84 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. GO 



The following statement will further represent his views: 



They are neolithic in pattern, whereas an opinion is somewhat prevalent 

 that implements found in such circumstances should be of paleolithic type ; 

 at least such a conclusion may fairly be drawn from much that has been 

 written on the subject. But this opinion can scarcely be well founded. In 

 Europe, where later glacial, interglacial, and possibly preglacial relics of man 

 are more or less recognized, the first mentioned are not palaeolithic. This 

 character belongs strictly to those of the second and third eras. All such are 

 palaeolithic and betray by their pattern an ancient origin. We should antici- 

 pate similar results here, and the facts above given are in accord with this 

 view. These implements bear every trace of comparatively recent date, and 

 they occur mixed in the clay and gravel deposits of the melting ice-sheet. 

 The evidence of their entombment proves that they belong to the closing years 

 of the glacial era — at the least their inclusion in their present matrix is of 

 that date.* 



Professor Claypole adds that it is at present far from certain that 

 paleolithic man ever reached this continent at all, although he allows 

 that doul)t i^ests at present on merely negative evidence. He states 

 further that — 



On this side of the Atlantic the ice-sheet thus far has proved a barrier 

 beyond which human footprints have not been found. Glacial man, and still 

 more, interglacial man, is therefore here a shadowy, semi-mythical being of 

 whose existence the anthropologist feels at best very uncertain. 



It is true that not a few cases have been brought forward in which human 

 relics have been found in such association with glacial deposits as to point 

 strongly to the conclusion that both were of the same age. But in all these 

 cases the deposits in question belong to the very latest stages of the Glacial era 

 and were the work of the retreating ice or even of the torrents that flowed 

 from it after the area in which the remains were found had been left bare. 

 Consequently, if every one of these cases was logically unassailable, and its 

 evidence positively conclusive, the only inference would be that man was a 

 denizen of North America during the final withdrawal of the ice, that he hung 

 Esquimaux-like on its borders and followed it as it withdrew to the northward. 



Of any earlier date than this, therefore, for man in Xorth America we have 

 no evidence whatever, and even this has been regarded with skepticism and its 

 value denied by men of eminence in the field of archfeologj\ Such skepticism 

 is wise and justifiable so long as it can be logically maintained. So important a 

 conclusion demands support much stronger than that which would amply 

 establish many less momentous propositions.^ 



At Little Falls, Minn., flood-plain deposits of sand and gravel are 



found to contain many artificial objects of quartz. 



Finds at Little .pj^-g fl^^^j ^-^^ -g believed bv some to have been 



I- alls, Minn. ^ 



formed and finally abandoned by the Mississippi at 

 about the close of the glacial period in the valleys, but the 

 question of exact age is still an open one, and to just what extent 

 eolian deposits enter into its composition is not readily deter- 



1 Claypole, Human Relics in the Drift of Ohio, p. 313. 



2 Ibid., pp. 302-303. 



