488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE AGE OF CAVE-DWELLERS IN AMEEICA. 



By E. T. ELLIOTT. 



THE various writers and thinkers on the subject of pre-historic man 

 generally concede that the races of to-day have radiated over the 

 globe from some point in Asia. Indeed, the traditions of different 

 nations lead to the conclusion that this point of dispersion was located 

 in the high central regions of that country. There, apparently, the 

 dog, horse, and ox were first domesticated, and can at the present time 

 be found in their natural, wild state. Hudson Tuttle says, in his " Ar- 

 cana of Nature," that " man originated near the equator, where the 

 climate was better adapted to his defenseless condition and food abun- 

 dant." 



This conclusion seems to be based upon the impression that the 

 different zones of the earth occupy the same relative positions now 

 that they have always done, and can hardly hold good in view of re- 

 cent developments. Colorado, an almost unexplored country, compara- 

 tively speaking, to the scientific world will be apt to change the logical 

 reasonings that have so far been advanced upon this interesting subject. 



Seiior Altamirano, of Mexico, the best Aztec scholar living, claims 

 the proof is conclusive that the Aztecs did not come to Mexico from 

 Asia, as has been long universally believed, but that they were a race 

 originated in the unsubmerged parts of America, as old as the Asiatics 

 themselves, and that that country may even have been peopled from 

 this. From the ruins recently found, the most northern of any yet 

 discovered, the indications of improved architecture, the work of dif- 

 ferent ages, can be traced in a continual chain to Mexico, where they 

 culminate in massive and imposing structures, thus giving some proof 

 by circumstantial evidence to Altamirano's reasoning. But now, as to 

 the antiquity of American man as shown by the yet recent discoveries 

 in Colorado. 



First it will be necessary to glance at the glacial period for an 

 instant, or rather at the geological spring following it, when the warm 

 rays of the sun turned the ice-covered crust of earth into a vast sheet 

 of water, with only the extremely high ground left exposed above 

 its surface. 



From the evidences of the rocks and the deposits of the mountain 

 valleys it is fair to deduce the conclusion that, as in time the waters 

 gradually receded, the first part of America to assume any dimensions 

 was the backbone of the continent, or that elevated portion known as 

 the Rocky Mountains, which had probably never at this period been 

 entirely covered with water, thus affording a long, continuous stretch 

 of dry ground on which man and beast could live and wander as they 

 listed. 



