Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/714

Rh A mining camp is the natural home of practical joking, and the notion that finds of human relics in the gravels tended to excite heated discussion would spread quickly from camp to camp until the whole region would be affected.

(12) The testimony furnished is greatly weakened by the facts (1) that the finds on which it was based were made almost wholly by inexpert observers, and (2) that all were recorded at second hand. Affidavits cannot redeem it. Nothing short of expert testimony, amply verified and vigorously stated, will convince the critical mind that a Tertiary race of men using symmetrically shaped and beautiful implements, wearing necklaces of wampum and polished beads of marble or travertine bored accurately with revolving drills, fishing with nets weighted with neatly grooved stone sinkers, and having a religious system so highly developed that at least two forms of ceremonial stones had been specialized, occupied the American continent long enough to develop this marked degree of culture without leaving numerous and distinctive traces of its existence.