A COMMENTARY ON EARLY MAN STUDIES IN THE NORTHEAST

This paper examines some of the earlier ideas, attitudes, and discoveries of investigators in the pursuit of the earliest human inhabitants of the northeast. Some digression from that area is necessary, and since the boundaries are not well defined I shall be limited by my own inclination, experience, time available, and space. This review should be regarded as a contribution to some larger more detailed analysis to be made in the future and to be weighed along with other earlier or contemporary reviews. In the early days of the search for early man in North America, the observers and investigators were even less well trained than they are now to understand the meaning of their observations, and a great many false starts were made. Probably the most valuable result was that gradually a series of criteria were established as progress was made in the new sciences of geology and anthropology. The admonition “Seek and ye shall find” was happily carried out in the search for early man in the nineteenth century, and some of the results would have made such modern proponents of Pleistocene man as George Carter quite happy. During this period, the State Geological Survey of California, in the person of its director, J. D. Whitney, supported the idea that evidence of man could be found in Tertiary and later gravels. From the west coast to the east there were scattered finds attributed by a number of well-meaning individuals to Paleolithic or Pleistocene levels. The most famous location in the east was near Trenton, New Jersey, in gravel deposits where crude argillite implements and even some human skeletal material were found over a period of years.’ 3 These finds were approved and supported by Frederick W. Putnam4? of the Peabody Museum at Harvard, who was responsible for the extensive work there by V o k s 7 Putnam was convinced that the ancestors of the American Indian had indeed been on the Atlantic coast during glacial times. He set up an exhibit of “Paleolithic” implements in the museum, to which were later added specimens from other localities in the east and from the Ohio Valley. Putnam’s support carried considerable weight for he was connected with a reputable institution and was permanent secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Others shared Putnam’s views. Thomas Wilson, curator of archaeology at the United States National Museum, became convinced that a general formal similarity between some of the Western European hand axes found in the gravels there and forms in the United States meant that the latter were also “Paleolithic” in age.s9*60 There was considerable support for this position from others such as W. J. McGee of the U.S. Geological Survey, Professor S. W. Willistons* of the University of Kansas, who reported on “Lansing Man,” and Professor G. Frederick Wright,64v6s who espoused man’s presence in Ohio during the Paleolithic. There were, of course, individual scientists who expressed doubt on some or all of these purported finds, but two deserve the most credit for long systematic study of such claims, and of later ones. Their work served to eliminate many erroneous interpretations and to establish guidelines for identification of