hrdliCka] discoveries ATTRIBUTED TO EARLY MAN 13 



Some of the huniaii bones recovered Avere not " powdery " but rela- 

 tively fresh, and in the words of Professor Bowman: 



One asks at once how the bones coiihl be preserved for so long a period. A^'e 

 are all familiar with the decayed condition of bones buried for even a short 

 period of 20, 50, or 100 years. The bones of the Cuzco man are distinctly 

 weathered, but they do not fall apart. They are so fragile that we broke some 

 of them in excavation, though we used great care ; yet they are sufficiently 

 firm, or at least some of them are, to display a clean mark when scratched 

 with the knife. On the whole their comparative freshness is striking in view" 

 of a probable age of 20,000 to 40.000 years. On the other hand, it must be 

 remembered that human bones equally well preserved have been recovered 

 from the shell heaps and kitchen-middens of P]urope ; that human bones no 

 more decayed than these have been found in far older glacial deposits in 

 France, Switzerland, and England; and that more important than the ques- 

 tion of state of decay is the question of conditions of burial. The position of 

 the bones within the zone of weathering, the character of the material, the 

 climatic conditions, and the state of the bones at the time of burial are all- 

 important considerations which are discussed in the following paragraphs. 



The bones of the Cuzco man, as well as the related vertebrate remains, all 

 show a certain degree of erosion as if they had been for a short time in the 

 grip of a stream. The finer details are wanting and projecting points are 

 moderately worn. The facts that only the projecting points are rounded and 

 the finer detail lost on the more exposed portions and that the amount of 

 erosion is small argues distinctly in favor of the freshness of the material at 

 the time of burial. If the bones had been decayed before being caught by the 

 aggrading stream, their more fragile portions would be worn, though not with- 

 out respect to exposure of moi'e projecting parts. The projecting points are 

 not necessarily the parts to decay more readily. It may be safely argued from 

 these two conditions also that the bones were decidedly fresh at the time of 

 burial, a condition favoring long preservation. 



The bones lay in the zone of weathering, that is to say in the zone between 

 the surface and the ground water. .\t the time the deposits were forming over 

 them they undoubtedly lay for a part of the time in the ground water and not 

 in the zone of weathering. 



Finally Professor BoAvman expresses his faith in the antiquity of 

 the human remains as follows : 



The original plan of the expedition did not include excavation or detailed 

 archfpologic work, nor was any effort made to do highly detailed geologic work. 

 It was essentially an exploratory expedition. Furthermore, I came to the 

 study of the bones, and the gravels in which they were embedded, with grave 

 doubts as to the value of the find. A rather extended reading of anthropologic 

 literature bearing on the antiquity of man convinced me, some years ago, that 

 almost all of our reported cases of buried human remains in North America 

 are not authentic, or the arguments are not sound. I expected to find some 

 doubtful evidence that would entirely destroy any supposed value the Cuzco 

 material might have. Upon examination the geologic evidence appeared very 

 convincing and the proof clear. .At the least a detailed study of the physio- 

 graphic geologj' of the head of the Cuzco basin was demanded. When this 

 study had been completed, I again returned to the bone locality, in a skeptical 

 frame of mind, prepared to find some fact that would destroy my former argu- 

 ments. 



