holmes] 



ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I 



83 



accidental associations with deep formations to Avhich they do not 

 pertain are lilcely to occur. That they represent a paleolitliic culture 

 rather than the universal neolithic of America is pure assumption. 

 In type they agree with the rude implements and the workshop 

 rejects of the Indian tribes. 



Very interesting and important discoveries of stone implements 

 were nuide in 1858 by Elmer E. Masterman at New 

 ™OMo^''^^''°" London, Huron County, Ohio. One of the objects 

 was a grooved ax of greenstone encountered at a 

 depth of 22 feet. The find has been 

 made the subject of a special investiga- 

 tion and report by Trof. E. W. Clay- ^\ ^ ' '"^^ /^ 

 pole, a geologist of high standing, who 

 accepted the statements of Masterman 

 as correct in every respect. 



He found the material penetrated by 

 the well to be clay, becoming tougher 

 downward and resembling the fine silt 

 that settles from still water, and con- 

 cludes that the ax was deposited there 

 when the thin gravel bed in which it fig 3s Groo%ed ax from supposed glacial 



. deposits, New London, Ohio. 



was found was formed, as it \ny directly 



upon the bowlder clay. There is a slight suggestion of uncertainty 

 as to the age represented in the following words : " If there is no 

 other origin or date for the fine clay and streaks of sand that overlie 

 it than that which assigns them to late glacial time, then the tool 

 must be set down to the same epoch and must be considered the work 

 of glacial man," ^ but subsequent statements by this author indicate 

 full confidence in the chronologic assignment of the find. 



The specimen is shown in figure 38. It is worthy of note that 

 several other specimens were obtained from the same formation as 

 follows: A greenstone celt at a depth of 5 feet; a grooved ax of 

 greenstone, at a dei)th of 7 feet; a chipped celt at a depth of 13 

 feet; a shovel-shaped specimen of slate roughly chipped around the 

 edge at a depth of 5 feet ; and a spearhead of red flint, at a depth of 7 

 feet. Professor Claypole, speaking of the specimens, remarks that— 



The discovery of these implements in the Ohio valley, where an exchislvely 

 palJT^olithic regime from the close of the glacial period had become pretty 

 firmly established, has served to open the question airain and give support to 

 the view that the rude chipped implements of so-called palaeolithic type are 

 here, as elsewhere, mere wasters of blade making by the Indian tribes.* 



1 Claypolo, Human Relics in the Drift of Ohio, p. 309. 



2 Ibid. 



