The third major discovery of classic Folsom artifacts came officially in
1934, when Roberts dug a site called Lindenmeier in Colorado; but as far
back as 1924—two years before the first discovery of a Folsom point in
New Mexico—Judge C. C. Coffin and his son, A. L. Coffin, had begun to
pick up such points in this area without recognizing their importance.
Lindenmeier is particularly significant because it was an occupational
site, a camp of some duration. It was also a factory, for Roberts found
spear points, scrapers, and other tools in various stages of
manufacture. Again there were bison bones.[16] There were also traces of
camel, as well as an elephant tusk not too closely associated with the
artifacts. A skillful geological study of the old and elevated river
terrace on which the site is located linked it with glacial moraines
which indicate a readvance of the glacial ice.[17]
The date of Folsom man is uncertain. Some believe he lived during the
last years of the Great Ice Age. Some place him a little later than the
melting of the glaciers. The earliest radiocarbon date yet determined
for Folsom is from the Lindenmeier site, where bits of charcoal provided
a date of 10,780 ± 375 years.[18] It took about 700 man-hours of tedious
and painstaking work to locate and recover this charcoal. Elsewhere, at
such Texas sites as Blackwater Draw, Lubbock, and Scharbauer, direct or
indirect dates indicate a survival of the Folsom culture until about
9,000 years ago.
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]
[Illustration: BURIALS IN THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW
_Disposal of the dead by exposure, as practiced among hunting
tribes. (After Sollas, 1911.)_]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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