The Association of a Human Culture with an Extinct Fauna in New Mexico

Abstract

DISCOVERIES in the Southwest in recent years have clone much to crystallize opinion regarding the length of time man has been in the New World. However, it is obvious that many more facts must be gathered before anything like a clear sequence of events, prior to the Christian Era, can be established. It is recognized that an absolute chronology is not essential; nevertheless, it is necessary for the ultimate understanding of American prehistory that the relative order of our earlier cultural complexes be more clearly defined. To follow the thread of the story of man prior to the Basket Makers of the Southwest becomes a complicated affair, involving factors having to do with geology and paleontology as well as archeology. It is proposed to examine briefly here the problem of mal 's antiquity in North America with reference to the results obtained at sites near Clovis and Carlsbad, New Mexico. However, before doing this it may be well to take a brief glance at the discovery which has given the greatest impetus to work upon the problem in recent years, namely, that made near the little town of Folsom, New Mexico. This discovery was made in 1925 by local residents of Raton, New Mexico, and reported to J. D. Figgins, of the Colorado Museum of. Natural History. In the course of the next few years careful work was carried on by the above museum and by the American Museum of Natural History, under Barnum Brown. Some thirty skeletons of an extinct bison and a number of highly specialized spearpoints were found in association under eight to twelve feet of restratified deposits. The spearpoints have come to be known as Folsom points, the chief characteristic being a thin leaf-shaped