The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studiesWilson, Daniel, Sir
History
The lost Atlantis, and other ethnographic studies
Wilson, Daniel, Sir
America -- Antiquities; Atlantis (Legendary place); Ethnology -- America; Indians of North America -- Antiquities
its original deposition as glacial debris; and if this is to be
accounted for by subsequent action of water, the unpolished surfaces of
the chipped implements are inconsistent with such a theory of their
origin. Huge boulders, of the same character as those which abound in
the underlying gravel, occur on the surface; and their presence there
was referred to by Dr. Abbott as throwing light upon “the occurrence of
rude implements identical with those found in the underlying gravels,
inasmuch as the same ice-raft that bore the one, with its accompanying
sand and gravel, might well gather up also stray relics of this
primitive people, and re-deposit them where they are now found.”
Accordingly, seeking in fancy to recall this ancient past, he says in
his first report: “In times preceding the formation of this gravel bed,
now in part facing the Delaware river, there were doubtless localities,
once the village sites of pre-glacial man, where these rude stone
implements would necessarily be abundant,” and he accordingly asks “May
not the ice in its onward march, gathering in bulk every loose fragment
of rock and particle of soil, have held them loosely together, and,
hundreds of miles from their original site, left them in some one
locality such as this, where the river has again brought to light rude
implements that characterise an almost primitive people? But, assuming
that the various implements fashioned by a strictly pre-glacial people
have been totally destroyed by the crushing forces of the glacier, and
that the specimens now produced were not brought from a distance, may
they not be referred to an early race that, driven southward by the
encroaching ice, dwelt at the foot of the glacier, and during their
sojourn here these implements were lost?”[51]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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