Archaeological Observations on the Problem of Post-Glacial Extinction

Abstract

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.”