HOLMES] ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I 57 



rapid. Traces of geologically ancient man have not been found in 

 America as in Europe, and investigations are proceeding with pain- 

 ful slowness and much halting along the various lines of research, 

 and false leads have been followed in many cases, prolonging the 

 investigations and impeding progress. Students have sought in 

 many ways to establish a chronology of the occupation of the conti- 

 nent by man. The magnitude of the work accomplished in the 

 building of mounds and other earthworks in the Mississippi Valley 

 has been dwelt upon at length, and the time required for the growth 

 and decay upon these works of a succession of forests has been com- 

 puted. The vast accumulations of midden deposits in both North 

 and South America and the fact that the beds composing them seem 

 in cases to indicate a succession of occupancies by tribes beginning 

 in savagery and ending in well-advanced barbarism have been con- 

 sidered by chronologists. Striking physiographic mutations, as 

 changes of level in coast lines and alterations in river courses since 

 man took possession, have been taken into account. Modifications of 

 particular species of mollusks between the time of their first use on 

 the shell-heap sites and the present time, and the development in one 

 or more cases of new varieties, suggest hoary anti(|uity, but the 

 highest estimate of elapsed times based on these evidences does not 

 exceed a few thousand years. After carefully weighing the evidence 

 collected by him in Alaska, Dall reached the conclusion that the 

 earliest midden deposits on the Aleutian Islands are probably as 

 much as 3,000 years old.^ It is possible that, considering the char- 

 acter of the evidences, other students utilizing the same observations 

 might have reached results differing from those of Dall. 



We view with wonder the massive ruins left by the more cultured 

 peoples of Middle and South America and speculate on the time 

 required for the evohition of stone-built cities, as Tiahuanaco or 

 Cuzco, Chichen or Copan, from villages of primitive type. Eefer- 

 ring, however, to Old World civilizations, we discover that many 

 of the grandest culture developments matured quickly and were 

 short-lived, being the product of some spasm of religious enthusiasm 

 or some abnormal development of national power and enterprise. 

 In India, for example, some of the most wonderful architectural 

 creations of all time were built and abandoned within a few cen- 

 turies. It is a well-ascertained fact that while the great architec- 

 tural monuments of Java, Cambodia, and India were rising in their 

 grandeur in the early centuries of the Christian era, the stone-built 

 structures of America were also springing up in the forests of 

 Yucatan and Central America. Centuries rather than millenniums 

 have witnessed the accomplishment of the greatest material achieve- 



^ Dall, On Succession in the Shell-beaps of the Aleutian Islands. 



