A number of sites in the West and Southwest are particularly notable for their age or for the character of their artifacts, or for both. Some push the record of man in America back beyond Folsom, possibly far, far beyond; and some bring into the picture a type of artifact—the milling stone—which does not seem to have appeared in Europe until later. The publications upon these sites from 1935 to 1941 aroused much controversy even while broadening and deepening our knowledge of early man. [Illustration: _Three early points from the borders of extinct lakes in the desert area of southern California. Points like the Pinto have been found in Chile. (The Pinto, after Wormington, 1944; the other two, after Campbell, 1937.)_] Confusion, as well as controversy, distinguishes the area which might prove the most significant of the four if more extended work were done there by geologists as well as archaeologists. This area is in the neighborhood of Abilene, Texas, and includes the banks of the Elm Creek branch of the Brazos River. Cyrus N. Ray, a local physician, has studied the Abilene sites assiduously for twenty years. In 1931 Gila Pueblo—Harold S. Gladwin’s research institution—sent E. B. Sayles to work there. Later Gila arranged to have Antevs, Howard, and M. M. Leighton, Chief of the Illinois State Geological Survey, study the finds and the sites. It is unfortunate that the men who worked in this area have not agreed on a consistent set of names for the various cultures and geological formations. As H. M. Wormington has observed, “the only way to approach publications dealing with the archaeology of this region is with a large bottle of aspirin in either hand.” [Illustration: _An Abilene point. (After Wormington, 1944.)_] The artifacts occurred in two strata. The upper contained points of types now called Plainview and Milnesand and a long, narrow point that has been dubbed Abilene, though not accepted as a distinct type by Texas archaeologists. Leighton placed these tools from what he called the Elm Creek Silts in the latter portion of our last Glacial period.[37] To reach Abilene at this time, early man may have passed through the gap that is thought to have appeared in the ice sheet east of the Rockies 40,000 years ago, or else when the Wisconsin ice of the last glaciers was in retreat 20,000 years later (see illustrations, pages 26 and 27).