Evening star., 1936-01-04
STONE-AGE TOOLS
DISCOVERED IN us.
May Be Earliest Trace OF
Human Beings in New
World.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY,
STAR Correspondent of The Star.

ST. LOLIS. January Am o!o
stone.age culture comparable to that
of the ogre-like pre-humans who In
habited Western Europe from 100000
to $4,000 years ago once may have
existed in North America.
DR.. E. B. Renaud Of the University
of Denver today reported to the an
thropological section of the American
Association for the Advancement OF
Science, discovery this Summer in
Southwestern wyoming of what may
be the earliest trace of human beings
In the New World. Strewn on the sur
face of an ancient river terrace he
found onore than 1000 stone tools
duplicating in type those made by sue
cessive population waves in Europe
over 100000 years.
That is, some of these tools picked
Up by themselves in France or West
ern Germany would be assigned with
out much question to the first inter-
glacial period nearly half million
years ago. Others, under the same cir
cumstances, would be placed at the
beginning of the last glacial period
when Western Europe was populated
by the grotesque. stopping Neanderthal
cave dwellers who Immediately pre-
ceded the human race OF today.
No Evidence on Age of Site.
DR.. Renaud was careful to stress
that he does not claim such g race
ever lived in America, or even that
his find has any very great antiquity
relative to the length of human his
tory. He has no geological evidence
as to the age Of the Wyoming site
which, because of the abundance OF
materials, evidently was used as a
workshop over many generations. The
facts at present only support the claim
that over an indefinite period at this
place human beings were making tools
hitherto known only from the sites
of the European pre-humans. Here,
however, hundreds of thousands OF
years of European cultural history may
have been telescoped into compare
lively few generations.
The tools gathered by the University
of Denver exploring party were crudely
chipped implements of ebert. quartz
lite and agate They were knives,
choppers, cleavers and the curious arti-
facts. the exact use Of which Is un-
known, known in Europe as "coups
de poing."
Some compare very closely with the
implements known in Europe as pre-
Chellean" whose geological surround
tngs indicate for them an origin dur
ing the interval between the first and
second great glaciations about 100000
years ago. The makers of this type OF
tool are entirely unknown. They may
have been related to the very primi-
tive and somewhat earlier Heidelberg
man of Germany or that chimpanzee-
like creature, the dawn man OF Eng
land
Compare to $4,000 Years Ago.
From this beginning. DR.. Renaud
compares his implements, step by step,
with those produced during the second
interglacial period in Europe and with
the first and second halves Of the
third interglacial. The series ends
with implements closely similar to
those of the so-called Mousterian pc
riod ir Western Europe, which is be-
lieved to have been about $4,000
years ago.
This was the time of the Neander-
thalers, the traditional "cave men,"
because they we're driven into the
caverns for shelter from the intense
cold which attended the southwark
of
of fantastic creatures, closer to the
apes in some respects than the human
race Of today, who had crude hunt
ing culture and knew the use of fire.
Nobody has suggested seriously that
such q race ever inhabited America,
and DR.. Renaud only goes so far as to
say that there were once human be-
ings here who made the same sort
Of tools. In Europe, toward the latter
part of the last ice age, the Neander-
thalers disappeared quite suddenly and
were replaced with races very close
to the true men of today.
During the last three years arche-
ologists have produced reliable evi-
dence that there were men in America
,contemporaneous with the mammoth
and an extinct variety of bison, and
these animals are believed to have be-
come extinct about the time of the
retreat of the last Ice sheet. These
so-called Folsom men," however, we're
makers of spear points and other i'm
: plements of an advanced type, COM
parable to those in Western Europe
sdated from the close of the last ice in
: vasion and long after the appearance
of the ancestors of the present races.
= DR.. Renaud left the question open,
with an appeal to biologists to deter
mine the date of the Wyoming terrain
. where the ancient implements were
found.