THE CANADIAN JOURNAL. 



NEW SERIES. 



No. XCVI. — OCTOBER, 1877. 



SUPPOSED EVIDENCE OF THE EXISTENCE OF 

 INTER-GLACIAL AMERICAN MAN. 



BY DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., F.R.S.B. 



The determination of a so-called palaeolithic period for Europe, 

 with its rude implements of stone and flint, chipped into shape 

 without the aid of any grinding or polishing process, and belonging 

 to an era when the European man was associated with animals 

 either wholly extinct or unknown throughout the historic period, 

 naturally stimulates the curiosity of American archaeologists in 

 their own native explorations. But thus far only very slight and 

 uncertain indications have seemed to point to any corresponding 

 evidences of a like antiquity for American man. 



Various causes combine to give to the researches of the American 

 archaeologist a character essentially distinct from that which marked 

 the earlier stages of antiquarian investigation in Europe, and which 

 stimulated its votaries to ally themselves with the students of 

 geology in a renewed and more strictly scientific inquiry into the 

 earliest traces of primeval man. In Europe the antiquary had long 

 been engaged in the elucidation of ancient historic monviments; and 

 had passed beyond these to a study of the ruder traces of primitive 

 art, and of the physical characteristics of races which appeared to 

 have pieceded the historic nations of the Old World. The researches 

 directed to the solution of the problems thus originated were 

 followed up through mediaeval, classical, Assyrian, and Egyptian 



