Additional mounds of Duval and of Clay counties, Florida; Mound investigation on the east coast of Florida; Certain Florida coast mounds north of the St. Johns riverMoore, Clarence B. (Clarence Bloomfield)
History
Additional mounds of Duval and of Clay counties, Florida; Mound investigation on the east coast of Florida; Certain Florida coast mounds north of the St. Johns river
Moore, Clarence B. (Clarence Bloomfield)
Florida -- Antiquities; Mounds -- Florida
“The skull of the collie agrees in size and height and convexity
of the frontals with the nearly perfect skull I have from the
Damariscotta shell-heap; it also agrees with the teeth with the
exception that in my Damariscotta skull the second and third molars
are slightly stouter and approach more nearly to the corresponding
teeth of the setter.
“Thus, I should say that the Damariscotta shell-heap skull is
very close to the English collie, and also very close to the gray
wolf. This Damariscotta skull was found very low down in the great
shell-heap, and it is unquestionably of prehistoric time, probably
centuries before any white man reached this continent. There is,
therefore, no possibility of its being a domestic dog brought over
by the Whites. The close affinities, in its shape, with the setter,
and thus with the gray wolf, lead me to regard it as a domestic dog
of the people whose refuse formed that ancient shell-heap; probably
a domesticated gray wolf, unless there was some now extinct species
of the genus _Canis_ from which this dog was derived, the only
prominent difference being in the shorter jaws of the dog.
“I have also three skulls from the ‘ash-pits’ of the ancient
cemetery near Madisonville, Ohio. In the contents of about 1,500
of these ash-pits, which we have carefully examined, not a sign of
White contact was found; and they are unquestionably of prehistoric
time. These three skulls from the ash-pits are slightly smaller
than the Damariscotta skull, but agree with it in every other
particular.
“I have examined two skulls (in the American Museum of Natural
History) found with an Indian skeleton on Staten Island, New York.
This burial-place is also of unquestionably prehistoric time.
These two dog skulls are of about the same size as those from the
Madisonville cemetery, and are of the same character.
“I have two skulls of dogs from the Lake Dwellings, at St. Aubin
and Neufchatel, Switzerland, which agree in size with the three
above-mentioned from the ash-pits at Madisonville, but differ from
them in having the frontals slightly flatter and in having the
interparietal crest nearly obliterated. A fourth skull from the
Madisonville ash-pits, smaller than the other three, agrees with
these Swiss Lake skulls in the latter character.
“I cannot distinguish any important difference between the
dog skull you found in the Florida mound and those from the
Madisonville ash-pits.
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