The Journal of Geology, January-February 1893: A Semi-Quarterly Magazine of Geology and Related SciencesVarious
Science
The Journal of Geology, January-February 1893: A Semi-Quarterly Magazine of Geology and Related Sciences
Various
Geology -- Periodicals
Relics of art attributed to gravel man have been collected, so far
as I can gather from museum labels and from incidental references in
various publications, from a number of sites aside from the two already
referred to. These are scattered over the city, and the finds were made
mostly in exposures of the gravels that remained visible for a short
time only, as in street and cellar excavations and well pits. These
reported finds can never be brought within the range of re-examination,
and the searcher after unimpeachable testimony must content himself
with placing them in the doubtful column on general principles.
Urban districts are so subject to disturbance through cutting down
of hills, filling in of depressions, grading of streets, digging of
foundations, cellars, sewers, wells and graves that no man can, from a
limited exposure such as those producing the reported tools necessarily
were, speak with certainty of the undisturbed nature of the deposits
penetrated. It is doubtful if any one is justified in publishing such
observations at all without serious query. Such testimony is liable
to fall of its own inherent weakness, being absolutely valueless if
unsupported by collateral evidence of real weight. It can only be made
permanently available to science by the discovery of something unusual
or unique with which to couple it, something decidedly un-Indian in
character or type, as for example the two skulls now in the Peabody
Museum. These objects and the antler knife-handle exhibited with them
may be alluded to as the only finds so far made at Trenton, having
of themselves the least potentiality as proof and these skulls and
this knife-handle must yet be subjected to the rigid examination made
necessary by the importance of the conclusions to be based upon them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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