ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA — NELSON 503 



leave no question as to the contemporaneity of man and of extinct 

 animal species. The fossil remains in these accumulations were not 

 re-sorted, as happens in open-air sites, and thus could give no erro- 

 neous ideas as to contemporaneity ; besides, the associated items were 

 found times without number in many different places, and they stand 

 further chances of being verified over and over again. Nobody 

 questions the conclusions arrived at from this source, except now and 

 then as to absolute dates. 



By contrast, the results are very different when we turn to the 

 isolated discoveries made in the geologic deposits. And this is true 

 not only with respect to New World finds but for Old World dis- 

 coveries as well. As examples of the uncertainty regarding the age 

 of such finds, it may be cited that the Pithecanthropus erectus re- 

 mains, which for a long time were considered of Tertiary origin, are 

 now generally regarded as of Quaternary date ; the classic Paleolithic 

 implement discovery in 1797 by John Frere at Hoxne, in Suffolk, has 

 been labored over by English investigators off and on ever since, 

 and has in turn been declared as dating from " a very remote 

 period ", " Postglacial ", " Interglacial ", " Postglacial ", and, last of 

 all, " Second Interglacial ",^* and recently the beginning of the Lower 

 Paleolithic culture stage — in spite of much allegedly specific evidence 

 dating it from the Third Interglacial — has by Breuil been shifted 

 back in time by what must amount to several hundred thousand years, 

 viz, to the First Interglacial ! After having listened in for 5 months 

 in Mongolia on paleontological discussions, such date shiftings no 

 longer frighten me; but to the ordinary tender-minded archeologist 

 feats of that kind are extremely disconcerting, to say the least. Ifc 

 goes without saying that there were good and sufficient reasons for 

 these and other changes of opinions ; but it also goes to show that the 

 precise age, either relative or absolute, of any given geologic deposit 

 may be difficult, perhaps impossible, of exact determination. To the 

 geologically minded, accustomed to deal with vast durations of time, 

 such minor shiftings obviously mean very little; to the historically 

 minded, reckoning events by single years, they mean a great deal. 

 This is not, of course, to say that our isolated archeo-paleontological 

 discoveries are no longer of great importance ; it is merely to suggest 

 that the final chronological position of such finds is in many instances 

 an open question which should not worry us overmuch. 



In conclusion, it may be of interest to compare the variously 

 achieved archeological results of both the Old and the New Worlds, 

 and to do it in such a way that they may readily speak for them- 



•* Moir, J. Reid, The silted-up Lake of Hoxne and its contained flint implements. Sladen 

 Excavation Fund and British Asso. Rep., vol. 5, pt. 2, pp. 137-165, 1925. 



