The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1950-05-11
=
ISSUES.

Uith early Ohio history. Others
will appear IN forthcoming
issues.
A Clipped Bit Of Flint
Just a tiny bit of black flint,
Clipped all around, but to those in
the know, the story it had to tell
was the oldest in the world-at least
ten thousand years.
The bit of flint is four inches long,
two inches wide and an inch and a
half through at its largest end,
tapering to a point and is carefully
Clipped to an adge all around. Black
flint, or ebert, it has on all surfaces
that peculiar glazed appearance
which indicates great age.
A perfect representative of the
palaeolithic type found in Northern
France and southern England, it's
discovery marked Tuscarawas County
as the fifth place in this country
where such discoveries have been
made. The others are Trenton, New
Jersey; Madisonville, Ohio; Medora,
Indiana; and Little Falls, Minnesota.
The palaeolith is stone implement
made and lost by pre-glacial man
more than 10000 years ago, scientists
declare-and prove it.
Found by w. C. Mills, secretary
of the Archaeological Society of New
comerstown, October 27, 1889, the
Tuscarawas palaeolith was unearthed
when the C. & M. R. r. was digging
up gravel bank for ballast on its
track.
From Polar Regions
The great mass of ice which broke
off the polar ice pack thousands of
years ago and ground down over
Ohio, the Great Lakes and Canada,
brought with it silt, gravel and
stones native to the northern country
over which it travelled but foreign to
that where they were left when the
glacier finally melted.
1t was on the level bed rock of
Ohio beneath a terrace of glacial
deposits that the spearhead of flint
was found. The surface of the ter
race there was 35 feet above the
flood plain of the Tuscarawas River,
whose valley is about a mile wide
at that point.
The gravel had been deposited In
a pocket at the mouth of Burkhorn
creek, where it was protected from
subsequent erosion. 1t extended up
the creek for about mile, growing
gradually more shallow.
Mills found the flint implement in
undisturbed strata Is feet below the
surface of the terrace, thus connect
ing it at least with the period when
the terrace was in formation. 1t
was just another link in the chain
of evidence that man was in Ohio
when or before the great glacier
covered the state.
Pre-Glacial Man
From the widely separated areas
where the paeoliths have been found,
it is apparent that pre-glacial man
lived not only on the land now Ohio
but all over the eastern and central
part of America, maybe further
north and west as we'll.
The glacier brought with it great
boulders, these on it's bottom cutting
both deep and shallow grooves, al
ways parallel and running north to
south, on the level native rock bed
of the state. These are as apparent
to biologists as are elephant tracks
to an African hunter. Such great
boulders are found all over Ohio,
where they remained when the
glacier broke up and melted-stones
of absolutely foreign formation in an
area where they never belonged.
Biologists say that the Tuscarawas
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through parallel strata of sandstone
and limestone there composing the
coal formation. The summit of the
hills on either side are from 800 to
500 feet and their perpendicular
faces provide even now, shelter for
primitive men.
But in the pre-glacial period the
trough of the Tuscarawas River was
It's feet deeper than at present
that amount of glacial gravel having
been deposited along its bottom and
raising it to the present level. No
evergreens grow there now but be-
fore the great glacier swept it away,
a great forest of evergreens grew on
the Tuscarawas. Not many miles
away terraces of the same age as the
Tuscarawas-at Newcomerstown-
have in recent years yielded great
numbers of red cedar logs, still so
fresh as to be useful in manufacture
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