Antiquity of Man in America compared with Jiuropc 149 



Fig. 20. 



Past. The purpose of Mr. (iilder's picture is to show the con- 

 trast between the material of the burial mound on the top of 

 the hill and the underlying loess. The dark portion shows a 

 section of the true mound. The lighter portion, behind the 

 man lower down, is the loess in which the primitive bones 

 were found. The purpose of Shimek's picture is to show the 

 dark layer which is outlined by the six markers. He states 

 that the lowest marker (the seventh) is on the only true loess 

 exposed in the pit, all the rest, including the dark layer, hav- 

 ing been penetrated by the presumed burial excavation, at a 

 depth of 12 feet be low the present surface, by Indians. 



But the picture reveals several other features. It shows 

 distinctly the fundamental and universal stratification of the 

 loess. This stratification can be produced in the loess sheet 

 only by sedimentation from water. A tumblerful of unfiltered 

 Missouri river w r ater will deposit in the tumbler a stratified 

 sediment of identically the same structure and composition. 

 As shown in Shimek's photograph, it pervades not only that 

 part which he considers true loess but also that which he calls 

 disturbed loess, and even appears in the dark stratum which 

 lie considers to have been an old soil. This common feature 

 links the three parts into a common history, whatever that 

 may have been. Into that history came a force which gave a 

 darker color to a thin stratum. Shimek would assume that 

 lure was an ancient soil, and he makes the statement that in 

 it he found a flint chip and a few shells of Succinea ovalis, as 

 if these required a different set of conditions. On the other 

 hand it may be asserted, from the occurrence of these quite 

 widely in tin- loess, that their occurrence here is convincing 



