Man and the Glacial Period

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:

“But it is in the aqueo-glacial gravels of the Delaware River at Trenton, which were laid down contemporaneously with the terminal moraine one hundred miles farther northward, and which have been so thoroughly studied by Abbott, that the most conclusive proof of the existence of glacial man is found" (p. 23). “Excluding all doubtful cases, there remains a fairly consistent body of testimony indicating the existence of a widely distributed human population upon the North. American continent during the later Ice epoch” (p. 24). “However the doubtful cases may be neglected, the testimony is cumulative, parts of it are unimpeachable, and the proof of the existence of glacial man seems conclusive” (p. 25).

In view of the grossly erroneous statements made by Mr. McGee concerning the Nampa image (described on pages 298, 299), it is necessary for me to speak somewhat more fully of this important discovery. The details concerning the evidence were drawn out by me at length in two communications to the Boston Society of Natural History (referred to on page 297), which fill more than thirty pages of closely printed matter, while two or three years before the appearance of the volume the facts had been widely published in the New York Independent, the Scientific American, The Nation, Scribner’s Magazine, and the Atlantic Monthly, and in Washington at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in 1890. In the second communication to the Boston Society of Natural History an account was given of a personal visit to the Snake River Valley, largely for the purpose of further investigation of the evidence brought to my notice by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, and of the conditions under which the figurine was found. Among the most important results of this investigation was the discovery of numerous shells under the lava deposits, which Mr. Dall, of the United States Geological Survey, identified for me as either post-Tertiary or late Pliocene; thus throwing the superficial lava deposits of the region into the Quaternary period, and removing from the evidence the antecedent improbability which would bear so heavily against it if we were compelled to suppose that the lava of the Snake River region was all of Tertiary or even of early Quaternary age. Furthermore, the evidence of the occurrence of a great débâcle in the Snake River Valley during the Glacial period, incident upon the bursting of the banks of Lake Bonneville, goes far to remove antecedent presumptions against the occurrence of human implements in such conditions as those existing at Nampa (see below, pp. 233-237).

Mr. McGee’s misunderstanding of the evidence on one point is so gross, that I must make special reference to it. He says[AB] that this image “is alleged to have been pounded out of volcanic tuff by a heavy drill, ... under a thick Tertiary lava bed.” The statement of facts on page 298 bears no resemblance to this representation. It is there stated that there were but fifteen feet of lava, and that near the surface; that below this there was nothing but alternating beds of clay and quicksand, and that the lava is post-Tertiary. The sand-pump I should perhaps have described more fully in the book, as I had already done in the communication to the Boston Society of Natural History. It was a tube eight feet long, with a valve at the bottom three and a half inches in diameter on the inside. Through this it was the easiest thing in the world for the object, which is only one inch and a half long, to be brought up in the quicksand without injury.

The baseless assertions of Mr. McGee, involving the honesty of Messrs. Kurtz and Duffes, are even less fortunate and far more reprehensible. “It is a fact,” says Mr. McGee, “hat one of the best-known geologists of the world chanced to visit Nampa while the boring was in progress, and the figurine and the pretty fiction were laid before him. He recognized the figurine as a toy such as the neighbouring Indians give their children, and laughed at the story; whereupon the owner of the object enjoined secrecy, pleading: ‘Don’t give me away; I’ve fooled a lot of fellows already, and I’d like to fool some more.’”[AC] This well-known geologist, on being challenged by Professor Claypole[AD] to give “a full, exact, and certified statement of the conversation” above referred to, proved to be Major Powell, who responded with the following statement: “In the fall of 1889 the writer visited Boise City, in Idaho [twenty miles from Nampa]. While stopping at a hotel, some gentlemen called on him to show him a figurine which they said they had found in sinking an artesian well in the neighbourhood, at a depth, if I remember rightly, of more than three hundred feet.... When this story was told the writer, he simply jested with those who claimed to have found it. He had known the Indians that live in the neighbourhood, had seen their children play with just such figurines, and had no doubt that the little image had lately belonged to some Indian child, and said the same. While stopping at the hotel different persons spoke about it, and it was always passed off as a jest; and various comments were made about it by various people, some of them claiming that it had given them much sport, and that a good many tenderfeet had looked at it, and believed it to be genuine; and they seemed rather pleased that I had detected the hoax.”[AE]

Thus it appears that Major Powell has made no such statement, at least in public, as Mr. McGee attributes to him. It should be said, also, that Major Powell’s memory is very much at fault when he affirms that there is a close resemblance between this figurine and some of the children’s playthings among the Pocatello Indians. On the contrary, it would have been even more of a surprise to find it in the hands of these children than to find it among the prehistoric deposits on the Pacific coast.

To most well-informed people it is sufficient to know that no less high authorities than Mr. Charles Francis Adams and Mr. G. M. Gumming, General Manager for the Union Pacific line for that district, carefully investigated the evidence at the time of the discovery, and, knowing the parties, were entirely satisfied with its sufficiency. It was also subjected to careful examination by Professor F. W. Putnam, who discerned, in a deposit of an oxide of iron on various parts of the image, indubitable evidence that it was a relic which had lain for a long time in some such condition as was assigned to it in the bottom of the well—all of which is detailed in the papers referred to below, on page 297.

Finally, the discovery, both in its character and conditions, is in so many respects analogous to those made under Table Mountain, near Sonora, Cal. (described on pages 294-297), that the evidence of one locality adds cumulative force to that of the other. The strata underneath the lava in which these objects were found are all indirectly, but pretty certainly, connected with the Glacial period.[AF] No student of glacial archæology, therefore, can hereafter afford to disregard these facts from the Pacific coast.

Oberlin, Ohio, June 2, 1894.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The wide interest manifested in my treatise upon The Ice Age in North America and its Bearing upon the Antiquity of Man (of which a third edition was issued a year ago), seemed to indicate the desirability of providing for the public a smaller volume discussing the broader question of man’s entire relation to the Glacial period in Europe as well as in America. When the demand for such a volume became evident, I set about preparing for the task by spending, first, a season in special study of the lava-beds of the Pacific coast, whose relations to the Glacial period and to man’s antiquity are of such great interest; and, secondly, a summer in Europe, to enable me to compare the facts bearing upon the subject on both continents.

Of course, the chapters of the present volume relating to America cover much of the same ground gone over in the previous treatise; but the matter has been entirely rewritten and very much condensed, so as to give due proportions to all parts of the subject. It will interest some to know that most of the new material in this volume was first wrought over in my second course of Lowell Institute Lectures, given in Boston during the month of March last.

I am under great obligations to Mr. Charles Francis Adams for his aid in prosecuting investigations upon the Pacific coast of America; and also to Dr. H. W. Crosskey, of Birmingham, England, and to Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, of Bridlington, as well as to Mr. C. E. De Rance and Mr. Clement Reid, of the British Geological Survey, besides many others in England who have facilitated my investigations; but pre-eminently to Prof. Percy F. Kendall, of Stockport, who consented to prepare for me the portion of Chapter VI which relates to the glacial phenomena of the British Isles. I have no doubt of the general correctness of the views maintained by him, and little doubt, also, that his clear and forcible presentation of the facts will bring about what is scarcely less than a revolution in the views generally prevalent relating to the subject of which he treats.

For the glacial facts relating to France and Switzerland I am indebted largely to M. Falsan’s valuable compendium, La Période Glaciaire.

It goes without saying, also, that I am under the deepest obligation to the works of Prof. James Geikie upon The Great Ice Age and upon Prehistoric Europe, and to the remarkable volume of the late Mr. James Croll upon Climate and Time, as well as to the recent comprehensive geological treatises of Sir Archibald Geikie and Prof. Prestwich. Finally, I would express my gratitude for the great courtesy of Prof. Fraipont, of Liége, in assisting me to an appreciation of the facts relating to the late remarkable discovery of two entire skeletons of Paleolithic man in the grotto of Spy.

Comparative completeness is also given to the volume by the appendix on the question of man’s existence during the Tertiary period, prepared by the competent hand of Prof. Henry W. Haynes, of Boston.

I trust this brief treatise will be useful not only in interesting the general public, but in giving a clear view of the present state of progress in one department of the inquiries concerning man’s antiquity. If the conclusions reached are not as positive as could be wished, still it is both desirable and important to see what degree of indefiniteness rests upon the subject, in order that rash speculations may be avoided and future investigations directed in profitable lines.

G. Frederick Wright.

Oberlin, Ohio, May 1, 1892.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

MAPS.

MAN AND THE GLACIAL PERIOD.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

That glaciers now exist in the Alps, in the Scandinavian range, in Iceland, in the Himalayas, in New Zealand, in Patagonia, and in the mountains of Washington, British Columbia, and southeastern Alaska, and that a vast ice-sheet envelops Greenland and the Antarctic Continent, are statements which can be verified by any one who will take the trouble to visit those regions. That, at a comparatively recent date, these glaciers extended far beyond their present limits, and that others existed upon the highlands of Scotland and British America, and at one time covered a large part of the British Isles, the whole of British America, and a considerable area in the northern part of the United States, are inferences drawn from phenomena which are open to every one’s observations. That man was in existence and occupied both Europe and America during this great expansion of the northern glaciers is proved by evidence which is now beyond dispute. It is the object of the present volume to make a concise presentation of the facts which have been rapidly accumulating during the past few years relating to the Glacial period and to its connection with human history.

Before speaking of the number and present extent of existing glaciers, it will be profitable, however, to devote a little attention to the definition of terms.