PALEOLITHIC MAN IN AMERICA. 25 



human population upon the North American Continent during 

 the later ice epoch. The records are not equally decisive, it is 

 true ; the artificial character of Miss Babbitt's quartz-chips has 

 been questioned, and they represent a stage of culture widely dif- 

 ferent from that represented by Winchell's objects from the same 

 deposit ; it has been suggested that McAdams's axe may have 

 been an adventitious inclusion ; Belt's untimely death prevented 

 final statement of the geologic position of the Colorado skull ; the 

 apparently conclusive structural evidence of the antiquity of the 

 Nevada obsidian is opposed by its fresh aspect and modern form ; 

 and Gilbert's hearth was not seen by the geologist who studied 

 its relations. Yet, however the doubtful cases may be weighted, 

 the testimony is cumulative, parts of it are unimpeachable, and 

 the proof of the existence of glacial man seems conclusive. But 

 the evidence of man's existence during the earlier epoch of gla- 

 cial cold is not conclusive ; and the evidence of still earlier human 

 occupancy of the continent is not reducible to the terms of defi- 

 nite geologic chronology. Moreover, there is a body of negative 

 evidence which is worthy of consideration. The lower lacustral 

 deposits of the Great Basin have been as carefully explored as the 

 upper, but have yielded no trace of human remains ; the oldest 

 glacial and aqueo-glacial deposits of the Mississippi Valley have 

 been explored in Nebraska, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio, as care- 

 fully as the later deposits, but (if Dr. Koch's famous find be ex- 

 cluded) no traces of human occupancy have been found ; and, 

 most significant of all, the deposits of the earlier cold epoch 

 throughout the District of Columbia have been scanned for years 

 by a dozen trained collectors and not a single object of human 

 manufacture has been found within them, though thousands have 

 been found on the surface, and though it might be shown that the 

 conditions for savage life were as favorable on the Potomac dur- 

 ing this epoch as they were on the Delaware during the later. 



The various archseologic discoveries of America display strik- 

 ing diversity in the degree of development exhibited in the relics, 

 which range from the rudest " turtle-backs" to finely chipped flint, 

 polished stone, and even copper ; but whether this disparity indi- 

 cates adventitious inclusion in certain cases — and thus weakens 

 the chain of evidence of human antiquity^or heterogeneity in 

 the primitive population, can not yet be decided. Whatever in- 

 terpretation be placed upon the questionable cases, however, there 

 is convincing proof not only of man's existence, but of the definite 

 stage of culture called paleolithic, in the later cold epoch of the 

 glacial period. It is indeed obvious that the autochthon must have 

 found birth anterior to this epoch, but the objective evidence of 

 pre-paleolithic art has not been ascertained ; and, since the date of 

 origin of a higher culture is unknown, it can only be said that the 



