ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA NELSON 477 



Trenton, N. J., and the gold-bearing gravel sites of California; and 

 as a result he " challenged the whole body of American paleolithic 

 ' evidence ' " and at the same time the evidence for geologic antiquity. 

 The Californian claims were, with one exception, disposed of as either 

 accidental inclusions or frauds,^" while the District of Columbia sites 

 were demonstrated to be quarr}^ and workshop locations and their 

 numerous so-called " paleoliths " to be nothing more than blanks 

 (unfinished implements) and rejects.^^ 



This all too brief sketch brings the development of American pre- 

 historic investigations down to the beginning of the present century 

 and within the memory of many of those actively at work in anthro- 

 pology, so that little more need be said historically. For a time inter- 

 est in the antiquity problem as such languished somewhat. Our 

 steadily increasing nmnber of archeologists busied themselves at first 

 with the accumulation and study of data, leading, to a tentative deter- 

 mination of culture areas and later to systematic excavations resulting 

 in more or less definite chronologies for several of these areas. But 

 meanwhile discoveries and arguments bearing directly or indirectly 

 on the question of antiquity have not been wanting, especially during 

 the last few years. Indeed, at the moment of writing (1931), all three 

 aspects of the American Indian problem — origin, antiquity, and cul- 

 tural development — are well to the front, and we may properly turn 

 to a summary presentation of the accumulated evidence. 



TYPES OF EVIDENCE AVAILABLE 



The claims brought forward as having a bearing on the antiquity 

 of man in America cover a wider range of phenomena, which for pur- 

 poses of treatment it is necessary to group in some fashion. As evi- 

 dence, some of the alleged facts are merely circumstantial ; others are, 

 in part, at least more than doubtful; still others are positive; and 

 lastly, some are negative. It is not the writer's ambition, however, to 

 pose as judge until necessary, and accordingly the attempt will be 

 made to present the various types of data under headings correspond- 

 ing as far as possible to their respective spheres of origin — ethnologi- 

 cal, paleontological, and archeological. 



ETHNOLOGICAL INDICATIONS 



For some time past, as knowledge of our living tribes has accumu- 

 lated, a number of ethnologists have expressed themselves as convinced 

 of man's geologic antiquity in America on the grounds largely of what 



'" Holmes, W. H., Revifw of the evidence relating to auriferous Gravel Man in Califor- 

 nia, Smithsonian Rep. 1899; Pitfalls of the Palaeolithic theory in America, Proc. 20th 

 Int. Congr. Americanists, pp. 171-75, 1922. 



'1 Holmes, W. H. Stone implemonts of the Potomac-Chesapeake tidovater province, 

 15th Ann. Rep. Eur. Amer. Ethnol., 1897. 



