The Irish republic. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1867-18??, 1868-02-29
Antiquity Of Man in America.
THE MoUND-BUILDERs AND THEIR REL
From the Chicago Tribune.


recent meeting at the Academy of Sciences Chicago
Colonel Foster read the following interesting paper
Colonel Foster said that he had brought there with him
certain relics of the undbuilders which he thought
evnced higher degree of civilization than ANYTHING vet
Instead of limiting his remarks the relics he pro-
posed speak generally of the antiquity of man in
America Most of them had been educated to believe in
the origin of man. but late explorations in Europe
showed that opinion to be untenabe In the valley drift of
the Somme in Belgian caves and in England human re-
mains had been found associated with the relics of extinct
mammaliawith species of fossil elephants with rhino-
cer BEARS hyenas etc. together with the musk OK and
reindeer found only i'm polar regions That showed
there had been marked climatic changes
They occurred period infinitely back of historic time
Man survived changes destroyed the and was
again to be found surrounded with fauna and fora
In Danish swamp flint heads found among the trunks
of strangers to Danish soil In the large oyster
heaps found the split bones of birds and animals thus
cleft to extract the There also occurred the flint
instruments of man. The same shell accumuatons appeared
the Swedish coast and showed that had gained feet
in vertical elevation He also referred the acustrine vii
lagos the Swiss waters in the of which only
implements had been found showing that they had
passed beyond the stone age while in others bronze hache
had been discovered
Deep down in the Nile mud had the remains of men been
found to which the pyramids young In 1854 borng
made between Heliopos and Memphis. They
carried to depth of seveny-two feet and did not get
through the Nile mud At every depth fragments of pottery
found. The deposit of mud calculated at two and
one-half inches century The pieces of pottery found at
the lowest depths would thus be $4,000 years old Compared
with it the Thebes of Homer modern.
During the past season in California deep the gold drift
overows of lava. If it carried back the epoch of the
introduction of a time than any European
observations While there abundant evidences of the
glacaton of great parts of this continent those phenomena
wanting in California though the Rocky Mountains
acted barrier But glaciers covered in the
Sierra Nevada and crushed up the gold and carried
them down. That grinding up might be referred to the
glacial period 1t probabethat comparative tranquility
followed those violent phenomena The valleys filled
with modified drift. Those deposits served mainly the
grave of the fossil elephant while the masodon found
in swamps At Nachez there terrace of sixty feet
where Doctor Dixon obtained the pelvic bone of a
intermngled with bones of the masodon and megaonyx
Sir Charles yell had attempted explain away but
now ready to renounce his old opinion.
The bones of great mastodon found in this country
with flint heads and charcoal he had been killed by the
aborgines. In excavang the Ohio canal the workmen
passed through peat swamp and found the jaw of the
teroides ohonss and masodon Among the bones the
ulna of
During the early American period of man. he had among
his contemporaries the leafeatng megaherum, the horse
colossal on the mastodon etc. In excavatng the founda
tons of the New Orleans gaswork human skeleton
found sixteen feet below the surface and with charcoal
According to the rate OF increase OF the Mississippi Dea
it have been 600 years DID, In the cacareou
gomerate of the Florida Count Pourtaes found
human tooth, which must have been 10000 years old.
Next the time of the mound-builders whose works
occupied the most superficial of the auval deposits He
thought highly of the degree of civilization they had attained
Their works extended from Central New York the Missis
sippi Valley and from Minnesota to the Gulf The same
motives influenced them in choosing location, which after
wards actuated the whites Many of the principal in
Ohio, such Cincinnati, Marietta, Chlcohe, Newark etc.
built their old works He spoke with admiration of
their extensive structures Newark whose solid contents
must equal those of the Pyramid of Cheops.
His inference that nomadc people could have
structed them supposed the Indian required ten
square miles for subsistence Yet their agriculture must
have been prosecuted disadvantage The horse and
which had existed had disappeared There only the
musk which SO low down and the to be
domesticated bison.
There silicous deposit in the coal basin of Ohio in
which pits had been sunk whence the moundbuder got the
material for arrowheads. There also immense &C
cumulaons of their clippings with dendrtic marks which
showed that they had modern origin These people
employed porphyry in the manufacture of their hatchets
polishing them to sharp edge They used copper
sively for bracelets chise and knives but unable
harden it, having TIM They had knowledge of lead
zinc had there been the evidence shown that they
knew of IRON The commercial intercourse maintained by
them extended the whole country New England mica
Lake Superior "copper" and Gulf of Mexico shells had been
found in Ohio They possessed hitherto almost unsupported