The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1902-08-31
Especial Correspondence.)

KANSAS CITY, Mo-, Aug. 2S.-A
party of scientists known and recog-
nized as authorities on geology has
just returned from a visit to Lansing,
Kan, where an examination was made
of the Lansing SKULL as the prehis-
tcric relic has become to be known.
The members of the party were Prof.
M. H Winchell, of Minneapolis, state
geologist of Minnesota since 1872 and
nowr president of the Geological So
ciety of America; Prof. Warren Up
ham, Of st. Paul, who spent fifteen
years in geological surveys and has
published work which is almost a
text book on the glacial period; Prof.
S. W. Williston, the pantheologist of
the University of Kansas; Prof Eras-
mus Harvard, who holds the chair of
mineralogy at the same university, and
M. c. Lang, curator of the Kansas
university.
1t has proved to the complete sat-
faction of the party that the human
bones found are the skeleton of a man
who lived in the glacial period, or
about $4,000 years ago, and that this
skeleton is the oldest ever found on the
North American continent. They unite
in pronouncing it the most important
geological discovery ever made in
America. The proof that man existed
on this continent thousands of years
previous to any date which has here
tofore been set as the time of his life
is complete. These men did not go to
Lansing with the idea that they were
investigating any important find.
Rather they were inclined to believe
that the skeleton was a remnant of a
much later period than the glacial.
Some of them had theories as to how
modern skeleton might have found
its way into the place where the bones
were found, and they worked to sup
port those ideas until conclusive proof
showed them to be untrue.
Older in European Countries.
Man is known to have existed in
Europe 100000 years ago-Iong before
the time when sheets of ice covered
the land to depths of hundreds of feet
In America no trace of human habita-
ton in the form OF skeletons has here
tofore been found 1t has generally
been believed that man did not exist
here then. Now it is known that he
did, and from the formation In which
the bones were found it is practically
established that this particular man
who left his skeleton imbedded in the
earth, lived and died at a period when
the ice sheet had temporarily receded
northward and extended only to the
middle of Iowa. In what biologists
call the Iowan period" when the ice
had melted away in Missouri, the man
carried out his destiny and died at an
advanced age. He might have been
drowned in the great food of water
Which swept down from the north as
result of the melting ice. One of the
scientists thinks so. He might have
met with violence, for one-half his
lower jaw was found ten feet distant
from the rest of the skeleton. To sun
port the former theory is the peculiar
tact that the bones were found in a
heap, as If their owner had sunk in q
cramped position; possibly exhausted
from exertion. The Missouri river wa @
then forty feet above the highest level
known in civilized times, and the
mark, made in 1881, is fifteen feet low
er than the place where the Skeleton
was round. On this basis, if the man
was drowned he suceumbed in thfrfv-
hve feet Of water after a valiant sfrua-
gle for life. Two bundled feet of. sali-
ment plotted out even his memory for
$50 centuries.
Old Man of Moderate Height.
The man was of average stature I"
sald PTof. Willtston. He was aged
and In some ways dissimiIar from fhe
man of the present time. The lower
Jaw projected somewhat beyond the
upper, as is shown from the worn cor
ditiop Of the lower teeth. This fact
would make him carry the. head oulre
erect. The forehead sloped backward
very appTeciably. Otherwise he was
not far different from the man of the
present. 1t would appear from. the con-
ditlon of. the teeth that he INDUCED
quite freely in sand and gritty SUBJ
s's1nceN Eoass thugs might have