NEW WORLD PALEO-INDIAN—ROBERTS 425 
single differing point from the bottom level of the shelter in its out- 
line suggests a Folsom point, but actually it was not of that type. 
During the interval between occupations, that characterized by the 
rock fall, the horse and giant sloth disappeared and the guanaco be- 
came rare. The latter as a matter of fact did not return in sufficient 
numbers to become an important food item until the closing days of 
the stemless-point period or third cultural horizon. 
At no great distance from the shelter and in the side of a hill called 
Cerro Sota is a long, narrow cave. The upward-sloping floor was 
covered at the inner end with a deposit of fine, dry dust 5 feet deep. 
In the lower 3 feet of this debris were many fragments of native horse 
bones and a few from those of the sloth. There were no artifacts, 
and the only signs of fire were those associated with the cremation 
burial of a group of 8 adults, 2 children, and 2 infants. The bodies 
had been placed in a hollow at the rear of the cave, had been sur- 
rounded with grass and then burned. There were no accompanying 
artifacts to indicate the cultural affinities of the remains, but it seems 
likely they belonged to the first or oldest horizon. The fact that the 
earth above the burial contained broken horse bones suggests such a 
correlation. The skeletal material both from this cave and Palli Aike 
shows that the people were long-headed, had general Indian charac- 
teristics, and in some traits resembled those whose remains were found 
in the Lagoa Santa Cave. 
Unquestionable association with an extinct fauna indicates certain 
antiquity for these finds, but again the question of when the animals 
disappeared is all important and there still is no satisfactory answer. 
This part of Patagonia was on the edge of the extension of the Pleisto- 
cene ice sheet in that area, and a possible correlation between the 
retreat of its last advance and other phenomena suggest that people 
may have been in the region to the east prior to the recession. At the 
time the excavations were made, a relative chronology was developed 
on the basis of a correlation between evidence for marked land rises, 
a change in the level of the Rio Chico, the subsidence of Laguna 
Blanca located some 60 miles west of Palli Aike, and clear indications 
that the volcanic eruption recorded in the bottom level of that cave 
was the oldest in the sequence. The initial occupation of Fell’s Cave 
apparently preceded the eruption, and the third period seems to have 
ended with the drop in the level of Laguna Blanca. Independent 
studies have suggested that the subsidence in the lake was synchro- 
nous with the last ice retreat, and if this were the case it would tend 
to establish appreciably early inhabitation in the area. The native 
horse and the giant sloth seem to have disappeared soon after the 
volcanic disturbance, when there may have been a rather severe but 
relatively brief fluctuation in climate. These factors give no real 
