DISCOVERY 



267 



below skeletons of species of mastodon and megalonyx. 

 This association with extinct mammals was taken to 

 indicate a remote date. Sir Charles Lyell, who person- 

 ally examined the locality, was of the opinion that 

 the human bone came from a burial at the top of the 

 cliff, whereas the remains of the extinct mammalia 

 had been dislodged from a lower position. The bone 

 has been pronounced to differ in no respect from thr 

 corresponding bone of recent man. A find of human 

 bones associated with those of the mastodon at Charles- 

 ton made in the sixties is discounted by the presence 

 of a fragment of porcelain. 



Fossilised human remains have been found in more 

 than one locality in Florida, notably at Lake Munroe 

 in 1852 or 1853, and at and in the neighbom-hood of 

 Osprev in 1871 and succeeding years. Further investi- 

 gation has shown that the tvpe of fossilisation exhibited 

 b\" these remains may take place within a compara- 

 tively short period and affords no criterion of great age. 



The most important of the earlier finds, and one 

 which attracted very considerable notice at the time, 

 was the Calaveras Skull, found in 1866 at Bald Hill, 

 near Altaville, Calaveras County, California, in auri- 

 ferous gravel dating from the Middle Tertiary period, 

 in a mine-shaft at a depth of about 130 feet from the 

 surface. It is a male skull of an individual of advanced 

 vears, and is of an intermediate tvpe between long and 

 broad. The forehead is of medium height, but not 

 sloping, as in most skulls of low form. The eye- 

 brow ridges are strong, but not especially prominent. 

 A comparison with the skull of a Digger Indian from 

 Calaveras County led Dr. G. A. Dorsey to the con- 

 clusion that the two skulls had the same general 

 character and might readilv be pronounced to be of 

 one and the same type. The Calaveras Skull also 

 corresponds in all essential features with a cranium 

 from a cave in the same county which was presented 

 to the National Museum in 1857. The body of evidence 

 in favour of the geological antiquity of this skull is 

 of greater weight than in the case of any other find ; 

 but the balance of probability, taken in conjunction 

 with its resemblance to the cave skull mentioned 

 above, which is " recent," and the fact that the con- 

 siderable number of implements, etc., found in similar 

 circumstances conform to the normal Indian types 

 of stone implements, must be taken as against any 

 very remote date. 



A discovery to which much importance has been 

 attached, both on morphological and on geological 

 grounds, w^as made in 1866, when a skull and lower 

 jaw were found at a depth of 3 feet in a fissure at 

 Rock Bluff on the Illinois River in drift material of the 

 region consisting of clay, sand, and broken stone, the 

 whole covered with a stratum of surface soil. It was 

 held in 1867 that the skull was not comparable to any 



of the aboriginal American cranial forms, while its 

 position pointed to an antiquity, possibly, of the 

 glacial epoch. For the latter conclusion, however, 

 there was very little evidence, and there can be little 

 doubt that the deposit in which the skull was found 

 had been washed into the rift. The morphological 

 evidence was its apparently low type and greatly 

 developed supraorbital (eyebrow) ridges. Dr. Hrdlicka, 

 who has made a careful examination of the skull, 

 points out, however, that this development is not com- 

 parable to that characteristic of the Neanderthal man 

 of Europe in the early Paleolithic Age, but belongs 

 to the t'S'pe of supraorbital ridge found in some Indian 

 skulls from the Illinois River mounds. It cannot, there- 

 fore, be regarded as evidence for geologically early man. 



Of all these finds of skeletal remains, with the 

 possible exception of the Calaveras Skull, the most 

 interest attaches to the crania found at Trenton, New 

 Jersey, where the conditions in certain respects approxi- 

 mate more nearly to those under which vestiges of 

 early man have been found in Europe. The district 

 is rich in deposits of glacial gravels, and for nearly 

 forty years the Delaware Valley has been subjected 

 to a close scrutiny with a view to determining whether 

 man was present there before the advent of the Indian. 

 Although many were inclined to regard the imple- 

 ments found as of late-glacial or immediately post- 

 glacial date, Professor Putnam, who carried on careful 

 investigations for a great number of years, suspended 

 judgment, while Dr. Hrdlicka, who subjected the 

 osteological material to a careful examination, was 

 definitely of the opinion that, with two exceptions, 

 the crania were to be regarded as Indian in type. 

 The two exceptions, the Burlington Skull and the 

 Riverview Skull, could not be referred to any known 

 aboriginal race. Both skulls are of a peculiar and 

 similar type, unusually low, with narrow face, though 

 the cranium is broad. Apart from other differences, 

 which appear in the detailed measurements, the small 

 height would be sufficient to differentiate these skulls 

 clearly from the Indian type. As no other skulls of 

 this type are known to have been found in America, 

 they have been attributed to a race earlier than the 

 Lenape Indians of the Delaware Valley, but Dr. Hrd- 

 licka is inclined to regard them as later immigrants, 

 possibly Dutch, and compares them to certain skulls 

 from Bremen, of similar dimensions, which have the 

 lowest height- length index in the world. These skulls 

 have been regarded as belonging to a distinct ethnic 

 type persisting along the coast of N.W. Europe and 

 exhibiting some resemblance to the Neanderthal race. 



A find to which much importance was attached 

 is that of the Nebraska " Loess man." In 1894, 

 during some excavations on a low eminence known as 

 Long Hill, about 3 miles north of Florence, near the 



