Cover of The Great Paleolithic War
The Great Paleolithic War How Science Forged an Understanding of America's Ice Age Past
by David J. Meltzer
University of Chicago Press, 2015
Cloth: 978-0-226-29322-6 | Electronic: 978-0-226-29336-3
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.001.0001

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ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Following the discovery in Europe in the late 1850s that humanity had roots predating known history and reaching deep into the Pleistocene era, scientists wondered whether North American prehistory might be just as ancient. And why not? The geological strata seemed exactly analogous between America and Europe, which would lead one to believe that North American humanity ought to be as old as the European variety. This idea set off an eager race for evidence of the people who might have occupied North America during the Ice Age—a long, and, as it turned out, bitter and controversial search.
           
In The Great Paleolithic War, David J. Meltzer tells the story of a scientific quest that set off one of the longest-running feuds in the history of American anthropology, one so vicious at times that anthropologists were deliberately frightened away from investigating potential sites. Through his book, we come to understand how and why this controversy developed and stubbornly persisted for as long as it did; and how, in the process, it revolutionized American archaeology.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

David J. Meltzer is the Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory at Southern Methodist University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Folsom and First Peoples in a New World. He lives in Dallas.

REVIEWS

"Meltzer’s book is the first detailed and comprehensive historical examination of the scientific debate over whether humans were present in the Americas during the Pleistocene, and the only history that fully recognizes and adequately treats the extent to which this debate played out not only among archaeologists, but involved complex interactions between archeologists, glacial geologists, Pleistocene paleontologists, and anthropologists. This is an important and much-needed contribution that fills a notable gap in the history of anthropology and archeology."
— Matthew Goodrum, Virginia Tech

"Meltzer has given us the most detailed historical interpretation of the tumultuous, half-century search for Paleolithic man in America that we are ever likely to receive. Through patient archival digging and first-hand field knowledge, archaeologist and historian Meltzer weighs and balances the evidence--archaeological, paleontological, geological, and most importantly psychological--to reveal finally his critical conclusion: status matters. Controversy in science is settled chiefly when those most competent to judge, and in position to do so, decide it is time to settle it. A superb achievement, with implications far beyond the arcanae of archaeology."
— Curtis M. Hinsley, author of The Lost Itinerary of Frank Hamilton Cushing

"Readers clinging to the notion that science is a peaceful pursuit of the truth will be shocked by the story told in David J. Meltzer’s The Great Paleolithic War, which depicts science 'red in tooth and claw.' Denouncing one another as fakers, frauds, and charlatans, American archaeologists, anthropologists, glacial geologists, and vertebrate paleontologists fought to ascertain when humans first appeared in North America. Focusing on the controversies between the 1870s, when the debate erupted, and the late 1920s, when discoveries in New Mexico resolved it in favor of a Pleistocene antiquity of humans in the New World, the distinguished archaeologist Meltzer provides a riveting account of this momentous episode in the history of American science."
— Ronald L. Numbers, University of Madison - Wisconsin

"Meltzer's new book is a meticulous study of the controversy over human antiquity in America, a dispute that transformed North American archaeology as a practice and discipline, tracing it from 1862-1941. The Great Paleolithic War traces the heated and multi-disciplinary debates over the existence of a Pleistocene human antiquity in North America. Meltzer’s book is a thick history that introduces readers not only to the major conceptual, epistemological, and methodological issues at stake in the controversy, but also to the figures who debated the nature and scope of human antiquity in America. Anyone with an interest in the history of archaeology or the study of human origins should check it out!"
— New Books Network

"Meltzer is at the forefront of research into the colonization and early settlement of North America. This book is the outcome of immense scholarship and meticulous research. It is also a labor of love; this is not a dry catalogue of past errors and triumphs, but a gripping account of the protagonists and the issues, claims, and counter-claims with which they grappled. This is not only a great read, and a brilliant piece of scholarship, but also a mirror image of what our European faced (and still face) when documenting our deep past."
— Antiquity

"Meltzer has produced a magnum opus—a 700-page, exhaustively researched and documented history of 'The Great Paleolithic War'. It is brilliantly written with his characteristic wit and gentle humor. It is a history of competition, jealousy, spite, irreconcilable interpretations, and sometimes grudging agreement, between and among members of various warring cliques of scientists. In sum, Meltzer has given us a superb, beautifully documented and elegant essay on the sociology of knowledge-making in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American archaeology and Pleistocene geology."
— American Antiquity

"Meltzer’s book sheds new light on an important controversy that influenced the development of the study of the ancient past. The Great Paleolithic War not only provides a detailed and well-grounded intellectual history of North American archeology, but it can also be read as an epistemological laboratory in which it is possible to explore the different epistemologies that constrain and expand the human deep past."
— Endeavour

"Meltzer has obviously been hard at work on this book for many years. His erudition and his care show through. To call his bibliography extensive is an understatement; he has read and quotes from books, journals, and the papers of even minor participants. Metzler provides a model for how others might well analyze the resolution of controversies. He mastered several sciences in order to describe the interactions as well as the ambitions of many men as they argued bitterly. Even those not particularly drawn to archaeology can profit from reading this book and examining its construction."
— Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

"In this volume, Meltzer weaves...an elegant tapestry and highly engaging chronicle of the rise and fall of the American Paleolithic and the ultimate resolution of the co-existence of early Native Americans with the late Ice Age bestiary. [In this] richly documented volume, I find his summary of the role(s) of geology in resolving the Paleolithic question to be both insightful and singularly impressive."
— American Anthropologist

"Scientific history is rarely both riveting and magisterial, but this book is an exception. With an engaging, indeed spellbinding prose style, Meltzer covers one of the greatest controversies in archaeology, the recognition and acceptance of Pleistocene human occupations in the Americas. He does so in encyclopedic but never boring detail . . . . As Churchill reputedly said, 'History shall be kind to me, for I intend to write it.' I suspect history will be similarly kind to Meltzer, for writing so prolifically and sharing his thoughts so openly, and in the process consciously setting research approaches and agendas about how the study of the early settlement of the Americas should proceed. We need more people in our field writing books like this on the history of American archaeology."
— Journal of Anthropological Research

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Roster of Individuals


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0001
[Narrative, historiographic method, interdisciplinary, data of history]
Historians of science find controversies to be fertile ground, though few have explored controversies within the history of archaeology. This chapter briefly introduces the dispute over human antiquity: when and why it emerged, and how efforts to resolved it rippled across multiple disciplines and decades. It explains the twofold approach to be taken in the book: to provide a detailed historical narrative of the controversy, and to explore the broader themes, processes and context of the dispute and its resolution. Accordingly, it explains why the focus is not just on the empirical, methodological and theoretical issues in dispute, though these weigh heavily throughout, for by the end empirical and conceptual knowledge was gained (albeit through many fits and starts) and a Pleistocene-age site was recognized for what it was. Nor as this chapter explains is the focus on any one person, site, institution or discipline, but instead on the interdisciplinary community of scientists who over several generations coalesced around the problem and sought to resolve it, for this problem demanded an interdisciplinary answer. And it identifies the historiographic methods used and the body of data tapped in undertaking this study, and the scope and structure of the volume. (pages 1 - 22)
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1.1 - Beginning and ending

1.2 - A powerful lens

1.3 - Approaching the inquiry

1.4 - The data of history

1.5 - The scope and structure of controversy


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0002
[Georges Cuvier, extinct Ice Age animals, Louis Agassiz , glacial deposits, Pleistocene, Smithsonian Institution, Joseph Henry, Native Americans, European Paleolithic]
By the early 1800s Georges Cuvier had proven animal extinction and Louis Agassiz a onetime Ice Age, putting in place key elements for telling past time. A new dimension of archaeology opened in mid-century with discoveries in Europe of stone artifacts associated with extinct animals in glacial deposits. The earliest traces of humanity abruptly plunged deep into the Pleistocene. The Smithsonian's Joseph Henry introduced those discoveries to America, and spurred him to send out a circular in 1862 to the institutions network of correspondents explaining what sorts of evidence to seek that might reveal a deep human antiquity on this continent. There had been occasional finds hinting at such, and so too did the great diversity of Native American languages and culture. Over the next decade the archaeological collections of the Smithsonian grew rapidly, but while some of the artifacts appeared to match "Stone Age" artifacts of Europe, similar artifacts were still being made by Native Americans, rendering their antiquity uncertain without geological evidence. By the late 1870s Henry was skeptical any would be found. Yet, just as he was abandoning hope a onetime physician was finding what appeared to be traces of Paleolithic artifacts in the Delaware Valley. (pages 23 - 40)
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2.1 - Establishing the parameters

2.2 - Bringing the Paleolithic to America

2.3 - Rude Americans?

2.4 - Looking anew

2.5 - Where to next?


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0003
[Charles Abbott, American Paleolithic, glacial history, astronomical theory of glaciation, Trenton Gravel site, George Frederick Wright, Frederick Ward Putnam, Boston Society of Natural History]
In 1872, Charles Abbott started finding artifacts in Delaware River gravels at Trenton, NJ, similar to European paleoliths. That discovery caught the eye of Harvard's Frederic Putnam, who provided financial aid, moral support and scientific respectability to the cause. Geologist George F. Wright seized the challenge of ascertaining the age of Abbott's finds. It was no easy task. Trenton was south of the limit of glacial advance by 60 miles, and had multiple gravel layers. Which were the same age as the glacier, and which were more recent? How did paleoliths fit that sequence, and the broader history of North American glaciation, then becoming more complicated with the realization there had been more than one glacial episode? The age of Abbott's paleoliths landed in a tug of war between competing camps. Nonetheless, he was certain the specimens were glacial in age, and in January of 1881 they took center stage at a Boston Society of Natural History meeting, where the city's scientific elite rose to bear witness to his discoveries. In scarcely a decade Abbott had shown that the future of American archaeology might be deep in its geological past. (pages 41 - 70)
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3.1 - Charles Abbott builds the foundation

3.2 - Frederic Ward Putnam comes aboard

3.3 - Firming up the structure

3.4 - The Trenton paleoliths go public

3.5 - Subdividing the glacial epoch

3.6 - Abbott’s Primitive Industry

3.7 - The sound of the applause

3.8 - The creed of George Frederick Wright

3.9 - Seeking his just reward


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0004
[Little Falls site, New Comerstown site, United States Geological Survey (USGS), Thomas Chamberlin, multiple glacial periods, Cincinnati Ice Dam, American Paleolithic]
In the 1880s paleoliths were reported from widely scattered sites such as Little Falls, Minnesota and New Comerstown, Ohio. Some were found in geological circumstances that suggested a late Pleistocene antiquity, others hinted of an older human presence, perhaps dating to a previous glacial period. Assuming there were multiple glacial periods. The 1880s also saw the difference of opinion regarding the number and timing of glacial episodes become more sharply defined. Most geologists, led by Thomas Chamberlin of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Glacial Division considered the question resolved in favor of multiple glacial episodes. G.F. Wright steadfastly held to the idea there'd been one glacial advance, even while employed by the Glacial Division. His claims, such as the idea the glacier dammed the Ohio River at Cincinnati, were angrily disputed by Chamberlin who, because of attacks on the USGS on Capitol Hill, tied him to awkwardly to Wright. Their relationship grew heated as Wright began to fashion himself a public spokesman for glacial geology. Yet, even as the geological situation became increasingly contentious, an archaeological consensus was emerging. By decade's end the American Paleolithic was almost universally accepted: the only lingering question was how far back in time it began. (pages 71 - 123)
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4.1 - The Paleolithic comes in quartz

4.2 - Lest Trenton be forgotten

4.3 - The American Paleolithic comes together

4.4 - Abbott takes center stage

4.5 - Pushing the antiquity envelope

4.6 - Thomas Chamberlin and the question of glacial history

4.7 - The Kettle Moraine moves east

4.8 - Mapping the Pennsylvania moraine

4.9 - An uneasy association

4.10 - Hard times for the USGS

4.11 - Wrangling over the glacial boundary

4.12 - Synthesis and antithesis

4.13 - Wright’s Ice Age in North America

4.14 - The bandwagon rolls

4.15 - Looking to the future of the past


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0005
[William Henry Holmes, Bureau of Ethnology (BAE), Piney Branch quarry site, manufacturing failures, Man and the glacial period, Panic of 1893]
In the fall of 1889, William H. Holmes of the Bureau of Ethnology (BAE) began excavations at the Piney Branch quartzite quarry in Washington, DC. This site of recent age was littered with manufacturing failures that strongly resembled supposedly ancient paleoliths: this suggested artifact form had no inherent chronological meaning. Without geological evidence to confirm its antiquity, the American Paleolithic was adrift in time. Proponents disagreed, insisting the similarity between paleoliths and Piney Branch quarry debris was purely coincidental. Holmes set out to prove otherwise on a scorched-earth march through the sites of the American Paleolithic. Although the dispute resolved itself as a geological issue, geology provided little guidance. It was uncertain whether the paleoliths were in situ and whether the artifact-enclosing formations were Pleistocene in age, which in turn were entangled in the ongoing debate over the number of glacial periods. Debate exploded with the publication of Wright's Man and the glacial period in 1892, and became a wide-ranging battle over theory, method and evidence, the role of amateurs in science, and the perceived heavy-handedness of government scientists, all complicated by institutional rivalries and the economic Panic of 1893. By mid-decade the talk was fiery and positions had hardened beyond compromise. (pages 124 - 191)
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5.1 - The Bureau of Ethnology takes the field

5.2 - William Henry Holmes and the lessons of Piney Branch

5.3 - Abbott returns fire

5.4 - The gathering storm

5.5 - The preliminary skirmish

5.6 - The Great Paleolithic War

5.7 - The “Betinseled Charlatan” affair

5.8 - Mounting a defense

5.9 - Collateral damage

5.10 - Holmes’s march through the American Paleolithic

5.11 - Point/counterpoint

5.12 - On the unity or diversity of the glacial period

5.13 - Showdown in Madison

5.14 - Interregnum

5.15 - Returning to the field of battle

5.16 - An end and a beginning


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0006
[Lansing site, Long's Hill site, loess, human evolution , anatomical change, Aleš Hrdlička]
At the turn of the century the human antiquity controversy took a sharp turn; attention shifted to sites producing ancient-looking human skeletal remains in what appeared to be Pleistocene-aged loess at Lansing, Kansas, and Long’s Hill, Nebraska. The shift from paleoliths to skeletal remains, and from sites in gravels to ones in loess triggered a new round of debate at once familiar and not. There were the usual questions about whether the remains were in primary context and how old the deposits were. Confounding matters. archaeological claims once more became entangled in geological disputes, this time over whether loess originated in wind or glacial meltwater, its age(s), and its relation to glacial history. On the archaeological side discussion veered into the unfamiliar terrain of what a Pleistocene age human skeleton ought to look like, a difficult question to answer given the meager fossil record then known, and uncertainty over the rate of anatomical change over time, and how long ago modern humans appeared. Aleš Hrdlička, a young medical doctor introduced to the controversy by Putnam, but soon hired by Holmes, became a central figure in the dispute. He visited, evaluated and criticized virtually every newly-discovered site with purportedly ancient skeletal remains. (pages 192 - 252)
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6.1 - Human skeletal remains emerge from the Trenton Gravel

6.2 - Aleš Hrdlička

6.3 - The Trenton femur: A preliminary look

6.4 - Hrdlička finds his method

6.5 - Holmes gets his man

6.6 - Cro- Magnons in Kansas?

6.7 - On the origin and age of loess

6.8 - Loess and the Lansing man

6.9 - Remedial lessons

6.10 - Dressed for battle, no one to fight

6.11 - Neanderthals in Nebraska?

6.12 - Hrdlička’s Skeletal Remains Suggesting or Attributed to Early Man in North America

6.13 - Over before it began

6.14 - Lansing to Long’s Hill: Loess to dust

6.15 - Trenton redux?


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0007
[Oliver Hay, Pleistocene vertebrates , extinct fauna as time markers, Vero site, Elias Sellards, Melbourne site, William Henry Holmes, Aleš Hrdlička]
By the teens of the 20th century the evidence for a deep human antiquity took yet another turn, with the discovery of human skeletal remains in apparent association with extinct Pleistocene fauna. If that association could be proven, it potentially provided a more precise means of estimating the age of the remains than enclosing gravel or less. But here too there was ambiguity, for the age of Pleistocene faunas was still so little known that when it came to estimating the antiquity of the Vero site championed by Elias Sellards, it was either Early Pleistocene in age according to paleontologist Oliver Hay; Middle to Late Pleistocene by the geologists' reckoning; or Recent according to Hrdlička. The evidence from Vero and the nearby Melbourne site sparked a wide-ranging debates over how to reconcile evidence when disciplines collide, about when modern humans appeared, whether evolutionary rates in humans and non-humans were comparable, about the place of Neanderthals on the human family tree, and especially about whose evidence was superior and therefore trumped all others. Sellards retreated from the fight, but in Hay Holmes and Hrdlička met their match in stubborn self-righteousness. Worse for them, Hay lampooned their views with wicked humor. (pages 253 - 294)
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7.1 - Oliver Hay offers a faunal solution

7.2 - Men and mammoth at Vero

7.3 - A nonharmonic convergence

7.4 - Spinning the message

7.5 - Turf wars

7.6 - Finding Vero’s place on the human family tree

7.7 - Violating the sacred confines

7.8 - Eras’ ends

7.9 - Dangerous to the cause of science

7.10 - With friends like these

7.11 - Speaking of old evidence


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0008
[Folsom site, Harold Cook, Jesse Figgins, Snake Creek site, Lone Wolf Creek site, Barnum Brown , Frank Roberts, Alfred Kidder]
A flurry of discoveries in the 1920s of stone artifacts in association with extinct animals culminated in the discovery of spear points unequivocally associated with bones of an extinct bison at a site in Folsom, New Mexico. The antiquity of the bison was not precisely known but it was generally agreed to be Pleistocene in age, and its association with the points was unimpeachable. The Pleistocene barrier to human antiquity was finally broken. That end came about largely in spite of and not because of those promoting this evidence of antiquity, Harold Cook, Jesse Figgins and Oliver Hay. The trio's previous, wildly inflated claims of human antiquity at Snake Creek, Nebraska, and Lone Wolf Creek, Texas, earned the skepticism of the scientific community, led to confrontations with Holmes and Hrdlička, but also a means by which the controversy could be resolved. When the Folsom discovery was made others, paleontologist Barnum Brown and archaeologists Frank Roberts and Alfred Kidder, were called in to attest to the meaning of the find. As Folsom did not rely on inherently 'primitive' artifacts or attributes of human skeletal morphology, neither Hrdlička nor Holmes could do much more than watch from the sidelines and smolder. (pages 295 - 356)
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8.1 - Harold Cook and Jesse Figgins— willful revolutionaries

8.2 - Anthropoid apes in America?

8.3 - Another head of the Hydra

8.4 - When it rains . . .

8.5 - Bearding the lion

8.6 - What’s in a name?

8.7 - Mammoths and metates

8.8 - Baiting the trap

8.9 - From the lion’s den . . .

8.10 - . . . to the belly of the beast

8.11 - Seeking a new identity

8.12 - Hedging bets

8.13 - Will the rising tide lift all boats?

8.14 - Whereas, Folsom

8.15 - Coming apart at the (mu)seams

8.16 - Once more, with feeling

8.17 - Dead men walking

8.18 - The sound of victory, the silence of defeat


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0009
[Edgar Howard, Clovis site, Ernst Antevs, Alfred Romer, Pleistocene extinctions, Bering land bridge , Ice free corridor, Minnesota Man, Ernst Hooton, Paleoindian]
Folsom inspired dozens of investigators to search for other early sites, and a tangible lesson: to find sites like search for large mammal bones, then look for associated artifacts. Of the nearly three dozen sites found over the next decade, the most important was at Clovis, New Mexico, where Edgar Howard found points with mammoth bones, in work that set a research standard. Once attention no longer needed to focus on when it shifted to issue of how and why. Questions regarding the timing of the Pleistocene and vertebrate extinctions were tackled by Ernst Antevs and Alfred Romer. Others considered where the first Americans came from and by what route(s), exploring the possibility of a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska, and an ice free corridor between Alaska and North America south of the ice sheets. Ostensibly Pleistocene human skeletal remains appeared, such as Minnesota Man, and these Hrdlička sought to refute, though this time against a formidable adversary in Ernst Hooton. By 1941, there were answers to questions about the origin, antiquity and adaptations of early peoples that could not have been asked a dozen years earlier, and those answers established the foundation for understanding North American Paleoindians. (pages 357 - 408)
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9.1 - Lining up the shot

9.2 - “Scattered around like a dog buries bones”

9.3 - Still fighting the last war

9.4 - Not just another old site

9.5 - Refining the Pleistocene

9.6 - Converging on a chronology

9.7 - The peopling process

9.8 - Recognizing variation and change

9.9 - A Philadelphia story

9.10 - What have the bones to say?

9.11 - Profiling

9.12 - Finding the time

9.13 - Fast forward


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226293363.003.0010
[relationship of form to age, archaeological context, resolving chronology, evolution, flat past, professionalization, scientific status, institutional change]
This final chapter explores the overarching themes and underlying dimensions that help explain why controversy developed, so long defied solution, was so often bitter, and yet ultimately was resolved. Organized thematically rather than chronologically, it begins with the core empirical and conceptual issues that drove dispute such as the relationship of form (artifacts and skeletal remains) to antiquity, the challenges of resolving context and chronology, how change was perceived, why conflict arose between and within disciplines, and addresses the paradox of why thoroughgoing evolutionists denied change over time and viewed the past as flat. It then moves outward to consider broader non-epistemic influences and context, for at the outset of controversy the field was broadly defined, open and inclusive, centered in museums and local scientific societies, and largely the purview of amateurs. By the first decades of the 20th century it had become a highly focused, closed and exclusive professional discipline, one rooted in universities, and with sharply defined boundaries of scientific status. This process led to clashes, as those on both sides of the controversy sought to establish their relative status and authority over the issues in dispute, but ultimately provided the means by which controversy could be resolved. (pages 409 - 468)
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10.1 - The medium is not the message

10.2 - Challenging context

10.3 - Ascertaining antiquity

10.4 - Numbers going nowhere

10.5 - Flattening the past

10.6 - “Savaging” the present

10.7 - Hrdlička’s lament

10.8 - When disciplines collide

10.9 - Last days of the tyro

10.10 - All scientists are equal, but some are more equal than others

10.11 - “Be sure to mention Kidder”

10.12 - Victims of the Matthew Effect

10.13 - Prehistory repeats itself

10.14 - Living in an old New World

10.15 - Controversy and its resolution

Appendix: Whatever became of . . . ?

Notes

A. Manuscript sources

B. Printed sources: Primary

C. Printed sources: Secondary

Acknowledgments

Index

Book published by University of Chicago Press, 2015. Page maintained by BiblioVault.