Early Man in North America | Nature

DR. FRANK H. H. ROBERTS, JR., according to a communication issued by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., has discovered in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, in northern

Colorado, a habitation site and factory of ‘Folsom’ man. This discovery is of the greatest importance for American archaeology, as not only is it the oldest known habitation site in America,

but it is also the first occasion upon which there has been any indication of the mode of life of the peoples by whom the ‘Folsom’ points were made, beyond the bare fact that they were

hunting tribes of a high antiquity—a deduction from the association of these points with the bones of extinct bison, musk ox and mammoth, known to have pastured at the edge of the ice-sheet.

The ‘Folsom’ points, it will be remembered, were first discovered five years ago at Folsom in New Mexico, and since then these finely-chipped flint implements have been found, frequently in

association with extinct mammals, all over the United States from New Mexico to Virginia and Pennsylvania. It is thought by some authorities that they point to the existence of man in

America several thousand years earlier than had previously been supposed. Dr. Roberts's discovery provides something of a cultural background for these scattered finds. The site he has now

discovered rests upon a hard, chalk-like formation with about fifty feet of alluvial deposits above it. These must have been laid down very slowly. It is about a quarter of a mile in extent,

but as yet only a small part has been excavated. The relics represent several camp sites occupied over a period of years. Flint nodules from which the implements were manufactured are

plentiful. Thirty characteristic points and a great variety of scrapers, rough stone blades, drills, engraving tools and hammerstones, with a large number of broken animal bones, have been

collected.

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