hrdmCka] skeletal remains OF EARLY MAN 



Report of Analysis No. 252S — Continued 



297 



Examined by J. G. Fairohild and reported January 9, 1911. 



F. W. Clarke, Chief Chemist. 



It is seen from the above data that the Miramar man gives evidence 

 of the retention of at least as much animal matter as the weathered 

 bones of the modern seal, horse, and deer, and of decidedly more than 

 a relatively recent guanaco or the more ancient scelidotherium. Nor 

 do the other tests indicate mineralization; but parts of the skull 

 that are more covered or impregnated with lime would doubtless give 

 somewhat different results. 



The retention of animal matter is the most important point brought 

 out. The mineralization of a bone, human or otherwise, is a matter 

 the importance of which, as pointed out in other parts of this report, 

 is very often overestimated. The process is far more a question of 

 environment than of time and can serve only under exceptional con- 

 ditions as an index of antiquity. As mentioned before, the United 

 States National Museum possesses parts of human skeletons fos- 

 silized in almost every possible manner and degree, some of the 

 specimens being entirely petrified and showing greater mineralization 

 than do the bones of the mastodon and other long extinct animals, and 

 yet it is well-determined that none of these remains are of even moder- 

 ate geologic antiquity. This whole subject was treated more at 

 length in the writer's report on the "Skeletal Remains Suggesting or 

 Attributed to Early Man in North America."^ Conditions favoring 

 strongly the covering and infiltration of bones, es})ecially with cal- 

 careous matter, are present along a large portion of the Argentine 

 coast, and apparently elsewhere in the country where there are loess 

 deposits. This is seen in the constant presence of the formation 

 within the loess of these regions of the tosca or calcareous conci-etions. 



' Bulletin 33 of the Bureau 0/ American Ethnology. 



