Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/27

In a paper published in Science, Nov. 25. 1892, I undertook to study the evidence relating to paleolithic man in the eastern United States from a new point of view,—that furnished by certain recently acquired knowledge of the contents of quarries and shops where modern aboriginal flaked implements were made. It was shown that all rudely flaked forms could be sufficiently accounted for without the necessity of assuming a very rude state of culture, and that any people, paleolithic or neolithic, would in roughing out blades—the principal product of the flaking process—produce precisely these forms and in great numbers as refuse. It further appeared that the finding of these objects in sporadic cases in glacial gravels or in any formation whatsoever, could not be considered as proving or tending to establish the existence of a particular grade of stone-age culture for the region in which the formation occurs, since they may as readily pertain to a neolithic as to a paleolithic status. It was conclusively shown that no worked stone that can with reasonable safety be called an implement has been reported from the gravels, and that it is therefore clearly useless, not to say unscientific, to go on enlarging upon the evidence of an American paleolithic period and multiplying theoretic details of its culture.

I now propose to review briefly the question of the age of our so-called paleolithic implements, the questions of the grade of a given feature of culture and of the age or chronologic place of that culture being very properly treated separately, as they depend for their support upon distinct classes of evidence. During the past summer, 1892, certain important items of new evidence have been discovered bearing upon the question of the