ANTHROPOLOGY. 



19 



ANT HROPOLO GY. Th e discovery of stone 

 implements in gravel-beds in the bluffs of the 

 Delaware River, near Trenton, New Jersey, 

 raised an interesting question as to the an- 

 tiquity of man in America, since these gravel 

 deposits were believed to have been formed by 

 glacial action. The discovery of a few human 

 bones in Pliocene deposits on the Pacific coast 

 was the only evidence of the extreme antiquity 

 of the human race upon this continent before 

 the finding of these relics in the Trenton grav- 

 els, to which attention was first called by Dr. 

 C. 0. Abbott. The genuineness of those Plio- 

 cene remains is, however, anything but well es- 

 tablished. The inter-glacial palasolitbs of the 

 Delaware Valley are rude celts of argillite. 

 They differ distinctly from the implements left 

 by the Indians here and in other parts of the 

 country ; yet nearer the surface, and occasion- 

 ally upon the surface, in the same region they 

 are found among flint weapons of the Indian 

 type. Morgan and other American archaeolo- 

 gists have concluded that the Indians reached 

 the Atlantic coast from the interior, and that 

 their original seats were near the Pacific. It 

 must be inferred that they encountered and 

 expelled another race, who had dwelt there 

 since the formation of these gravel deposits. 

 There is historical evidence of a race of differ- 

 ent ethnological characteristics from the red- 

 men inhabiting this part of the Atlantic sea- 

 coast in the sagas of the Icelandic colonists of 

 Greenland, relating to their visits to Vinland in 

 the eleventh century. The Ski-tellings, found 

 by the Northmen in New England, have been 

 identified by most certain indications in their 

 descriptions with the Esquimau race, and 

 were called by the same name in the chroni- 

 cles. The Northmen first met the Esquimaux 

 low down on the Atlantic coast. Three cen- 

 turies later they appeared in large numbers in 

 Greenland, and the severe conflicts which took 

 place between the colonists and these invaders 

 were probably the reason why the Green- 

 land settlements were finally abandoned. The 

 migration of the Esquimaux to the north- 

 ward, evidenced by these events, was doubt- 

 less caused by the pressure of the Indians 

 behind them, who in more recent times have 

 encroached upon the Esquimaux in British 

 America. 



Weapons of a ruder type than the flint, 

 quartz, and jasper arrow and spear heads, of 

 many different patterns, attributed to the In- 

 dians, have been found near the surface, not 

 only in the Delaware Valley, but in New Eng- 

 land and elsewhere in the Eastern States. They 

 are always large, rudely- fashioned celts of nearly 

 uniform pattern, much weather-worn, and made 

 of argillite, thus corresponding in all particu- 

 lars with the implements of the Trenton grav- 

 el-beds. These paleolithic weapons, even in 

 the absence of historical evidence, could be 

 attributed with good reason to the Esquimaux, 

 as being the only race living in the earlier stone 

 age found in an accessible region. They are 



quite similar to implements still made by the 

 Esquimaux. 



There was less difficulty in connecting the 

 Delaware flints with the Esquimau race than 

 in accepting them as evidence of glacial or pre- 

 glacial man, though found buried in what was 

 supposed on good evidence to be glacial drift. 

 The special study of this formation made by 

 Henry Oarvill Lewis has led to conclusions 

 which remove this difficulty. Mr. Lewis says 

 that the implement-bearing gravel is the most 

 recent formation except recent alluvium, and 

 much later than the Philadelphia brick-clay 

 and red gravels which were deposited at the 

 melting of the great glacier. It extends np 

 the valley of the Delaware to the Water-Gap, 

 and is of fluvial origin, marking the former 

 bed of the river. It bears marks of ice- 

 action, which must be ascribed to a second 

 (more recent) glacier, whose flood cut a channel 

 through the deposits of the first glacial period. 

 The date of this smaller glacier corresponded 

 approximately to the Reindeer period of Eu- 

 rope. The implements found in this gravel, 

 which is the most recent of nine gravel and 

 clay deposits in the Delaware Valley, are un- 

 questionably of the same age as the formation, 

 indicating the existence of man at the time 

 when the floods of the river covered this grav- 

 el, which is far above the present river-bed. 

 This period Mr. Lewis proposes to call the Es- 

 quimau period. 



The recent measurements of African skulls 

 by M. Hamy show that the races of that con- 

 tinent are not as universally dolichocephalous 

 as has been supposed. He distinguishes be- 

 tween two distinct types of cranial formation 

 in the negro races, and between forms within 

 these ranging from the sub-brachycephalic 

 through the mesocephalic and the sub-doli- 

 chocephalic to the true dolichocephalic. The 

 dwarf race north of the equator, described by 

 Schweinfurth and Miani (see AKKAS), has been 

 studied by M. Hamy, who does not find their 

 skulls less arched than those of the rest of man- 

 kind. Their stature is greater than that of the 

 Bushmen, and is about the same average as the 

 Andaman-Islanders. Their horizontal cephalic 

 index approaches the true brachycephalous ra- 

 tio. The Noubas, Fourahs, Gallas, and Niam- 

 Niams, and the Haoussas, who dwell west of 

 Lake Tchad, and are separated from the above 

 peoples by a population craniologically distinct, 

 he classes together in a single race. 



Fossil evidence of the semi-human transi- 

 tional stage in the development of the human 

 species may be claimed to be afforded by a hu- 

 man jaw-bone found in the Schipka Cave in 

 Moravia, with bones of the mammoth, and rude 

 palrooliths. It is a fragment of the lower jaw, 

 containing the incisors, an eye-tooth, and two 

 premolars, with the last three back teeth just 

 emerging from the bone. It is therefore a 

 child's skull, in the stage of development be- 

 longing to the eighth year. Yet the size of 

 the jaw and the teeth is that of an adult. The 



