Essays of an Americanist: I. Ethnologic and Archæologic. II. Mythology and Folk Lore. III. Graphic Systems and Literature. IV. Linguistic.Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Philosophy
Essays of an Americanist: I. Ethnologic and Archæologic. II. Mythology and Folk Lore. III. Graphic Systems and Literature. IV. Linguistic.
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
America -- Antiquities; Indians
Another deposit of gravel further down the Delaware River is much older:
The best authorities in such matters believe that it was deposited, not
after the recession of the great glacier which once covered Canada and
the northern portion of the United States, but while that tremendous
phenomena was at its height, and when all the streams of the central
United States were periodically choked with vast masses of ice and snow.
In this, which is called the Columbian gravel, chipped stone implements
have been found by Mr. Cresson, all of the “simple” variety, and at such
depths as to preclude the theory of an intrusive deposit. These
discoveries carry the age of the appearance of man in the Delaware
valley back to a date which is possibly over a hundred thousand years
ago.
The great glacier left its mass of boulders, pebbles and broken stone,
which it pushed before it, or carried with it, in a long line of
so-called “moraines,” extending, roughly speaking, from New York to St.
Louis. In this mass, at its edges where the great wash from the melting
ice poured down, palæoliths have been found in undisturbed position,
proving that also there man had struggled with the inclemency of the
ice-age, and, poorly provided as he was, had come out victorious. Here
too all the implements he left are of the “simple” type, indicating at
once the vast antiquity of the period and the presence of a race
substantially the same as that to the east at the same date.
No tribe has been known to history which was confined to the knowledge
of “simple” implements, or which manufactured stone implements
exclusively in the Palæolithic forms. Wherever, therefore, these are
found without the admixture of artificially ground or polished stones we
may be sure we face the remains of a time whose antiquity cannot be
measured by any chronology applied to the historic records of humanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account