly indebted to a number of these: Miss Margaret Currier, Librarian of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge; her assistant Miss Jessie Bell MacKenzie; Mrs. Ella L. Robinson, Librarian of the Southwest Museum; Dr. Lawrence C. Powell, Librarian of the University of California at Los Angeles; his most cooperative staff; and particularly one of its members, Miss Hilda M. Gray, whose expeditions into the equal mysteries of stacks and bibliographies saved me many hours of labor and I can’t guess how many blunders. Professor Hester and I add a warm word of thanks to Mrs. Alice De Lisle for assembling data, preparing charts, typing, filing, and research.

I was particularly indebted to Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., of the Smithsonian Institution, the outstanding authority on early man in North America, for his reading, checking, and challenging of the manuscript, and to M. R. Harrington, who read and criticized my first draft. I also owed much to a number of men and women who read various chapters on which they had special knowledge: Edgar Anderson, Ernst Antevs, Robert J. Braidwood, Henry J. Bruman, Loren C. Easeley, James Gilluly, Harold S. Gladwin, M. R. Harrington, Robert F. Heizer, Earnest A. Hooton, Alex Krieger, Alfred L. Kroeber, Theodore D. McCown, Ernest S. Macgowan, Hallam L. Movius, Jr., and H. M. Wormington.

Both Professor Hester and I are especially obliged to Campbell Grant, amateur of anthropology as well as artist, for the many illustrations.

Finally, in the typing of the original manuscript and the checking of the many references I was fortunate in having the aid of Miss Frankie Porter and of Joe Pavalko.

Since we are not adding a repetitive bibliography to the almost four hundred references that we cite, we should like to list a few of the sources which we have found most useful and which should prove so to any reader who may wish to pursue further various aspects of the subject:

Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., “Developments in the Problem of the North-American Paleo-Indian,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 100:51-116 (1940), and “The New World Paleo-Indian,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1944, 403-433.

H. M. Wormington, Ancient Man in North America, 4th edit. (1957).

E. H. Sellards, Early Man in America (1952).

Raymond W. Murray, Man’s Unknown Ancestors (1943).

Early Man, a symposium edited by George Grant MacCurdy (1937).

The American Aborigines, a symposium edited by Diamond Jenness (1933).