THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE ESKIMO — COLLINS 459 



ture was an exclusive one, and that there was no demonstrable 

 connection between either of these and the far more ancient Paleo- 

 Indian cultures of the western plains. These conclusions still stand 

 insofar as they pertain to the stages of Eskimo and Siberian Neolithic 

 culture thus far known. However, the problem has assumed larger 

 dimensions, and possibly a different orientation, as a result of the 

 recent discoveries in Alaska to which we have referred. In 1948 

 at Cape Denbigh, on Norton Sound, Giddings discovered an early 

 microlithic culture with definite Mesolithic affinities, older than and 

 possibly ancestral to both Eskimo and Siberian Neolithic, and also 

 corrected in some way vvith Folsom and Yuma. In the smnmer of 

 1950 two other sites yielding the same types of stone artifacts were 

 found in the vicinity of Anaktuvuk Pass in the Brooks Eange in the 

 interior of northern Alaska by William Irving and Robert J. Hack- 

 man (Solecki and Hackman, 1951). 



Giddings' early material was found at the base of an old site on 

 Cape Denbigh known to the Eskimos as lyatayet. The uppermost 

 materials were relatively recent and overlaid deposits representing 

 the Early Punuk period. Beneath this was a clay layer containing 

 flint implements of Ipiutak type together with others resembling 

 prehistoric South Alaskan and Dorset types, and also small stone 

 lamps, round to triangular in shape, and thin, hard pottery frag- 

 ments decorated with a dentate or simple check stamp. Next came 

 a sterile layer of laminated sandy clay from 2 to 18 inches thick, and 

 underlying this was the basal deposit — a thin stratum of pebbles and 

 flints representing a microlithic industry unlike anything previously 

 laiown from the New World. This basal "Denbigh Flint Complex" 

 comprised (1) delicately rechipped lamellar flakes, tiny blades made 

 from such flakes, and the polyhedral cores from which they had been 

 struck off; (2) blades of generalized Folsom and Yuma types; and, 

 most surprising of all (3) a large assortment of burins, a specialized 

 form of stone implement never before found in America, the distin- 

 guishing feature of which is a restricted, stout edge designed for cut- 

 ting deep grooves in bone and similar material. The Denbigh burins 

 comprise a number of types, most of them closely resembling those 

 from Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic horizons in the Old World 

 (Giddings 1949, 1951). 



The Cape Denbigh discovery is of great significance in connection 

 with the problem of Early Man in America. It links Folsom and 

 Yuma with the lamellar flake-polyhedral core industry found at the 

 University of Alaska campus site and elsewhere in central Alaska 

 (Rainey, 1939), in the Brooks Range (Solecki, 1950), and at Meso- 

 lithic sites in Mongolia (Nelson, 1937) and in Sinkiang, Manchuria, 

 southern Siberia, Kamchatka, and Hokkaido (Watanabe, 1948). It 

 tends to place all these cultural manifestations in a Mesolithic setting, 



