36 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bdll. 6g 



eaten, and in nearly all cases wholly or largely destroyed. The same 

 thing happens constantly with the skeletons of the larger animals 

 whose bodies remain on the surface of the ground. What is pre- 

 served of them in the geological formations consists usually of indi- 

 vidual teeth or bones, or at most of a few related parts, yet animal 

 bones are on the whole more durable than human bones, and there 

 are immeasurably more of them. For every human body abandoned 

 on the surface of the earth there were probably millions of carcasses 

 of animals; and this applies even more forcibly to prehistoric times, 

 when men were scarce and animals much more numerous. 



What slight chance, then, can there be of finding in any stratum, 

 but especially in one of slow accumulation, a fairly complete and 

 well-preserved human skeleton of equal age with the deposit ? And if 

 one such marvel should happen, what chance would there be of the 

 discovery within a few rods distance, at almost the same depth, and 

 in a distinct geological fonnation, of a like skeleton? Surely such 

 a chance would be infinitesimal ; and if such skeleton or skeletons 

 are actually found in ancient strata, it is only reasonable to expect 

 that scientific explorers should make every possible effort to find 

 a more probable explanation of their presence than that of original 

 deposition, before announcing their contemporaneity with the in- 

 closing deposits and Avith the animal bones found in those deposits. 



But there are other considerations in cases of this nature which 

 must receive due attention, and these are all anthropological. 



In the first place, anthropology has a right to expect that human 

 I'emains of Avhatsoever nature assigned to great antiquit}?^ should show 

 some adjustment in structural type to such anti(|uit3^ It is not suffi- 

 cient in any such case to endeavor to explain the. presence of modern 

 forms by the unsupported statement that such might have occurred 

 in an earlier age. So much has already been accomplished in un- 

 raveling man's history, and so much material evidence, cultural and 

 skeletal, has been gathered relating to this history, that the anthro- 

 pologist is well justified in demanding actual, generally acceptable 

 precedents for such assumed occurrences. Thus pottery is not known 

 to haA'e existed in any part of the world before the neolithic age, while 

 strictly modern forms of the skull and bones, beginning with the 

 upper Aurignacean or the Solutrian cultural periods, are not much 

 older. Suppose, now, a modern type of pottery and modern forms of 

 skeletal remains were found together — what probability would there 

 be of the finds being so ancient as to date from another geo- 

 logical epoch? And if, further, the remains were accompanied by 

 modern forms of bone and stone implements, and if all the objects, 

 skeletal and cultural, resembled to the point of practical identity 

 those of the modern natives of the neighl)orhood or general region — 

 would not the anthropologist be fully justified in demanding over- 



