stone Age in Indiana 111 



cited as one of the possible tj^ie stations for early man in America. It 

 is, therefore, of unusual interest to know that this site is by no means 

 exhausted, but still rich in data. The question your find raises is 

 whether the person who made the sketch on the bone which has been 

 presei'ved saw a mastodon or mammoth. This cannot be answered posi- 

 tively, but the probabilities of the case can be estimated. In the first 

 place, the work is of the primitive stamp and such as we might expect 

 from the hand of an American native. It so happens that upon these 

 bones at least three attempts were made to represent living forms, ap- 

 parently by the same artist. Two of these forms have the distinctive 

 lines of elk and deer, while the lines of the third characterize elephant 

 kind. This favors the interpretation that an elephant, mastodon, or 

 mammoth was intended. At once the objection will be raised that the 

 bone is recent. Though the ma.stodon and the mammoth are character- 

 istic of Pleistocene time, it is not known when they became extinct; 

 for all that is known to the contrary, these great mammals may have 



Fig. 3. Carved bone from Jacob's Cavern. Note carving representing a mastodon 

 typo of mammal. 



held out to within three thousand years ago. Thus, the artist could 

 have seen one of these animals and still have lived under modern con- 

 ditions. No one in authority seems now prepared to deny that man was 

 in America three thousand years ago. In other v/ords, there is nothing 

 zoological that makes your interpretation improbable. We must, there- 

 fore, turn to the cavern itself. It appears that this bone was found 

 in the present surface of the cave, but approximately five feet of deposit 

 were taken out by Moorehead in 190.3; hence this bone is older than 

 anything found by him. When we recall that both Pcabody and Moore- 

 head were impressed with the great age of what they removed, the 

 evidence is again favorable to your interpretation. Also, there are still 

 in the cavern almost five feet of deposit, in the main clay, through 

 which you were so kind as to sink a shaft in my presence. This excava- 

 tion indicated the presence of man's handiwork in all parts of this 

 deposit, one piece of worked stone being found at the bottom of the 

 shaft, lying flat upon the original stone floor of the cavern. One must 

 conclude, therefore, that there are remains in the cavern that are of 



