27 Antiquity of the Indians of North America. [Febu 
been no other causes in operation to bury them, are about sixty 
centuries old. If we double the deposit from the water in a 
given time, even then twenty-six hundred years had passed by 
since the abandonment of these little shell-heaps and “ home- 
steads ” when Columbus discovered the western world ; but I be- 
lieve the former estimate to be much nearer the truth. 
I have already referred to arrow-heads which I considered to 
be about thirteen centuries old. They were far from being rude 
in workmanship, although not of the most elaborate finish. If 
we grade a series of a thousand specimens from one locality into 
three or four, say four, degrees of excellence, such specimens as 
I have estimated as probably thirteen centuries old will stand 
as number three jn the series. If the acquirement of excellence in 
flint chipping was uniform, the first and rudest of the arrow-heads 
assignable to the neolithic Indian dates back twenty-six centuries 
previous to the specimens graded as number three. All things 
considered, from thirty-five to forty centuries ago, at least, I 
believe to be the point in the past when the. Indian appeared in 
what is now New Jersey ; but it is by no means improbable that 
the paleolithic implements belonged to the same people as the 
neolithic forms, or they are the production of a distinct people. 
by them according to numerous authors, the relics now found 
Seem corroborative of such a tradition, and these paleolithic 
implements, so different from the others in many respects, re- 
main as the only trace of that still older people, the autochthonous 
race of these shores who were in sole possession when driven away 
by the incoming Indians, whose own stone implements at the time 
were but little more elaborate than those of the expelled or subju- 
gated people, but which, as century after century rolled by, became 
the beautiful specimens of the flint-chipping art which we now 
find scattered over our hills, along our valleys, and mingled with 
the pebbles of our forest brooks. 
