278 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
and, in structure of body, belonged to the modern type. 
The introduction of the Aurignacian culture in Europe 
appears to have taken place about thirty thousand years 
ao-o — an estimate which must be regarded as merely a 
tentative one. It does seem very probable, then, that 
the ancient men of Trenton were living in the Delaware 
valley when the Cromagnon race inhabited the rock- 
shelters along the valley of the Dordogne. 
The discovery at Trenton has a very direct bearing on 
the antiquity of men of the modern type. Let us look 
more closely at its significance. It is a guarantee that 
before the last period of glaciation modern man, in the 
form of that highly evolved race — the American Indian — 
was living on the eastern sea-board of North America. 
That race, as we have seen, represents a branch of the 
Mongolian stock. It is therefore plain that, long before 
the last period of glaciation, the Asiatic ancestry of the 
American Indian must have been in existence. We 
obtain, by researches carried out in Europe, a glimpse of 
Paleolithic man in the western part of the old world ; 
the discovery at Trenton gives us, indirectly, the informa- 
tion we stood in need of, namely, that, at an equally 
early part of the Palaeolithic period, men of the modern 
type were in existence in the eastern part of the old 
world. It is plain, to account for modern man in Europe, 
in Asia, in America, long before the close of the Ice age, 
we must assign his origin and evolution to a very remote 
period. 
Having thus obtained reliable evidence of the great 
antiquity of man on the eastern sea-board, we pass to the 
Central States, approaching them from the south, along 
the valley of the Mississippi. Our first stopping-place 
is Natchez, on the eastern bank of the river, and about two 
hundred miles above the delta. Here, in 1846, came 
Sir Charles Lyell in search of evidence regarding man's 
antiquity. On the eastern side of the valley at Natchez 
rises a high terrace of yellow loam or loess, a deposit 
formed by floods during the latter part of the glacial 
period. At the time of Lyell's visit part of a human 
