How comes it that, with the exception of hrief notices by Morton,'
the subjoined unequivocal instance of American fossil man has been
generally overlooked for a quarter of a century ? His fossil hones
were discovered by Capt. J. D. Elliott, H. S. M., and are now in the
Academy of Matural Sciences at Philadelphia: eight fossilized human
relics, besides
“ A specimen of the rock of which the mound is composed, and in which the skeletons
are imbedded. It consists of fragments of shells united by a stalactic matter.”
Dr: Meigs philosophically remarked, twenty-six years ago: —
The present specimens are particularly interesting, inasmuch as they belong to the American
continent, and as adding another link to that chain of testimony concerning the early
occupation of this soil, of which the remains are so few and unsatisfactory, but of which
another link, a strong analogue exists in the Island of Guadaloupe, in good measure neglected
or disregarded, on account of its loneliness or want of connection with similar
facts.” *
Here, then, is one “ homo Diluvii negator,” to he coupled with Dr.
Dowler’s sub-cypress Indian, who dwelt on the site of Hew Orleans
57,600 years ago.
The next most important and valuable contribution to this department
of knowledge, in every point of view, has been made by the
distinguished Danish naturalist, Dr. Lund, who has given'an interesting
account of the calcareous caves of Brazil, so peculiarly rich in
animal remains. He discovered human fossils in eight different localities,
all hearing marks of a geological antiquity. In some instances,
the human hones were not accompanied by those of animals. In the
province of Minas Geraes, human skeletons, in a fossil state, were
found among the remains of forty-four species of extinct animals,
among which was a fossil horse. This learned traveller discovered
both the human and the animal reliques under circumstances which
lead to the irresistible conclusion that all of them were once contemporaneous
inhabitants of the region in which their several vestiges
occur. With respect to the race of these fossil men, Dr. Lund found
that the form of the cranium differed in no respect from the acknowledged
American type; proper allowance being made for the artificial
depression of the forehead. The peculiarity in the arrangement of
the teeth has been noticed elsewhere.
In a cave on the borders of a lake called Lagoa Santa, Dr. Lund
again collected multifarious human hones, in the same condition with
those of numerous extinct species of animals. They belonged to at
least thirty different individuals, of every age, from creeping infancy
to tottering decrepitude, and of both sexes; and were evidently de*
An Account of some Human Bones, found on the Coast of Brazil, near Santas; latitude
24°*30/ / S., longitude 46° W. By C. D. Meigs, M. D. Read 7th December, 1827 : Trans.
Amer. Philos. Soc.; Philad. 1830, iii. pp. 286-291.
posited where the bodies lay with the soft parts entire: immense
blocks of stone with which Mature had partly covered them, hearing
unanswerable testimony to the great revolutions which the cave had
undergone since their introduction into it.
These hones were thoroughly incorporated with a very hard breccia,
every one in the fossil state. A single specimen of an ^ extinct
family of apes, callithrix primcevus, was found among them; hut large
numbers of rodents, carnivora, and tardigrades, were intermixed promiscuously
with the human fossils. All their geological relations unite
to show, that they were entombed in their present position at a time
long previous to the formation of that lake on whose borders the
cavern is situated; thereby leaving no doubt of the coexistence, in
life, of the whole of the beings thus associated in death. These facts
establish not only that South America was inhabited by an ancient
people, long before the discovery of the Hew Continent, or that the
population of this part of the world must have preceded all historical
notice of their existence: they demonstrate that aboriginal man m
America antedates the Mississippi alluvia, because his hones are fo ssilized
; and that he can even boast of a geological antiquity, because
numerous species of animals have been blotted from creation since
American humanity’s first appearance. The form of these crania,
moreover, proves that the general type of races inhabiting America
at that inconceivably-remote era was. the same which prevailed at the
period of the Columbian discovery: and this consideration may spare
science the trouble of any further speculation on the modus through
which the Hew World became peopled by immigration from the Old ;
for, after carrying backwards the existence of a people monumentally
into the very night of time, when we find that they have also pre- ■
served the same T y p e back to a more remote, even to a geological,
period, there can be no necessity for going abroad to seek their origin.
Thus much information, up o n fossil man in America, was common
property of th e . authors of this volume and the writer, until March,
1853.: and such, in substance, were the consequent ethnological deductions
in which they coincided. However convinced^ themselves,
in regard to the real fossiliferous antiquity of the os innominatum
unearthed by Dr. Dickeson from the bluffs near Matehez, they were
aware of the conditions obnoxious to its special acceptance as evidence
in court; and would, therefore, have cheerfully resigned, to
their fellow-continentals of South America, the honor of exhibiting
the oldest human remains upon the oldest continent, but for an unanticipated
event, which enables Horth America to claim (in human
palaeontology at least) a republican equality.
Prof. Agassiz, during March and April, favored Mobile with a