• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1570 0

on the stone tools from Argentina. Holmes wrote: “Subsequent to the completion of the foregoing pages Doctor Hrdlicka drew attention to certain specimens collected by him along the barranca at Monte Hermoso, which had escaped particular notice on the writer’s part. Attention was directed also to a brief pamphlet just received from Dr. Ameghino, describing a series of similar specimens collected by him while examining this same barranca in company with Doctor Hrdlicka. Considering the nature of the specimens and the manner of their occurrence, the observations and interpretations of Doctor Ameghino are so remarkable that the writer is constrained to refer to them in some detail” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 149). Otherwise, Hrdlicka’s whole project would be shot to pieces. A report showing that Hrdlicka had, in the company of Ameghino, himself extracted undisputed stone tools from an Early Pleistocene or Late Pliocene formation would in itself have destroyed everything Hrdlicka had tried to accomplish by publishing Early Man in South America, which was nothing less than a polite but thorough demolition of Ameghino’s work.

Holmes wrote: “The objects in question are about 20 freshly-fractured chips and fragments of coarse, partially fire-reddened quartzite, a larger fragment of the same material used as a hammer, and a knife or scraper of jasper. All were found in a surface layer of gravelly sand capping the Monte Hermoso barranca, or on the broken face of the barranca itself. The latter were picked up on the ledges of the bluff face, where they had cascaded from above. The jasper knife or scraper is of a type familiar in the coast region as well as in Patagonia” (Hrdlicka 1912, pp. 149–150). It should, however, be kept in mind that it is principally the objects found in situ that concern us. The implements found lying on ledges might very well have been recent.

Holmes suggested in every possible way that all of the objects, even those found in situ, were of recent origin, pointing to their discovery in a “surface formation.” He also characterized most of the pieces of stone not as implements but rather as the “shop refuse” of recent tribes (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 150). This latter conclusion was apparently an attempt to contradict Ameghino’s view that the crude nature of the objects was supportive of their being of extremely great antiquity.

Holmes stated: “The inclusion of such objects in superficial deposits which are subject to rearrangement by the winds and by gravity is a perfectly normal and commonplace occurrence” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 150). As we have seen, it is not certain that the top layer of Ameghino’s Puelchean formation, in which implements were found by Hrdlicka at a depth of 1.5 feet, should be classified as such a superficial deposit, especially one that could be rearranged by the wind. Even the large dune surmounting the stratum in which the implements were found was covered with grass and fixed (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 363).

Getting to the real heart of the matter, Holmes stated: “Such differences as may arise between the writer’s interpretation and those of Doctor Ameghino are probably due in large measure to the fact that the points of view assumed in approaching the problem of culture and antiquity are widely at variance. Doctor Ameghino takes for granted the presence in Argentina of peoples of great antiquity and extremely primitive forms of culture and so does not hesitate to assign finds of objects displaying primitive characteristics to unidentified peoples and to great antiquity, or to assume their manufacture by methods supposed to characterize the dawn of the manual arts. To him all this is a simple and reasonable procedure” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 150). This is not a fair characterization of Ameghino’s work, for it is quite clear that in addition to the form of tools he also took into consideration their geological position, which for him served as the chief indicator of their age. If one finds stone implements in geological strata of a certain age, one is certainly justified in attributing them to a people that lived