HOLMES] ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I 89 



seems reasonable than that while the inclosed artifacts correspond 

 in age with the superficial terrace deposits, the period to which these 

 pertain is quite imperfectly made out. To call them paleolithic be- 

 cause of their form is but to risk serious misinterpretation, since 

 they appear to be nothing more than the shop refuse of the Indian 

 arrow maker. 



Cave explorations throughout America have been unfortunately 

 limited in extent, considering the vast number known 

 Cave Explorations to be awaiting the pick of the archeologist and geol- 

 ogist. It is to the caves that the archeologist naturally 

 looks for traces of the presence of tribes of the earliest times, for 

 these were the ready-made dwellings of primitive man; yet, in the 

 habitable caverns throughout northern America and especially in the 

 middle region of the United States, of which there are thousands, 

 thus far little has been found that may not be attributed to the In- 

 dian tribes of comparatively recent times. It is this remarkable fact, 

 together with others of similar import, which giA'e countenance to 

 the attitude of caution assumed by the writer and others in regard 

 to the so-called evidence of man of geological antiquity in America. 

 Prof. N. S. Shaler, who, as State Geologist of Kentuclr^', had unex- 

 ampled opportunities for the study of cave phenomena, makes the 

 following very significant statement : 



Noting the fact that primitive man had extensively resorted to the caverns 

 of the Old World and had left there extensive accumulations of bones, his 

 own and those of species on which he fed, with many other evidences of his 

 presence, I expected to find similar deposits in our caves and rocks. A good 

 deal of fruitless work led me to the conviction that cave dwellers never 

 existed in the Appalachian district in the, way they did in northern Europe. 



In 1869 I made extensive excavations at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky, partly 

 with the hope of finding human remains mingled with the 

 [Ohio Valley Caves] abundant bones of extinct mammalia which occur in the 

 deposits of mud at that point. Here again I gathered only 

 negative evidences which went to show that primitive man never hunted the 

 elephant, the mastodon, the Ovibos and other large animals which frequented 

 this region about the time of the glacial period, probably when the ice lay over 

 the region north of the Ohio. As this field would have been an excellent hunt- 

 ing ground for early man, as it was for their successors, the red Indians, and 

 the frontiersmen, it seemed to me strange that I could not find a single trace 

 of man below the level occupied by the living bison which evidently comes to 

 this district in modern days. In this superficial layer made up mainly of bison 

 bones, I found a number of arrow or spear heads. It also seemed to me 

 important to trace the remains of the " mound builders " or early American 

 Indians backward or downward to see if they graduated into those left by yet 

 earlier varieties of man ; with this idea in mind I searched the banks of the 

 Ohio and its tributaries for a distance of a hundred miles or more to see if the 

 sections of its alluvium might show human or art remains of another kind than 

 those derived from the known indigenes of this country. This work also proved 



