Man and the Glacial PeriodWright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
History
Man and the Glacial Period
Wright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
Glacial epoch; Prehistoric peoples
To discredit the discoveries at Trenton and Newcomerstown, Mr. Holmes
relies largely upon the theory that portions of gravel from the surface
had slid down to the bottom of the terrace, carrying implements with
them, and forming a talus, which, he thinks, Mr. Mills, Dr. Abbott,
and the others have mistaken for undisturbed strata of gravel. In his
drawings Mr. Holmes has even represented the gravel at Newcomerstown
as caving down into a talus without disturbing the strata to any great
extent, and at the same time he speaks slightingly of the promise which I
had made to publish a photograph of the bank as it really was. In answer,
it is sufficient to give, first, the drawing made at the time by Mr.
Mills, to show the general situation of the gravel bank at Newcomerstown,
in which the implement figured on page 252 was found; and, secondly, an
engraving from a photograph of the bank, taken by Mr. Mills after the
discovery of the implement, but before the talus had obscured its face.
The implement was found by Mr. Mills with its point projecting from a
fresh exposure of the terrace, just after a mass, loosened by his own
efforts, had fallen away. The gravel is of such consistency that every
sign of stratification disappears when it falls down, and there could be
no occasion for a mistake even by an ordinary observer, while Mr. Mills
was a well-trained geologist and collector, making his notes upon the
spot.[AA]
[Footnote AA: The Popular Science Monthly, vol. xliii, pp. 29-39.]
[Illustration: Height of Terrace exposed, 25 feet. Palæolith was found
14-3/4 feet from surface.]
[Illustration: Terrace in Newcomerstown, showing where W. C. Mills found
the Palæolithic implement.]
I had thought at first that Mr. Holmes had made out a better case against
the late Miss Babbitt's discoveries at Little Falls (referred to on
page 254), but in the American Geologist for May, 1894, page 363, Mr.
Warren Upham, after going over the evidence, expresses it as still his
conviction that Mr. Holmes's criticism fails to shake the force of the
original evidence, so that I do not see any reason for modifying any of
the statements made in the body of the book concerning the implements
supposed to have been found in glacial deposits. Yet if I had expected
such an avalanche of criticism of the evidence as has been loosened, I
should at the time have fortified my statements by fuller references,
and should possibly have somewhat enlarged the discussion. But this
seemed then the less necessary, from the fact that Mr. McGee had, in most
emphatic manner, indorsed nearly every item of the evidence adduced by
me, and much more, in an article which appeared in The Popular Science
Monthly four years before the publication of the volume (November, 1888).
In this article he had said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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