320 T. C. CHAM BERLIN 



agencies, natural and artificial, have been carried below the sur- 

 face and become imbedded in unconsolidated deposits. "The' 

 only indisputable geologic proof of the Pleistocene age of man 

 must consist in finding a continuous undisturbed bed or layer of 

 demonstrable Pleistocene age above the human remains."' In 

 view of the questions that are still undetermined, he advises 

 suspension of judgment for the present. 



Contribution from the testimony of the human hones. — Dr. Ale§ 

 Hrdlicka, after describing critically the human bones, expresses 

 the unreserved opinion that they do not differ in any essential 

 respect from those of the modern Florida Indians.^ He argues 

 in favor of the human burial of the remains, but this, of course, 

 is geological rather than anthropological and is only incidental 

 to his testimony as an expert student of the human skeletons 

 themselves. He reaches the conclusion that the human bones 

 found at Vero may well be prehistoric, and date from the early 

 part of the occupation of the Florida peninsula by the Indians, 

 but that no proof is furnished by the circumstances of the find,' 

 or by the human bones themselves, which would relegate the latter 

 to an antiquity comparable with that of the extinct fossil remains 

 with which they are associated. 



Contribution from the viewpoint of the human artifacts. — In a, 

 note inclosed in Dr. Hrdlicka's paper, Dr. Wilham H. Holmes 

 reports on twenty pieces • of pottery collected near the human 

 bones, that 



they represent moderately small, undecorated vessels, apparently simple 

 bowls such as were in common use among the Indian tribes of Florida. Com- 

 pared with corresponding plain vessel fragments from Florida sand mounds, 

 and from occupied sites generally, no significant distinctions can be made; in 

 material, thickness of walls, finish of rim, surface finish, color, state of preserva- 

 tion, and size and shape of vessels represented, all are identical. There thus 

 appears not the least ground in the evidence of the specimens themselves for 

 the assumption that the Vero pottery pertains to any other than Columbian 

 and immediately pre-Columbian time.^ 



The more comprehensive contribution from the archaeological 

 point of view was made by Dr. George G. MacCurdy, who took 



' Symposium i, Joitr. Geol., XXV (1917), 41. ^ Ibid., p. 50. , 



3 Ihid., 51. 



