52 The American Geologist. January, 1892 
with the conclusions which have been reached regarding the char- 
acter of many of the rocks of the Keewatin (Archean) group in 
the region northwest of lake Superior. 
EARLIEST MAN IN AMERICA, 
The AmeERICAN GxEoLoGIstT, Vol. VIII, p. 180, September, 
1891, and the American Naturalist, Vol. XXYV., pp. 991 and 
1054, November, 1891, note the important additions that have 
been made to our knowledge of ancestral human types by the 
discoveries of MM. Lohest and Fraipont, of Liége, Belgium. 
These discoveries, together with similar discoveries at Canstadt 
and elsewhere in Europe, establish the fact that the anomalous 
cranium, known as the Neanderthalskull, which has been discussed 
with more or less energy since 1857, represents a race of men 
once widely distributed throughout Europe, and not, as has been 
over and over again suggested, a mere individual peculiarity. 
The object of this-note is not to discuss these discoveries, but 
to point out the fact that America was once occupied by a race of 
low-browed men, that were in all respects as degraded as the men 
of Neanderthal or Canstadt. 
Dr. J. W. Foster* was among the first to call attention to the 
fact that tumuli in the Mississippi valley furnished crania char- 
acterized by great development of the supra-orbital ridges, low, 
retreating forehead, and zygomatic arches projecting beyond the 
general contour of the face. The skull from ‘‘Kennicott’s 
mound,” near Chicago,7 had it been found in Kurope, would be 
regarded as a fairly typical cranium of the Neanderthal or Can- 
stadt race. A cranium from the region of Dubuque, Lowa, is 
equally as flat and as destitute of forehead as the famous Nean- 
derthal skull. Dr. Lapham, speaking of the peculiarities of two 
skulls preserved at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, refers in particular to 
the ‘low forehead, prominent superciliary ridges, the zygomatic 
arches swelling out beyond the walls of the skull, and especially 
the prominence of the occipital ridge. ”’t 
Four crania exhumed and described by Mr. C. L. Webster be- 
long to the same degraded type. One of these from near Floyd, 
Towa, is figured in the American Naturalist, Vol. XXII, Plate 
*Pre-historic Races, Chap. VIII. 
tFoster’s Pre-historic Races, p. 280. 
{Private correspondence of Dr. Lapham quoted by Foster. Pre-his- 
toric Races, p. 290. . 
