III. PROGRESS OF ARCHEOLOGIC RESEARCH 



SCIENTIFIC research in the domain of American archeology 

 did not begin until well along in the nineteenth century, and 

 for a long time the meager disquisitions respecting the 

 remains of antiquity were colored by speculative interpretations and 

 handicapped by the point of view imposed by Old World conditions. 

 Gradually, however, archeologists have broken away from the 

 thrall of the past and have exposed many of the fallacies which had 

 grown into settled beliefs, and now the records of prehistoric times 

 are being interpreted in the light of their own testimony. The 

 public, however, is slow to follow and the cloud is not fully lifted 

 from the popular mind, which seems prone, perhaps from long habit, 

 to find error more fascinating than truth. 



Among the fallacies which early took hold of the popular mind, 



appearing everywhere in the older literature, are 



Popular Fallacies those of the presence in America of civilized pre- 



Indian populations. The mound builders, so-called, 



were supposed to hnxe reached a high stage of culture and to have 



disajipeared completely as a race, a conclusion 



The Mound Build- i-^ached after Superficial examination of the monu- 



ers . ^ 



mental remains of the Mississippi Valley. This 

 idea has held with great tenacity notwithstanding the facts that 

 many articles of European provenance are found in the mounds as 

 original inclusions, indicating continuance of construction into post- 

 Columbian times, and that the aborigines in various parts of the 

 American Continent, as in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, 

 when first encountered by the Spanish invaders, were occupying a 

 culture stage far in advance of anything suggested by the antiquities 

 of the Mississippi Valley. 



A fallacy similar to that regarding the mound builders fastened 



itself upon the ancient cliff dwellers of the arid re- 

 The ciiflf Dwellers gion when traces of their interesting culture first 



came to light, but more recent investigation has 

 shown that the ancient occupants of the region who built and dug 

 their dwellings in the cliffs were in general the immediate ancestors 

 of the Pueblo tribes which occupy the same region to-day. 



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