A FEW years ago the town of Folsom, New Mexico, was put on the map. This event does not seem to have affected the struggle of this little town to retain its few houses and stores, and, no doubt, the name will be hidden away in archaeological reports long after the place itself has disappeared, for the name has been applied to a particular type of spear-point which differs from other stone points.
These Folsom points not only stand out on account of their superior workmanship, but also because so many of them have been found in association with the bones of extinct animals. This has led many scientists to express the belief that man lived in this country at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, which may or may not be actually so. Geologists have not yet worked out a time scale, showing just when the glacial period ended and the recent period began, so that the whole problem of Pleistocene man in America is in a rather vague state, and waiting to be solved by a concerted attack of geologists, palaeontologists, and archaeologists.
Much has been written on the subject, dating back to the middle of the last century or further, but the proof for the early existence of man in America has not been sufficiently definite to be generally accepted. Furthermore, where skeletal material has been recovered, competent physical anthropologists point out that there is no radical difference between that found and the skeletons of our recent Indians. This is pretty good proof that man did not live here at any very early time. In other words, we should not expect to find Neanderthal man in America. However, this does not preclude the possibility of our Indian having been here for a considerable length of time, and without any radical change in his physical make-up having occurred. How long can we say this was?
Image Number: 13156
If we knew definitely that animals such as the mammoth, ground sloth, camel, horse, musk-ox and certain types of bison actually became extinct in our Southwest as the result of the advance of the last glacier, the problem might be somewhat simplified. But the glacial advance did not occur with the suddenness of a summer ‘norther,’ and the retreat was probably gradual also, giving the animals, which had migrated into new environments, time to adjust themselves. Local glaciers may even have existed in higher areas for a long period after the main ice sheet began to retreat. Using the animals alone as a criterion to date our ‘Folsom man’ may not be very exact. There may have been some other agent, itself a result of the change in climate, which caused the gradual extinction of these animals.
This brings us to the question when the last glacial retreat began. According to some authorities the climax of the last glacial period was about twenty-five thousand years ago, the retreat of the main ice sheet ending about fifteen thousand years ago. It seems to be safe to assume that the animals above mentioned were contemporaneous with man in this country five to ten thousand years ago and that the type of spear-point referred to as the ‘Folsom point’ was made by the men who lived at that time.
The type of spear-point found at Folsom and at other places in New Mexico is as well made as anything of its kind found in America. Most of them have a groove along the faces from the base. The more generalized type is larger and does not show the wonderful control in pressure flaking that the smaller ones do. The generalized type has a very wide distribution, and comes from New England, the middle Atlantic states, through the middle states down to Mississippi and Louisiana and through many of the western states as well. Whether this type represents an earlier or a later stage has not yet been determined.
Let us hope that, with the increased interest in the question of Pleistocene man in this country, we may turn up something that will give us a definite sequence of events, at least, as far back as the time when the herds of extinct bison and horse trod the plains of the west.
The University Museum, jointly with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is interested in doing some share of the work of trying to solve this problem of early man in America, and last November sent the present writer to Clovis, New Mexico, to investigate a gravel pit which had been opened up in one of the old lake beds previously examined. Here an opportunity was offered to study the formations underlying the old lake bottom. In one stratum enormous quantities of bones of an extinct bison were exposed, along with mammoth, horse and peccary teeth. Folsom type points similar to those shown in Plate X, having been found previously in nearby lake beds, of similar composition, there seems to be an excellent chance of finding one of these points in place at this site. Further work is contemplated this spring and may give us the clue for which we are looking.
E.B.H.