THE FOLSOM PROBLEM IN AMERICAN 

 ARCHEOLOGY » 



By Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr. 



Archeologist, Bureau of American Ethnology 



[With 15 plates] 



The so-called Folsom problem has assumed an important place in 

 American archeology during the last decade. It is outstanding in 

 popular interest, and in scientific circles it is regarded as significant. 

 This is due to the fact that it is closely coupled to the question of 

 early man in the New World. At several places in New Mexico and 

 Colorado implements have been found in association with bones of 

 extinct animals and in deposits suggestive of geologic antiquity. 

 These discoveries help push the date of occupation farther back into 

 the past and have encouraged renewed consideration of the length of 

 time that man has been in America. The more important sites where 

 such finds have been made are those near Folsom, between Clovis and 

 Portales, and in the Guadalupe Mountains in New Mexico; and at 

 the Lindenmeier ranch and Dent in Colorado (fig. 1). 



The first in the series — that which gave its name to archeological 

 remains of the type — is on a small intermittent tributary of the Cimar- 

 ron River, in a little valley named Dead Horse Gulch, several miles 

 west of Folsom, Union County, N. Mex. It lies below the eastern rim 

 of Johnson Mesa and was discovered in the summer of 1925 by local 

 residents. Fred J. Howarth and Carl Schwachheim of Raton, N. 

 Mex., reported the find to J. D. Figgins, then director of the Colorado 

 Museum of Natural History at Denver, now director of the Isaac W. 

 Bernheim Foundation, Louisville, Ky. Bones sent to the museum 

 showed that the remains were those of an extinct species of bison and 

 of a large deerlike member of the Cervidae. Prospects for fossil 

 material were so promising that the Colorado museum sent a party 

 to the site in the summer of 1926. Bearing in mind an occurrence 2 

 3^ears previous when another group from the museum was digging 

 near Colorado, Tex., and uncovered two chipped-stone objects in 



> Reprinted, by permission, with some revision, the addition of new information, illustrations, and ref- 

 erences, from Early Man, as depicted by leading authorities at the International Symposium, the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, March 1937. J. B. Lippincott Co., 1937. 



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