Читать книгу The Mythology of Cherokee, Iroquois, Navajo, Siouan and Zuñi - James Mooney - Страница 15

More recent finds have been summarized by an eminent authority connected with the United States Bureau of Ethnology as follows: "In a post-Glacial terrace on the south shore of Lake Ontario the remains of a hearth were discovered at a depth of twenty-two feet by Mr. Tomlinson in digging a well, apparently indicating early aboriginal occupancy of the St. Lawrence basin. From the Glacial or immediately post-Glacial deposits of Ohio a number of articles of human workmanship have been reported: a grooved axe from a well twenty-two feet beneath the surface, near New London; a chipped object of waster type at Newcomerstown, at a depth of sixteen feet in Glacial gravel; chipped stones in gravels, one at Madisonville at a depth of eight feet, and another at Loveland at a depth of thirty feet. At Little Falls, Minn., flood-plain, deposits of sand and gravel are found to contain many artificial objects of quartz. This flood-plain is believed by some to have been finally abandoned by the Mississippi well back toward the close of the Glacial period in the valley, but that these finds warrant definite conclusions as to time is seriously questioned by Chamberlain. In a Missouri river-beach near Lansing, Kansas, portions of a human skeleton were recently found at a depth of twenty feet, but geologists are not agreed as to the age of the formation. At Clayton, Mo., in a deposit believed to belong to the loess, at a depth of fourteen feet, a well-finished grooved axe was found. In the Basin Range region, between the Rocky Mountains and the sierras, two discoveries that seem to bear on the antiquity of human occupancy have been reported: in a silt deposit in Walker River Valley, Nevada, believed to be of Glacial age, an obsidian implement was obtained at a depth of twenty-five feet; at Nampa, Idaho, a clay image is reported to have been brought up by a sand-pump from a depth of three hundred and twenty feet in alternating beds of clay and quicksand underlying a lava flow of late Tertiary or early Glacial age. Questions are raised by a number of geologists respecting the value of these finds."