PLEISTOCENE OF EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND NORTH AMERICA 495 



central states, as well as considerable evidence of the appearance of man 

 before the disappearance of the mastodon in the eastern states. This 

 raises the further question as to the period of the final extinction of the 

 mastodon. 



It will be interesting to pass in review some of the alleged or actual cases 

 of the association of implements of human manufacture with the remains 

 of various extinct mammals. 



Man and the mastodon. — As early as 1839 flint arrowheads were reported 

 by Koch in association with the bones of M. americanus in Missouri. Again, 

 evidence for the contemporaneity of man and the mastodon was reported 

 in the Pleistocene near Charleston by Holmes in 1859 and in the Pleistocene 

 of California by Whitney (1866-1867). In 1869, however, Leidy declared ^ 

 that neither of these alleged associations established beyond doubt the coex- 

 istence of man with any of the extinct Pleistocene mammals. In 1885, 

 however, Putnam reported the remains of man and mastodon in Worcester, 

 Massachusetts,^ as follows : a mastodon tooth and a human skull were found 

 associated together in a marsh eighteen feet below the surface; the lower 

 jaw was embedded in blue clay; both showed that they had been transported 

 by running water, and brought to this deposit before the overlying peat 

 formation began. Norris, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, reported 

 some fragments of elephant or mastodon tusks exhumed from a mound in 

 Wisconsin. In 1887 Scott summed up the evidence as follows:^ "It is 

 well known to archaeologists that pipes of catlinite shaped like the elephant 

 have been discovered in Iowa, also that a so-called 'elephant mound' in 

 Wisconsin has been much debated, since it is situated in the region of the 

 effigy mounds of the northwest. . . . The coexistence of man and the mas- 

 todon, or mammoth, in America, as in Europe, has advanced now beyond the 

 stage of presumption; it has been so well verified that "it can hardly be 

 excluded from the realm of science." Still, it is necessary to exercise care 

 in the use of facts brought to light which seem to bear on this question. 

 In 1887 D. G. Brinton * reported human footprints in the volcanic tufa at 

 Lake Managua, about ten feet above which were mastodon remains. A 

 striking feature of these footprints is that the second toe is the longest of all. 



In 1895 Mercer ^ reported at Petit Anse, Louisiana, the discovery of 

 modern implements, fourteen feet below the surface, underlying remains 

 of an extinct elephant. This author considers that this may be a case of 



1 Leidy, J., The Extinct Mammalian Fauna of Dakota and Nebraska, Including an Ac- 

 count of Some Allied Forms from Other Localities, together with a Synopsis of the Mammalian 

 Remains of North America. Jour. Acad. Nat. Set. Phila., (2) Vol. VII, 1869, pp. 1-472. 



' Putnam, F. W., Man and the Mastodon. Science, Vol. VI, no. 143, 1885, pp. 375-376. 



' Scott, W. B., On American Elephant Myths. Scribner's Magazine, Vol. I, April, 1887, 

 p. 469. 



* Brinton, D. G., On an Ancient Human Footprint from Nicaragua. Proc. Amer. Phil. 

 Soc. Phila., Vol. XXIV, 1887, pp. 437-444. 



* Mercer, H. C, The Antiquity of Man at Petit Anse (Avery's Island), Louisiana. Amer. 

 Natural., Vol. XXIX, no. 340, April, 1895, pp. 393-394. 



