94 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. GO 



and ever down, rearranging in utmost disorder; forests are up- 

 rooted, dragging up the deepl}' buried records and letting down the 

 superficial into their place; and man and beast are ever at work 

 digging and boring and preparing the ground for abundant crops of 

 misleading observations and erroneous interpretations. It was a 

 knowledge of these conditions that led the writer at an early date 

 to appreciate the danger of hasty determinations respecting antiquity, 

 based on random and unskilled observations, and to realize at the 

 same time the futility of attempts to determine the culture status 

 of the people merely by the form of the few random artifacts re- 

 covered. He insisted on the closest scrutiny of all discoveries sup- 

 posed to bear on the problems of chronology. His restrictions, how- 

 ever, were regarded by some as ill-advised and as tending to 

 embarrass or to endanger the acceptance of legitimate conclusions. 

 The sequel seems, however, to justify the questioning attitude, since 

 to-day, after 30 or 40 years of persistent research, a large part 

 of the testimony advanced in support of geological antiquity is dis- 

 credited and the remainder awaits a fate to be determined only by 

 additional research. The writer has no fear that the truth can be 

 obscured by any amount of adverse inquii-y, for, if men occupied the 

 continent at or before the final glacial retreat, the evidence of this 

 occupancy exists and in time must be found in convincing abundance. 

 Thus far the testimony brought forward is scattering, disconnected, 

 and contradictory, and tells no consistent story, the manner of oc- 

 currence of the various finds being such as might be expected to 

 result from intrusion rather than from original inclusion in the 

 formations with which they were found associated. 



The Yero, Florida, finds, brought to light since the present work 

 was written, have been fully discussed in Bulletin 66 of the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology, It does not appear that the evidence as 

 published requires any modification of the above conclusions. 



Considering the evidence in all its phases, it can not be allowed 

 that the Tertiary, or even the Pleistocene, occupancy of the American 

 Continent by the race is demonstrated, and the writer prefers to favor 

 the view, already fully expressed, that the continent was probably 

 not reached and occupied until after the final retreat of the glacial 

 ice from middle North America, At the same time it must be 

 granted that there is no apparent reason why, if already occupying 

 northern Asia, man should not have reached American shores by 

 way of Bering Strait during any of the periods of mild climate 

 which preceded and interrupted the Ice Age; yet we may wisely 

 await the results of further research and provide for the application 

 to these of the severest tests that science can devise. 



