ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA — NELSON 495 



main current of the world's flint-working developments, and may 

 possibly be the real source of our American flaked- and chipped-stone 

 industries. Indeed, were we to look closely at our so-called " Neo- 

 lithic " inventories, we should easily recognize — besides the men- 

 tioned Eskimo bone objects of Upper Paleolithic type — such items as 

 our widely distributed wooden spear and spear thrower, perhaps of 

 Magdalenian affinity; our three out of four forms of Solutrean 

 chipped blades ; our ordinary Aurignacianlike end scraper ; our sim- 

 ple Mousterian type flake; *^ and, finally, our Acheulian and Chellean 

 varieties of the coup-de-poing. It is not an impressive list, nor is it 

 offered as evidence occurring either in isolation or in stratified order ; 

 it is presented merely as something reminiscent chiefly of the Old 

 World's core industries. Wherever its actual origin or whatever its 

 routes of distribution, this industry was truly ancestral to the real 

 Neolithic of the Old World and may also very well underlie our 

 American Neolithic. But whether this substratum of the Neolithic 

 actually arrived in America during its Solutrean phase is extremely 

 doubtful, because the close relation of the Old and New World 

 Neolithic would seem to be attested by the fact that the two cultures 

 have at least 85 objective elements in common (54 being stone imple- 

 ments), besides strong similarities among several other less material 

 traits. Stated otherwise, the indications are that the Neolithic com- 

 plex was already taking shape in Eurasia before its carriers invaded 

 the American Continent, though the date is not necessarily limited 

 by the supposed earliest Neolithic developments in Egypt placed at 

 about 5500 B. C. 



Patination on stone imyleifnents. — It is a toss-up now whether the 

 question of patination, by which is here meant the weathered condi- 

 tion of stone artifact surfaces due either to mechanical wear or to 

 chemical alterations, should be treated under a positive or under a 

 negative heading. Either position involves the admission of numer- 

 ous exceptions; but inasmuch as several positive claims and actual 

 demonstrations have been made from time to time we may as well 

 dispose of the subject here. At the outset it must be premised that 

 while patination, which is simply nature's way of effacing the work 

 of man and reclaiming it as her own, is undoubtedly a valuable 

 criterion of age, it is at the same time a most difficult phenomenon 

 with which to deal effectively. Thus, to secure valid results by the 

 ordinary comparative method is next to impossible, because the 

 essential factors involved in the patinating process are rarely if 

 ever constant ; that is to say, identity of raw materials to be affected 

 and the identity likewise of the predisposing physical and chemical 

 activities do not obtain over any considerable portion of the world. 



" Sarasin, Paul, Zur Frage von der prahistorischen Besiedelung von Amerika. Denk- 

 schr. Schweizerischen Nat. Ges., M6m. See. Helv6tique Sci. Nat,, vol. 64, mem. 3, 1928. 



