The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished RacesAllen, Emory Adams
History
The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished Races
Allen, Emory Adams
Archaeology; Indians; Prehistoric peoples
In forming a mental picture of the conditions of life at that
early time, it is not necessary to imagine a dreary scene of
Arctic sterility. This is not true of the time when the Glacial
Age was at its greatest severity. But at the time we are now
considering, the glaciers had retreated over a large part of the
country, though they still lingered in northern and mountainous
regions. Great lakes and majestic rivers were the features of the
country. The St. Lawrence was still choked with ice, and the
great lakes must have discharged their waters southward.60 The
Mississippi, gathering in one mighty stream the drainage of the
Central Basin, sped onward to the Gulf, doubtless many times
larger than its present representative. The animals then living
included several species that have since become extinct.
Mastodons and elephants must have been numerous, as their remains
are frequently found in loess deposits.61 They have also been
found in the gravels of New Jersey, in connection with the rude
implements already mentioned. Probably keeping close to the
retreating glaciers were such animals as the moose, reindeer, and
musk-ox, while the walrus disported itself in the waters off the
coast. At any rate those animals now only found in high northern
latitudes were living during Glacial times as far south as
Kentucky and New Jersey.62
A good deal of interest is connected with the finding of one
mastodon’s tooth. It was found in the gravel deposit, about
fourteen feet beneath the surface. It must have been washed to
the position where found when the great floods from the melting
glacier, with their burden of sand and gravel, were rolling down
the valley. We can either conclude that the climate was such as
to permit the existence of such animals, or that the animal to
which it belonged lived in some far away pre-glacial time. But
our interest suddenly increases when we learn that, but a few
feet away, under exactly similar circumstances, was found the
wisdom tooth of a human being. It, too, was rolled, scratched,
and polished, and had evidently been swept along by the
tumultuous flood. “The same agency that brought the one from the
Upper Valley of the Delaware brought the other, and, after long
years, they come again to light, and jointly testify that, in
that undetermined long ago, the creatures to which they
respectively belonged were living together in the valley of the
river.”63
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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