II. ENUMERATION OF THE SOUTH AMERICAN FINDS 

 RELATING TO EARLY MAN 



Bv Ales Hrdlicka 



The discoveries, so far as published, of industrial and skeletal 

 remains suggesting man's antiquity in South America, are restricted 

 to Brazil and Argentina. 



Brazil presents only one group of finds of this class, namely, those 

 of the Lagoa Santa caves, in the Province of Minas Geraes. They 

 consist of a relatively large series of skeletal remains of man and a 

 single stone implement, which collectively have been considered as 

 probably belonging to Quaternaiy times. 



In Argentina, on the other hand, discoveries of reUcs attributed 

 to ancient man and even to man's precursors, have been very numer- 

 ous. These began with some debris of "fossil" human bones from 

 the Rio Carcarana, in the northern part of the Province of Buenos 

 Aires, and with two ''fossil" human crania reported from the valley 

 of the Rio Negro, northern Patagonia. Subsequent finds, numbering 

 in all several thousand specimens and including both human bones 

 and what are assumed to be traces of human activity, with the 

 exception of those from Patagonia and of the so-called Ovejero re- 

 mains, have all been obtained from the Province of Buenos Aires. 



The determinations of the geologic age of the numerous Ai-gentine 

 finds by the local authors who have reported on them are considerably 

 at variance. There are in the main, however, two groups of opin- 

 ions, one represented by Florentino Ameghino, the other by Santiago 

 Roth and R. Lehmann-Nitsche. Below is given the classification of 

 these finds by Ameghino, according to the geologic age assigned them 

 by this author; the classifications of the other observers are more 

 restricted in the number of finds regarded as ancient, and ofi^er in 

 general more moderate estimates of the ages of the specimens. 



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