60 BUREAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY [bill. GO 



This should not l»e taken as a caU',i,'orical denial of the existence <tf early 

 man in South America, however improbable such a presence may now appear ; 

 but the position is maintained, and should be maintained, it seems, by all 

 students, that the liual acceptance of the evidence on this subject can not be 

 justified until there shall have accumulated a mass of strictly scientific obser- 

 vations requisite in kind and volume to establish a proposition of so great 

 importance/ 



The extensive literature of the subject is cited in full detail by 

 Dr. Hrdlicka in his report. The results of the present writer's ex- 

 amination of the large collections of stone artifacts brought back 

 by Dr. Hrdlicka, which are embodied in the same volume, serve to 

 show that the determinations of Ameghino, drawn from the study 

 of corresponding material in his own collections, are properly sub- 

 ject to critical revision. There ai:)pears to be no very cogent reason 

 for assigning any of the cultural traces to sources other than tribes 

 occupying the region in comparatively recent times. 



Apart from the evidence obtained by Lund in Brazil and by the 

 authorities above referred to in Argentina, considered with such 

 acumen by Dr. Hrdlicka, South America has furnished no geological 

 data deserving of extended mention. 



The very serious risk of hasty conclusions, not only by amateurs 



but on the part of scientific observers, respecting 



IS asty on- ^^j^^jg ^-f j^i^j^^jin remains in association with geologi- 



clusions ... r 



cal formations is well illustrated by a recent in- 

 stance furnished by the second Peruvian expedition of Prof. 

 Hiram Bingham. The osseous remains of a human being were 

 found by the first expedition in the vicinity of Cuzco in what were 

 believed to be deposits of Pleistocene age, and after careful exami- 

 nation by the geologist of the expedition, the following announce- 

 ment was made of the discovery of a fossil man of an antiquity which 

 would have given countenance to the questionable discoveries of 

 Ameghino in Argentina: 



From a detailed study of the geology of the upper Cuzco basin witli special 

 reference to glacial forms, it is concluded (1) that the beds belong to the 

 I'leistocene series, (2) that the bones were deposited during a period of pro- 

 nounced alluviation, and (3) that since the deposition of the bones at least 75 

 feet of gravel were deposited over them and later partly eroded, an erosion 

 that is still in progress and to whose activity we owe the exposure. 



It should be remembered that while compelled to refer the gravel beds of 

 this locality to the Pleistocene series, I have yet to determine their place in 

 that series. When this is done the antiquity of the vertebrate renuiins may 

 be more safely approximated than now. A provisional estimate would hardly 

 be less than 10,000 years ; it could not exceed the maxinnun glaciatlon of the 

 last glacial period, generally estimated at 75.000 years.^ 



1 rirdlidka and otho»rs, Early Man in South America, pp. 3S5-3S0. 



- I'>owman, in Bingham, Preliminary Report of the first Yale Pi-ruvian Expediiion, 

 p. 25. 



