1940: Anthropology

Worldwide upheavals notwithstanding, the accumulation of anthropological knowledge advanced through the year, giving continued evidence of man's perennial interest in man, his evolution, his history, and his ethnology.

Life Span of Early Man.

A subject which always arouses interest is man's life span. Doctor Franz Weidenreich of Peiping Union Medical College concludes, from a re-examination of 38 known skulls of Sinanthropus (Peking Man) and seven skulls of more recent Old Stone Age people, all found in different levels of the Choukoutien Caves in China, that for most of these men, death was not only early in life, but sudden and violent. Most of the skulls had either been shattered by clubs or pierced by some pointed stone implement. Fifteen of the skulls were of children under fourteen years old; three were less than thirty; three were between forty and fifty, and one was over fifty. We may add that because of their condition it was not always possible to classify all the adult skulls by age.

Appearance and Characteristics of Early Man.

A re-examination of the dentition of the fossil ape skulls and teeth (Australopithecus) found in South Africa by Doctor Robert Broom of the Transvaal Museum in 1936 was made by Doctors Milo Hellman and William K. Gregory. Their study confirms Broom's conclusion that the canine teeth of these apes are almost human; the molar and the lower teeth combine both human and ape-like features. As reconstructed, the upper dental arch appears markedly human in form. These investigators maintain that these Australopithecus skulls are probably primitive forms which persisted in South Africa after man himself had emerged, perhaps in some other part of the world.

Doctor Weidenreich, in pursuing these inquiries further, reports that the evolution of the special character of the human physical type, is, according to his most recent studies, strictly orthogenic, and does not alter the basic pattern which man shares with the anthropoids. He contends that man's cerebral development is primarily responsible for all the changes that have taken place in the human skull. Also, that the unusual enlargement of the brain is responsible not only for the changes in the skull itself, but for the changes in accessory skull structure, for example, the reduction in the size of the face and teeth, in contrast to those characters in fossil and living great apes. He finds also comparable changes occurring in dogs — small dogs have larger skulls in proportion to their bodies than do large dogs. With a larger skull goes the reduction in size of face and development of the teeth. He also finds similar relations and differences in other mammalian groups.

A variety of primitive surgical techniques was known and practiced by prehistoric and living primitive peoples the world over. Trephining, one of the most delicate of these techniques, is known to have been frequently practiced among the Inca in prehistoric Peru, as well as in several scattered areas in aboriginal North America. It has not hitherto been reported in prehistoric Eastern United States. Recently, however, Mrs. Alice L. Ferguson has unearthed a skull on the Maryland side of the Potomac River opposite Mt. Vernon. This skull has a triangular hole with sharp edges beveled inward where the bone had begun a new growth and healed. It is definitely pronounced as having been trephined by Doctor T. D. Stewart of the United States National Museum.

Possible evidence of human sacrifice is reported from Virginia where archaeologists have recently found charred human bones. According to some old and not too well authenticated accounts, these human sacrifices were made in the course of ceremonies for controlling the weather. These accounts state that during these ceremonies a fire circle was made and two or three young children were sacrificed to the rain god. However, Doctor T. D. Stewart of the United States National Museum offers another explanation based on bundles of human bones, both burned and unburned, which he has unearthed in burials along the York River, Virginia. He believes that when the skeletons were collected for secondary burial in grave pits, they were then probably burned ceremonially.

New Evidence of Primitive Man in America.

Geographically rather widely scattered evidence continues to accumulate on the subject of the antiquity of man in America. Such new evidence that man lived in North America during the time of mastodons and extinct American horses was reported by Doctor E. H. Sellards of the University of Texas. Excavating on the banks of Blanco Creek in Bee County, Texas, he found spear heads, scrapers, and worked flints associated with bones of extinct mammals at a level about fifteen feet below the present land surface. However, digging at greater depths in beds of Pliocene age, which preceded the great Ice Ages, he found only bones of extinct camels, horses, rhinoceroses, and deer, together with mastodon, but no evidence of the handiwork of man.

Recent field work in the Northern Basin region of South Central Oregon, under the direction of L. S. Cressman of the University of Oregon, points to the presence of early man in this area, associated with genera considered to be more characteristic of the Pleistocene than the Recent period. Evidence of such occupation was found at considerable depth, in caves in the Alvord Valley, associated with the gravel of the exposed high beach of this Pleistocene Lake. Also under Doctor Cressman's leadership a group of twelve studied the association of artifacts with extinct fauna in the lower Klamath Lake region of southern Oregon and northern California. For a short period this group was assisted by Ernest Antevs of Globe, Arizona, and other geologists. Here were found two and possibly three culture horizons. If it should be demonstrated finally that the latter is correct, it should be noted that the first horizon is represented by association of artifacts and extinct fauna; the second has no extinct fauna, and a different percentage distribution of types of projectile points; the third horizon, the most recent, has characteristic artifacts of the historic culture of the region. The remains of the first two culture horizons are found under old peat formations of the lake level of the Little Pluvial period, which began about four thousand years ago, now represented by beaches about eight feet above the present lake level. The most recent occupation is probably about two thousand years old. If, however, after further study, it is determined that only two horizons are demonstrable, the first would consist of two phases corresponding to the first two horizons described above. Chester Stock of the California Institute of Technology and Henry P. Hansen of the Oregon State College have made a correlated study of the fossil fauna in the peat beds in the search for evidence of climatological changes, such as may be shown by pollen profiles.

Folsom Man in the United States.

The story of the famous Folsom Man of the Ice Age who lived some 25,000 years ago and is known thus far only by the tools he has left buried in his camp sites, continues to unfold. An apparently new and hitherto unreported site of his activities has been discovered some twenty miles southeast of Tucumcari, New Mexico, by Doctor Frank C. Hibben, who reports finding the typical projectile points of this old culture. He also reports the discovery in a cave in the Sandia Mountains in New Mexico, another Folsom, or possibly pre-Folsom deposit. In the Sandia Cave he found a distinctive type of stone point, differing from the Folsom type, and possibly older. No human remains have been found, as yet, so like Folsom Man, Sandia Man himself must remain a mystery for the present.

Doctor F. H. H. Roberts has continued his search at the best known and most thoroughly studied Folsom camp site, known as the Lindenmeier Site in northeastern Colorado, for the burial grounds of Folsom Man himself. He has not yet succeeded in this search, but recently reported finding a stratified corner at this camp and workshop which, upon excavation, reveals evidence of repeated occupation of the site. Through an analysis of these gradually accumulated culture bearing and barren layers he has been able to prove that Folsom Man was the first and oldest occupant of this site. These Folsom hunters returned repeatedly, each time leaving some of their beautifully made stone dart points. Newly discovered are needles with eyes, proving, according to Doctor Roberts, that Folsom Man used needles with eyes during the same period when they were used by European Cave Dwellers. The Folsom occupation was followed, after a lapse of a few centuries, marked by a sterile layer, by another people who, for a short time, made a sort of degenerate Folsom point, and who may possibly have been actual descendants of Folsom Man, but who nevertheless presumably had some contact with his culture. This occupation was followed by another unoccupied period. Finally, the excavations revealed a quite different type of dart point, the work of a third occupation by a hunting people. This stratified culture sequence will enable archaeologists to establish the relative age of similar dart points found in other places.

Study of Extinct Animals.

In an attempt to determine man's association with extinct mammals. Richard McCormick Adams of the Archaeological Laboratory of the Academy of Natural Sciences of St. Louis investigated the Kimmswick bone bed in Missouri to obtain a collection of Pleistocene and Post-Pleistocene fauna, particularly to determine any possible association of man or his culture during those periods.

Among ethnological studies made during the past year among many scattered peoples the following may be mentioned. Doctor Froelich Rainey of the University of Alaska wintered with the Eskimo of Point Hope, Alaska, to study the impact of white civilization on the culture of this group; Doctor Julian H. Stewart of the Bureau of American Ethnology worked with the Carrier Indians of Canada to investigate the culture traits borrowed from the Indians of the Pacific Coast by these people; Homer G. Barnett of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Oregon studied the processes of acculturation among the Tsimshian Indians; Goesta Moberg headed a joint expedition of the Smithsonian Institution and the Royal Ethnographical Museum to French and Dutch Guiana to study the Indians living in the unexplored jungles of those countries.