[Illustration: Cross section, east slope of Funeral Mound, Ocmulgee National Monument. Arrangement of construction elements confused by erosion and wash from top and side of successive mound stages.] [Illustration: INDIANS COME TO THE NEW WORLD] Most living American Indians share with the east Asians a group of features which are considered to be distinctive of the great Mongoloid division of mankind. These include: straight dark hair, dark eyes, light yellow-brown to red-brown skin, sparse beard and body hair, prominent cheekbones, moderately protruding jaws, rather subdued chin, and large face. Since the question of race determination, however, is one of extreme complexity, it should also be pointed out that while the majority of modern Indians as well as prehistoric skeletal remains in America share enough of these features in common to be regarded as predominantly Mongoloid, they as well as the east Asians themselves, possess other physical traits like stature and head form which vary widely from group to group. Some of these other traits may be explained by the influence of different environments acting over long periods of time, but others point to an admixture of non-Mongoloid features in some of the earliest migrants to these areas. It is just the meaning of this mixture of apparently diverse elements which makes the problem of ultimate origins so difficult; and we shall have to be content for now with the general relationship which seems to have been established. If the earliest wanderers to the Americas were primarily a blend of other racial elements, their influence on the physical type of later American Indians has been largely submerged by the Mongoloid features of the vast majority of later arrivals.