394 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLAT:I. Xo. 1216 



to securing a wider interest in this extensive 

 field. Wo other man could have brought a 

 wider knowledge or a more skillful hand to 

 this noble task and the accomplished work is 

 a credit to its author and to his coimtry. 

 G. A. Miller 

 Univeksity of Illinois 



I Additional Studies in the Pleistocene at Vera, 

 Florida. Pages 17-82, 141-143, from the 

 Ninth Annual Eeport of the Florida State 

 Geological Survey, 1917. 

 The pamphlet, just arrived, comprises five 

 articles of particular interest to anthropolo- 

 gists : one by Professor E. "W. Berry, of Johns 

 Hopkins University, on Fossil Plants; one by 

 Dr. E. "W. Schufeldt on Fossil Birds; one by 

 Dr. O. P. Hay, of the Carnegie Institution, 

 on Fossil Vertebrates ; and a final paper (with 

 a supplement) by Dr. E. H. Sellards, state 

 geologist of Florida, summing up the evidence 

 and the discussion to date with reference to 

 the antiquity of the associated human remains. 

 The three special papers, it should be noted, 

 are concerned mainly with data from stratum 

 No. 3, i. e., the top formation in and at the 

 base of which most of the human remains 

 occur. Of the organic forms foimd here those 

 either totally or locally extinct are given ap- 

 proximately as follows: mollusks per cent., 

 turtles 50 per cent., birds 33 per cent, mam- 

 mals 40 per cent., and plants 20 per cent. Dr. 

 Sellards deems this record consistent and after 

 affirming that the exposed Vero section shows 

 "distinct uninterrupted lines of stratification 

 beneath which human materials are found," 

 pens his conclusions in these words: "The 

 human remains and artifacts are contempo- 

 raneous with extinct species of mammals, birds, 

 reptiles, and at least one extinct species of 

 plants, as well as with other animal and plant 

 species that do not at the present time extend 

 their range into Florida. The age of the de- 

 posits containing these fossils according to the 

 accepted interpretation of faunas and floras is 

 Pleistocene." 



The full significance of these remarks is of 

 more than ordinary importance. With the 

 findings of specialists in the fields of geology 



and paleo-biology no anthropologist wiU be dis- 

 posed readily to take issue; and the writer in 

 particular, having spent only a few hours at 

 Vero, is in no position to challenge directly 

 any of the allied facts; but he ventures, 

 nevertheless, to offer some remarks having 

 general bearing on the situation as now devel- 

 oped. 



In the fii'st place, anthropological literature 

 records a score or more of isolated archeolo- 

 gical discoveries (Dr. Hay cites some of them) 

 which, because of attending circumstances, 

 have by some been adjudged proofs of extra- 

 ordinary human antiquity and which thus 

 lend substantial support to the appearances at 

 Vero. Many of these discoveries, like the one 

 before us, are of the hona fide sort, requiring 

 no affidavits, and they range from the Tertiary 

 gravels of California to the glacial deposits of 

 New Jersey. Nevertheless, whatever the 

 merits of these data, they have not been gen- 

 erally accepted because their acceptance, in 

 view partly of the known conditions of paleo- 

 lithic Europe, involved tremendous difficulties 

 in the way of assumptions rather than doing 

 away with them. At the same time it can 

 not be doubted that these very finds have 

 directly inspired many students to the investi- 

 gation of artificially stratified deposits, both 

 in caverns and elsewhere with a view, if x)os- 

 sible, to obtaining supporting evidence that 

 would ultimately result in the credibility of 

 these isolated and questionable discoveries. 

 Now, up to the present time, although this in- 

 direct effort has been continued for more than a 

 generation and has ranged geographically from 

 Alaska to Patagonia, nothing satisfactory has 

 come of it. Within the United States alone, 

 both cave and moiond deposits have repeatedly 

 been shown to record a considerable range in 

 cultural development, but the associated f aunal 

 remains of even the oldest strata have never 

 yielded any but modern species; and this, so 

 far as the published data goes, is true also 

 for the shell mounds of Florida. Under those 

 circumstances no archeologist can be expected 

 to relinquish at once his scepticism concern- 

 ing the Vero discovery. 



