THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA
We should consider quite briefly this subject. As was remarked on pages 32–4, man may have occupied America in times of great antiquity. Personally, I cannot understand how all the different Indian dialects developed in comparatively recent times. It would seem that several thousand years at least were required for so many and diversified tongues to have developed among our aborigines.
Not being a geologist, it would be presumptuous for me to pass opinion on questions in which geology played prominent part. What little is offered, therefore, is based upon study of man’s handiwork and distribution of his implements rather than upon geologic evidence. There has been not a little said concerning the observations of Mr. Ernest Volk and Dr. Charles C. Abbott in New Jersey, as both of these men have labored for many years near Trenton, upon fields and in the sands and gravels. Recently Dr. Abbott published three pamphlets.[[34]] There are some personalities in these pamphlets which might have been omitted, and one or two statements to which some persons might object. But on the whole these three pamphlets sum up all of Dr. Abbott’s observations during the past thirty years, with reference to New Jersey archæology and the antiquity of man in the Delaware Valley.
Waiving these minor considerations, which no broad-minded man would treasure up against Dr. Abbott, we may safely assume that both he and Mr. Volk are real archæologists. That is, they understand conditions as they existed in ancient times, and that is something that few men of to-day grasp. It cannot be learned from reading the reports, from studying in museums, or through obtaining a degree from one of our universities. Both Volk and Abbott have worked hard. There was no fuss made about it. It was a continuous grind day after day, week in and week out, year upon year.
Fig. 723. (S. about 1–3.) A remarkably well-preserved gourd water-jug. Found in the ashes of Salts Cave, Kentucky. B. H. Young’s collection, Louisville, Kentucky.
No man can dig a pit in the ground and fill it up so that it conforms to the surrounding natural strata. Such a place always shows disturbed soil or clay. Walk along the riverbank, where the water has washed out a line of fence and left the marks of the post-holes, and observe; note gravel-banks anywhere in this country where aborigines buried in graves, and as white men haul away the gravel and expose the bank, one is able to see clearly defined the outlines of the graves. The same is true of the holes of burrowing animals and of tree-roots, etc. The beds of streams mentioned by Dr. Abbott in his work play an important part in archæology. When the implements found in them were lost, the streams were active. Since then they have filled up. The character of one deposit in the Delaware Valley investigated by Abbott and Volk differs from that of another, and the differences are so striking, the deposits being in the one place sand, and in another place glacial clay, in another place river gravel, that one cannot but believe that a considerable period of time elapsed between these various cultures.
In many sections of the country are found not only chipped implements, but other implements heavily coated with patina, which is an incrustation accruing by time alone. There are other worn specimens which appear very old. Select some of these and compare them with objects from the Mandan or Iroquois sites, or even from the mounds in the Ohio Valley, and one will observe the apparent difference in the age of these specimens. The Mandan pottery and some of the Iroquois pottery are even at this late date coated with soot. There is no soot on the mound pottery. Along the Atlantic Coast, and in the South, flint implements are sometimes coated with patina. In Florida shell heaps are occasionally found skeletons at great depth. Mr. Clarence B. Moore considered the lower strata of the larger shell heaps to be very old.
There was a skull found by Dr. Wyman during the course of his exploration many years ago in the base of a shell mound in Florida.[[35]] I present a picture of it in Fig. 717. The cranium is heavily incrusted by cemented shells. Such a burial must be of great age.
These shell heaps accumulate very slowly during the occupancy of the sites by many generations of Indians. This skull, and the skull found at Lansing, Kansas, at a depth of twenty-five or thirty feet, and other finds, are evidences of considerable antiquity. Dr. Hrdlička has said that the Lansing man was of the same type as the modern Indian. This does not mean that it is modern, for Assyrian and Egyptian crania five or more thousand years old have been taken from the tombs, and it would require experts to distinguish them from crania of living people.
Prof. Edward H. Williams, Jr., of Woodstock, Vt., suggested to me that an expert analysis be made of the surface of certain problematic forms and ornaments finished and unfinished. Therefore, I gave to Prof. Williams some forty objects from our Andover collection, and he made a careful examination, as did his friend Prof. John D. Irving of Lehigh University, who is secretary of the Geological Society of America, and an expert in such matters. Some of these specimens are found to be old, a few very old, and others more or less recent. I shall quote a few of his observations. The numbers refer to catalogue numbers in our books:—
“22517—From Georgia. This is a fine-grained diabase. Prof. Irving reports that the ophitic structure is very well marked. This object has been buried for some time, and the surface is weathered, and has been pitted since it was worked.
“23449—Syenitic Gneiss. The feldspar had begun to kaolinize before the pebble was worked. Since working the surface has been considerably etched, and the hornblende is left rising above the surface. This black mineral has also been decomposed since working, and the iron component has rusted and stained the horn.
“34772—Extremely fine-grained muscovite schist with grains of magnetite. This was weathered before working, and the magnetite has almost wholly rotted to soft dark spots. There was some etching of the surface since working.
“4137—Foliated greenish talc. The lighter pits and scratches are recent. The surface is darker than the fresh fracture, and shows age and handling.
“18414—This is a much decomposed rock of the trap variety, which has become so weathered and softened that it has become almost entirely chlorite. It looks very much like an argillite. It belongs to one of the ‘greenstone’ rocks.”
As to the exact number of years required for this weathering, it is impossible to state, but since these specimens were considered from a geological and mineralogical point of view, and critically analyzed by two entirely competent men, it is safe to assume that a few hundred years would not account for the disintegration. I do not know whether these things are a few hundred or several thousand years old, but the analysis shows that the stone weathered to some considerable extent, and this would be indication of age. It would be interesting to analyze some of the Iroquois objects and to compare.
The different cultures in America would appear to be evidence of the antiquity of man. One cannot imagine that the Cliff-Dwellers and mound-building tribes, that the stone-grave people, or the cave people in the Ozarks, or the shell-heap people of Florida, or the Plains tribes, and finally, the woods and mountain Indians, who never made any monuments of any description—that all these cultures developed in a few hundred years. They are so totally different, and are so influenced and modified by climate and local conditions, that it would appear plausible that several thousand years must have elapsed before these sharp lines of distinction developed. Again, while all Indians have skins more or less red, the variation in physical appearance among our aborigines is surprising. No one could fail to distinguish an Ojibwa from an Iroquois, or a Sioux from an Apache, or an Osage from a Seminole, even if one had no knowledge of Indian language or customs. Environment and habitat must have influenced these tribes and affected their stature and physical conditions.