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Archaeological Observations on the Problem of Post-Glacial Extinction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Loren C. Eiseley
Loren C. Eiseley*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
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Extract

In a recent paper notable for its lucid presentation of certain of the wider problems confronting the American anthropologist in his attempt to unravel New World prehistory, Dr. A. L. Kroeber has touched, doubtless with justified trepidation, upon the problem of Folsom man in America. That subject has indeed suffered but little illumination in so far as its relation to the rest of the American archaeological record is concerned, and Dr. Kroeber, with sturdy honesty, minces no words in pointing out the hiatus which intervenes between this early horizon and later cultures. It is, he warns, dangerous to produce “speculative bridges that quickly tend to run into fantasy.” He notes that “the earlier date, the longer time span, have an inherent attractiveness to most human minds.” “So long,” he says, “as there is a real possibility that some of the associations of human artifacts with extinct animals may be no more than three thousand years old, it is certainly not wise to build interpretations on the contrary possibility that some of them may be twenty-five thousand years old.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , January 1943 , pp. 209 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1943

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References

1 Kroeber, 1940, See Bibliography, pp. 291–295, following.

2 Schultz and Eiseley, 1935.

3 Clark, 1936.

4 Ibid.

5 Romer, 1933.

6 The same argument found currency in connection with the earlier Florida problems. Here the presence of a water-bound peninsula served as persuasive argument.

7 Clark, 1940, p. 128.

8 Leakey, 1936, p. 26; Hornell, 1941, p. 234; Antonius, 1938, pp. 7–8.

9 Colbert 1940, p. 103: “Then at the end of the Ice Age when the last of the great continental glaciers was retreating to its present arctic limits there was a relatively sudden and widespread extinction of mammoths throughout the world …Was man concerned with their extinction? It seems hardly probable.“

10 Thom, 1926, pp. 35–37.

11 Earl Morris (1939, p. 11), makes the following suggestive comment: “As I see it, the process of climatic change and desiccation operative toward the very close of the Pleistocene brought about a concentration of the fauna in the most favorable localities. One of these stretched from north to south over the relatively high plains which parallel the eastern side of the Rockies, namely, that region in which the Folsom and related types of dart points appear to be most common. Conditions in such places would have been much like those existent today on the East African game ranges. Countless thousands of animals would have foraged upon the grasslands and congregated about the ponds and waterholes. Here were ideal hunting grounds and to them the scanty human population would inevitably have been drawn …

“The question arises, why have not remains comparably old been found nearer to the heart of the Pueblo area? It is not impossible that discoveries which will meet these requirements will be made as time goes on, but if not there need be no cause for surprise. Evidently the region, because of its relatively great elevation and tendency to aridity, would never have been a teeming game country and so would have offered little attraction to a purely hunting people. It was not until man had become possessed of the power to provide his own food supply that the mesa-canyon country became an alluring retreat. The line of descent, from the early hunters to the first agriculturalists will probably always remain obscure.”

12 Lohman and Frye, 1940, pp. 846–847, also p. 854. Many others including Leighton confirm this view.

13 Smith, H. T. U., 1938; Eiseley, 1939.

14 Antevs, 1935, pp. 310–311.

15 Schultz and Howard (1935, p. 293): “It is interesting to note that many of the cave forms now living in regions other than the Guadalupe Mountains are found to the north and in many cases in the higher mountains. Several of these species and varieties now live in life zones as high as the arctic Alpine Zone. This is a strong indication that the climate in the region of the cave, during the time of the Pre-Basket Maker occupation was much different than it is today.“