One thing is certain: the Folsom point won the battle for early man in the Americas because it proved that he or his predecessors had hunted extinct bison, camels, mammoths, peccaries, and horses. Hitherto every find of human artifacts with fossils had been thrown out of court on the argument that the artifacts might be intrusive. That charge could not be leveled at two of these unique Folsom points because they were found in a unique and decisive position—one between the ribs of an animal and the other penetrating the channel of the spinal cord.
Some of the opponents of early man were not convinced. They shifted the argument. Man was early, the Hrdličkas admitted, but not so very early, because the bison and the elephant were late. More of that in a later chapter. Meantime, it is worth noting that a humble invertebrate, a mollusk, found in the Clovis dig, suggests that the Folsom-bearing deposits were glacial.[19]
BURIALS IN THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW
Disposal of the dead by exposure, as practiced among hunting tribes. (After Sollas, 1911.)
You may ask why we have not found Folsom man himself. Howard has pointed out that early man, as a migrant hunter, would probably have followed much the same customs as our Plains Indians in the disposal of his dead. He would have left the bodies exposed on scaffolds or in trees, or he would have cremated them. “Under such circumstances,” Howard writes, “it would be the merest chance to come across a skeleton of Folsom man anywhere in the enormous area of our Great Plains country. It would be even more remarkable to recognize him as such, unless he had a Folsom point in his hand or was holding an elephant by the tail.”[20]
The Clovis fluted point is not so fine a piece of craftsmanship as the Folsom, yet it is more significant as evidence of very early man in North America. Clovis points tend to be longer, larger, and heavier than the Folsom. The fluting is rather rudimentary. The earlike tips characteristic of Folsom usually are lacking in Clovis, and careful finishing or retouching of the edges is rare. The refinement of workmanship in Folsom suggests that Clovis antedated it. This, as we have indicated, is borne out by the fact that Clovis-like points are usually found with mammoth bones rather than those of the later bison. These points are widely distributed, but the best associations have been found at or near Houston, Midland, Miami, and Abilene, in Texas, and at the Naco and Lehner sites, in Arizona. The first such point definitely associated with the remains of a mammoth was found near Dent, Colorado, in 1932.
Another extinct mammal besides the mammoth and Bison antiquus has been found in early sites—the mastodon. The animal is not typical of any particular time period, or associated with any special kind of projectile point. It would seem that people of early cultures in the eastern United States hunted this beast with a variety of stemmed projectile points until about 5,500 years ago. Mastodons occur at least five times in probable association with early man, according to Stephen Williams. He lists the discoveries at Island 35 in the Mississippi River; Tipton County, Tennessee; Koch’s much publicized finds in Gasconade and Benton Counties, Missouri; along with the Richmond mastodon, near Cromwell, Indiana; and the Orleton Farms mastodon, near Plumwood, Ohio.[21]
Another Fine and Ancient Point
Folsom man and his spear point had only just begun to worry conservative anthropologists when A. E. Jenks—who was to champion skeletons of early man in Minnesota—noted, in 1928, a still finer type of flint in the collection of Perry and Harold Anderson, of Yuma County, Colorado. It was long and narrow, with parallel sides and a triangular point, and looked rather like a half-bayonet without its Folsom flute. It was consummately chipped by pressure over its whole surface. These artifacts were at first known as Yuma, but now they are called Eden, after a site in Eden Valley, Wyoming, where they were found in situ.[22] They are easily the finest job of flint knapping in the New World, equaled only by the later neolithic daggers of Egypt and Scandinavia (see illustrations, [page 158]). This might be a good argument for Eden points’ being neolithic, if artifacts with Eden chipping had not been discovered in association with Folsom tools and also with the fossils of extinct mammals. Evidence from a site near Cody, Wyoming, indicates that the Eden industry as a whole is younger than the Folsom. The Eden points found there are nearer 7,000 than 11,000 years old,[23] for the soil in which they lay was formed during a moist period late in that interval of time. Eden and similar points are fairly widespread; some have been found in Canada and in Alaska.[24]