The Roswell daily record. [volume] (Roswell, N.M.) 1903-current, 1907-03-13

famous tstone lions OF Cochiti-. The
lions are very rudely carved, the work
manship being much inferior to that
shown upo1 the head Of the bear, but
the intentions of the sculptor are un-
mistakab1e.
1t is quite customary to speak of
the cliff jewellers of the Mesa Verde
4 other districts and the a v dwell
lers of Pajarito park as if they be-
longed to AZ same race and lived at
about the same time. They were
probably thousands of years apart.
The cliff jewellers built walled houses
on lodges On beetling cliffs, but the
cave men simply scooped out rude
holes in the rocks. Here they must
have LIVED almost like the beasts
whose burrows they initiated. Their
implements and workmanship mark
them as belonging to the paleolithic
age, using weapons of war and of the
chase and tools and implements of
rough, unpublished stone. In culture
and in material advancement they
were separated by aeo1s from the
neolithic men of the cliff dwellings,
who used weapons and implements
of polished flint and obsidia1.
Finger Prints of Prehistoric Men.
In some of the cliffs may be e
tier after tier of these rude
while in others they are all on the
same level. The doorway is ge1er-
ally from two to four feet wide, and
rarely as much as four feet high.
Sometimes the ceilings are five feet
above the floor, but four feet is the
rule, and some are even less than
that. Heac it has been argued that
the cave men were pigmies. the ev-
idence is not conclusive, but it is GER
tain that they were not giants. Not
a bone nor other human trace has
been found that sheds a particle of
light upon the question. Just within
the door is the main room of the
dwelling. Sometimes this is circular
sometimes oval, and sometimes rec
tangular. Some of the larger rooms
are more than twenty feet in diame-
ter, while others are hardly six feet
across. The large rooms each doubt
less formed a living room for the
whole family. Connecting with it
are often several smaller rooms, three
four or six feet across On account
of their small size and the absence of
! any means of lighting them, it is be-
lieved that these were used as store
rooms. Many of the living rooms
were rudely ~plastered. In some plac-
es the finger prints he LETT
in the soft plaster ages, ago are still
NISlDle anu LldIS dIS Ill a Will
the smoke of fires that went out
wnen the world was still in the hey
day of its youth. Beyond these faint
traceS-proving that these were in
truth the abodes of men-little has
been found to show what manner OF
men they we're, in what epoch they
lived, and what was the fate that OV-
ertook them. Perhaps they lived
when the petrified forests were green
wnen palms waved in the zephyrs
that swept the plains. and When the
valley of the Mississippi formed the
bed of a great salt sea.
The Ruins to be Preserved.
1t is only within recent years that
any systematic effort has been made
to make a scientific study of the cave
dwellings. OF present day investiga-
tors, Prof. Edgar L.. Hewett of the
American Society of Archaeological
! Research, is easily the leader. If his
efforts to ave a school of ~archaeolo-
gy established at Santa Fe, are sue
cessful, it may come to pass that we
will some day know as mucn about
American Antiquities as o those
of Assyria, Babylonia, and the Nile
Valley
Along the tops of the cliffs have
been trace the ruins of communal
houses, but whether these were built
by the same race or by their success
sors is uncertain. Private persons,
cowboys, ranchers and tourists have
dug and excavated among the caves
in the hope of finding pottery or 9th
er relics of value. Some have even
searched for buried treasure-iglor-
ant or forgetful of the fact that the
cave jewellers knew nothing whatever
of metals, whether base or precious.
These h~aphazard n p~urposeless ex-
cavations have resulted in the utter
destruction of many of the dwellings,
the mutilation of Photographs, and ir-
reparable loss to the cause of archae-
illogical research. To stop this van
dalism the government has taken
charge of the whole district, placing
it under the care of the c~ustodians of