At first it was maintained that the Creator had placed an original pair of human beings here, as Scripture teaches that He did in the old world.[219] Other writers equally confident that the first ancestors of the American race were indigenous, have not so definitely expressed themselves as to the manner of their origin.[220] The most recent phase of the autochthonic theory is that which designates evolution as the means by which the continent was populated with human beings, developed from its own fauna. This latter question is now the most absorbing of all that occupy the attention of the American Anthropologists. But to go back to the separate creation view, we find it expressed in general and unscientific utterances at first, mostly based on the hasty observation of travellers who, in many cases, had little knowledge of anthropologic or ethnic principles. In fact, the subject was not fairly discussed and its advocacy based on satisfactory investigation until the justly celebrated Dr. Samuel G. Morton, of Philadelphia, issued his _Crania Americana_, containing the results of the most diligent researches on the skulls of the Mound-builders, Mexicans, Peruvians, and many of the known tribes of the Red Indians. In the face of abundant proof among the crania of his own splendid collection, and contrary to the testimony of his numerous measurements, which have often since been used against his theory, this diligent investigator arrived at the conclusion that the Americans were a distinct race, originated in this continent, having a uniform cranial type (excepting only the Eskimo), from the Arctic Circle to Patagonia.