36. AN OBSIDIkN IMPLEMENT FROM PLEISTOCENE DEPOSITS IN NEVADA1

By W J McGee2

Walker river has the form of a compressed horseshoe. It gathers

among the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in Eastern California,
between the fair-Lake Tahoe -- the gem of the Sierras -- and the foul

Lake Mono, and, quickly embouching from the narrow canons of its birth
into the broad valley of its principal course, passes into Nevada be-
tween the Sierras and the Wassuck mountains (or Walker River range).
Thence for 50 miles northward it meanders through the flat-bottomed

Walker valley in a shallow willow-fringed channel. Opposite the north

end of the Wassuck mountains its course swerves to the eastward and then
to the southward through a contracted valley or outer canon sweeping

around the end of the range; and the southerly course is maintained 20

miles before the river falls into the lake of the same name in which its
waters extend yet another 20 miles southward. At the toe of the horse-
shoe, around the northern extremity of the enclosed mountain range, the
previously shallow channel deepensand the river flows through a steep-
walled inner canon, reaching 300 feet in depth; and in the canon walls

the deposits of the valley are exposed in a superb series of stratified

beds from which the Pleistocene history of the region may be easily read.

The valley of Walker river, from a few miles below the embouchure
of its mountain-bound cainons to and beyond the extremity of the lake in
which its waters are evaporated, forms a part of the basin of the ex-
tinct Lake lahontan, which has been restored and immortalized by King
and Russell; and the history recorded in these deposits coincides with
that read from the mechanical sediments, the chemic precipitates, and

the ancient shore lines of other parts of the same old lake and of other
extinct lakes in the same quarter of the country. This history comprises
three principal episodes:  First, an episode of cold and wet, during

which glaciers formed within the mountains, and outletless lakes formed
or expanded in the valleys; second,  an episode of warm and dry climate,
during which the glaciers melted, the lakes were evaporated to or below
their present level, and canions were cut in the newly formed sediments;
third, a shorter episode of cold and wet, during which glaciers again

formed in the mountains, and lakes in the valleys, and another sheet of
sediments was laid down; and then came the present period of dry and

warm climate, during which the glaciers were obliterated and the lakes

evaporated, and the sediments, new and old alike, were laid open by the
rivers in their descent toward the lowest points in the mountain-bound
basins.

Some of the details of the general history are obscure, but they
are elucidated in a measure by the present condition of the region. In
the present episode of warm and dry climate, the Lake Lahontan area is

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a sun-scorched semi-desert, with scant foliage on the mountains, with
the meagre and sickly verduxecf desert plains (save where reclaimed by
irrigation) in the valleys, with rare springs on the slopes, and with
shrunken lakes of bitter water in the lowest depressions; the fauna is

still poorer in species and generally in individuals than the poor flora;
and the human population found by the white pioneers -- the "Diggers"

of the early overland pilgrims -- was perhaps the most wretched and de-
graded of the land. The present conditions of aridity in climate and

poverty in life must reflect and repeat the like conditions of the inter-
lacustral period. With the second chilling of climate and checking of
evaporation, the rivers and lakes expanded, a richer and more varied
fauna immigrated or developed, and the elephant and rhinoceros, the

camel and horse, the ox and the deer left their bones by thousands in
the marshes about the shores of the sweetened lakes; moreover, to sup-
port a fauna so rich and varied, an equally rich and varied flora must
have covered the upper valleys and clothed the lower mountains. And
this wealth of life manifestly reflected and repeated the like condi-
tion during the first episode of cold and wet. So the Walker river

deposits and their correlatives, and the present condition of the region,
together record two epochs of meagre life, one of which is past while
the other persists, and two epochs of abundant life, both long past;

and the latter have been demonstrated by physical geologists to corre-
spond with the two great ice invasions of the northeast.

On October 6th, 1882, I rode along the low scarps and higher

salients of white marl forming the walls of the inner cainon of Walker

river, some 15 miles above the head of the lake, searching for fossils;
and here and there I found within the marls a bleached and porous bone,
or within the associated brown sands an iron-stained and heavy tooth
or bone of horse, ox, elephant, or camel -- the abundance being such

that a day's collection gave as much material as could be conveniently
carried behind the saddle.  The coon walls there exhibit the follow-
ing succession:

1. Stratified loam, sand, and white silt, without fossils,
2. A discontinuous layer of calcareous tufa .   .   .   0

3. Massive, finely laminated, or obscurely stratified fine

silt or marl, generally snow-white, with fossil bones
about its base.   .   .         .   .         .

4. Somewhat ferruginous and pebbly stratified sand con-

taining numerous fossil bones .   .   .   .   .   0

5. Fine white silt, generally similar to the third member,

but occasionally interstratified with sand and gradu-
ating downward into coarse sand and gravel . .
6, An unconformity.

7. A series of white silts and brown sand, apparently

duplicating the deposits from 1 to 5, inclusive, dis-
sected by inter-lacustral erosion, and appearing only
in the canon bottom .   0   .   .     .   .   .   .

5' to 25'

. 1/li"'   2,1/2

. 20  "   50

.3

1t 20

. 10 " 200

0 " 100

The deposits above the unconformity represent the later period
cold and wet; the unconformity represents the inter-lacustral period

of
of

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warm and dry climate; and the lower series was accumulated during the
earlier period of enlarged glaciers and expanded lakes.

I forded the river to reach a little park on the northern side,

formed by the expansion of the inner gorge, Just above the greatest con-

striction of the outer canon and bounded by precipitous walls of silt and
sand. This park lies 12 miles in an air line from the mouth of the river
and half a mile above an immense salient of red-brown loam and sand which
our party had previously christened the "Vermilion Cliff" (see Fig. 2).
Three hundred yards east of the Vermilion Cliff there is a little butte
of snow-white silt, 30 feet high and 300 feet in circuit, rising from
the ferruginous ossiferous sand; and about the base of the butte many

bones were found.3   Riding around it, a slight projection, like the tip
of a slender bone, 5 feet above the base and 25 feet below the summit,

caught my eye, and on exami ation was found to be the tip of the imple-
ment illustrated in Fig. 1.

Apprediating the significance of the discovery, I at once sought
to devise means of securing corroborative testimony; but I was alone;

the camp of my side party was five hours' ride distant, and no one was
there but my packer; probably no other white man could have been found
within a day's journey; there was no photographic apparatus in the side
party; and it was the last day of a side trip and necessary to break
camp immediately on my return in order to join the main party at a

specified rendezvous 50 miles distant; and so the hope of corroborative
testimony was reluctantly abandoned.  But before extracting the object a
number of hypotheses as to the manner in which it might have become im-

bedded were formulated, in order that the validity of each might be tested
in the process of removal. Among these were the following: (1) That
it was embraced in a veneer of mud such as sometimes forms on vertical

cliffs of unconsolidated materials during or after rain storms; (2) that
it was imbedded in a pseudo stratum of debris blown or washed into a

horizontal crevice in the face of the cliff; (3) that it had worlked down
a burrow once communicating with the surface and now exposed by the

recession of the cliff; (4) that it had fallen into a vertical or oblique

fissure or joint such as sometimes intersects the deposits in the vicinity;
and (5) that it had been shot or otherwise projected into its position

either alone or attached to a shaft which subsequently became dislodged.
After spending perhaps half an hour in reflection, I proceeded to exhume

the object by cutting away the sun-dried silt carefully, bit by bit, with
the blade of a pocket knife. During this process the first four of the
foregoing hypotheses were found to be disproved by the absence of a mud
veneer and by the homogeneity of the finely laminated deposit, while the
fifth appeared to be disproved by the position of the implement, which
was nearly horizontal (the large axis inclined perhaps 100 toward the

stem), with the tip projecting less than a third of its length from the
face of the cliff. The relation of the object to the minor structure
was studied in order to ascertain whether the laminae were disturbed

in such manner as to suggest either impact of or deposition over the ob-
ject; but the results were not decisive.

The implement is represented full size in Fig. 1. It is of massive
obsidian, or volcanic glass, and quite free from superficial incrustation

or disintegration.  In material, size, general form, mode of chipping, and

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Fig. I - Obsidian implement from

Walker Valley, Nevada.

Fig. 2-Sketch showing approximate

location of site 26-Mi-7.

freshness in appearance it is undistinguishable from the arrow points

in use to-day by the Piute Indians of the vicinity. It should be men-
tioned that this fresh aspect is paralleled by that of the fossil bones
found in the same stratum of white silt. These bones are perfectly

white, not at all mineralized and, when found in fragments not readily

identifiable, may easily be discriminated from long-weathered recent bones
by their greater porosity and less weight.

The upper series of Lahontan deposits within which the obsidian
was found are classed as Pliocene (Equus beds) by the vertebrate

paleontologist and later Pleistocene by the physical geologist; but

this discrepance is of no further significance than an indication that
the chronologies of paleontologist and geologist do not coincide. It
suffices that the later episode of cold and wet in the Lahontan basin

has been demonstrated by King, Gilbert, and Russell to correspond with
the second ice invasion of the glacial epoch.

The delay in publishing a detailed autographic account of the

discovery was not due to neglect. The object and the notes of its find-
ing were duly conveyed to the chief of party in charge of the surveys

in Lake Lahontan, Mr. I.C Russell, of the U.S. Geological Survey, but
with serious misgivings as to the propriety of publication; the reasons

for which are stated below. After consideration, Mr. Russell decided to
publish, and so the implement is figured, and the deposits in which it
was found and the fauna with which it was associated are described, in

his Geological History of Lake Lahontan (Monographs of the U.S. Geologi-
cal Survey, Vol. IX, 1885, p. 247)o About the time this matter went to
press, Mr. G.K. Gilbert, the chief of the division in which the worrk

was carried on, recommended publication in a more detailed manner and in
a medium more generally accessible to anthropologists; and in con-

sequence of this recommendation the oral communication, of which this is
a revised abstract, was presented before the Anthropological Society of
Washington November 16, 1886. A notice of this communication (prepared
by Mr. Nelson H. Darton, but published anonymously) appeared in the

Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXIII, 1887, p. 9221, and was re-

published in Nature, Vol. XXXV, 1887, p. 476. Several references to the
discovery have since been made in different scientific publications --

e.g., in the American Naturalist, Vol. XXXI, 1889, p. 458, and Proceed-
ings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol.

XXXVII, 1888, p. 295. The author has hitherto made published reference
to the matter in the Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XXXIV, 1888, pp. 23,
25, 27, and 29. Thus the discovery already has a definite place in
scientific literature.

By reason of these advance publications, the author has had per-
haps unexampled opportunities for observing the reception of the dis-
covery by scientific men; and it is perhaps an unprecedented circum-
stance that he finds his evidence receiving greater weight and more

ready acceptance from others than from himself. And by reason of his
own agency in the matter he can freely discuss the validity of the

testimony and its relevancy to the great question of the antiquity of
man without engendering personal feeling. So some of the principles

which it is believed ought to guide and guard judgment in all cases are
appended.

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It is a fair presumption that any unusual object found within, or

apparently within, an unconsolidated deposit is an adventitious inclusion:
Every cautious field geologist accustomed to the study of unconsolidated
superficial deposits quickly learns to question the verity of apparently
original inclusions; he may, it is true, exhaust the entire range of

hypotheses at his command without satisfying himself that the inclusion
is adventitious; yet he is seldom satisfied that he has exhausted the

range of possible hypotheses as to the character of the inclusion, and

hesitates long before accepting any unusual association as veritable. His
case is not that of the invertebrate paleontologist at work in the

Paleozoic rocks, to whom a single fossil may carry conviction; for not

only are the possibilities of adventitious inclusion indefinitely less in
solid strata, but the mineral character of the fossil is commonly identi-
cal with that of the matrix and so affords inherent evidence of the

verity of the association. Nowhere, indeed, in the entire range of the
complex and sometimes obscure and elusive phenomena of geology is there

more reason for withholding final judgment based upon unusual association
than in the unconsolidated superficial deposits of the earth; and it is

only where there is collateral evidence that such testimony is acceptable

to the cautious student.  Now, the sediments of Lake Lahontan are generally,
and in Walker river ca~non almost wholly, unconsolidated, and so the
probabilities are against the verity of the association.

It is a fair presumption that an isolated association is adventitious:
Nature is prodigal of phenomena and consistent in operation, and these

facts are so fully recognized by rational beings that they esteem lightly
an observation which cannot be repeated.  The first step in inductive

science is observation and the second is generalization, and if only a

single observation be made induction fails; it is true that imagination
may span continents, bridge oceans, roam the heavens, and produce addi-
tional phenomena upon which generalization may be propped, but faulty

observation and far-fetched generalization are the bane of science. When
the age of a rock formation is in question, it is not the finding of one

but of many fossils, and not by one individual but by all individuals who
may see fit to visit the locality, that the question is decided; when

Huxley demonstrated the affinity between man and the anthropoid apes, it
was not by one but by many anatomic preparations, certified not only by
his own observation but by that of all anatomists who chose to examine

them; even a discovery of so little immediate importance to man as that
of an asteroid, a comet, or the satellite of a distant planet, is not

accepted on the testimony of a single observation and finds no place in
science unless all other suitably equipped observers can repeat the ob-

servation; indeed, in the whole range of conservative science, no weighty
conclusion is based on a single observation. Now, the sediments of Lakes
Iahontan and Bonneville are laid open by numberless canons and ravines;
a dozen geologists have worked for weeks or years over these superb ex-
posures; innumerable fossils, scores of minute flexures and faults,

several unique minerals, and dozens of museum cases full of the freaks of
segregation and crystallization have been found; but only a single trace
of man has been brought to light. The force of the testimony offered by
the Nevada obsidian is greatly weakened even by the fact that its dis-

coverer spent several days before and several hours after the discovery
in careful scrutiny of the deposit whence it came without finding other

traces of human life.

It is a fair presumption that an incongruous association is ad-

ventitious: Natural phenomena are intimately related and commonly repre-
sent links of definite sequence, and this harmony is consciously or

intuitively recognized by rational beings; and so discord engenders a

suspicion that the prevailing harmony has been adventitiously interrupted.
The botanist has a term for sports and the zoologist for monstrosities;

the physicist recognizes the aberration of sound; and the paleontologist

is constantly confronted wfith anachronisms in the distribution and sequence
of organic life; but these interruptions of prevailing harmony in nature

are only considered abnormal with respect to certain laws and are collated
and systemized as bases for other laws. Yet the incongruous association

is not commonly accepted as a basis for generalization unless its verity be
established by collateral evidence. Now, the archaeologists of the present
generation have shown that man passed through certain stages of culture

which correspond vaguely with certain episodes in the Pleistocene history
of the earth; that in general paleolithic art preceded neolithic art, and
neolithic art preceded the stage of varied industries and manufactures;
and in a general way that the contemporaries of the Lahontan mammalia

used paleolithic implements, while the users of finely chipped obsidian
implements are quite recent; and so the testimony offered by the Nevada
obsidian is weakened by the incongruous association. It has already

been pointed out that "the apparently conclusive structural evidence of
the antiquity of the Nevada obsidian is opposed by its fresh aspect and
modern form." (Pop. Sci. Mon., Vol. XXXIV, 1888, p. 25)

So, despite the fairly complete structural evidence as to the

verity of the apparent association of the Nevada obsidian, the uncon-
solidated condition of the deposits, the isolation of the occurrence,

and the incongruity of the relations, all indicate that the association
is adventitious and-valueless to anthropology. Yet this conclusion is
subject to several qualifications.

In inductive science the value of evidence varies with its volume,

its consistency, and its cumulative character: It is a primitive doctrine,
born of crude conceptions, nurtured by ecclesiastical dogma, and fostered
by juridical necessity, that all evidence is either strictly true or

wholly false, and moreover that final judgment must be reached in each

case howsoever incomplete the available evidence may be; and the commonly
accepted rules of evidence form a device for sifting testimony, detect-
ing error and mendacity, and reaching final judgment despite the in-

sufficiency or contradictory character of the available evidence. But

the doctrine and the method growing out of it are eminently unscientific.
Inductive science affords a method of reasoning from particular phenomena
to general relations and principles; each phenomenon is an unimpeachable
witness whose testimony can be fully interpreted only in terms of that

of related phenomena; the witnesses gather strength and intelligibility
with numbers; and it is the great merit of the inductive method that

final judgment may, and indeed must, be postponed until the evidence is
complete. An isolated sport may be meaningless to the botanist, but a

score may form a basis for a valuable generalization, and a hundred may
bring to light an important principle; the first crude observations on
meteorites only gave play to vague fancies and added nothing to exact

knowledge, but extended and systematic study of these always incongruous

apparitions, at the hands of Smith, Newton, Roche, Lockyer, G.H. Darwin,

and others, has resulted in one of the most notable advances in science
of the century; the finding of the first Eocene fossil in the Pliocene

phosphate beds of South Carolina was simply a puzzle to Touney, but the

finding of hundreds of the older fossils in the newer deposit has thrown
more light on the conditions of origin of an interesting deposit than all
of the more congruous discoveries combined; and so in each branch of

science, isolated observations may be at first incongruous, but become

consistent and significant with multiplication, and finally by the cumu-

lative character of their combined testimony form bases for new generaliza-
tions and new principles. Now at the time of the Nevada discovery it

was nearly isolated both in geography and geochrony, and thus of little
significance; but since that time Abbott's discoveries in the Trenton
gravels have been verified and repeated by a score of students, Miss

Babbitt's discovery of quartz chips in the Mississippi terraces have been
made and verified, the Ontario hearth has been discussed by a trained
geologist, and the Metz paleoliths have been exhumed from the glacial
gravels of southern Ohio; these discoveries extend over a considerable

part of the country and were made in deposits of definitely determinate

age; and it is a fact of prime importance that these deposits are coeval
among themselves and with the beds yielding the Nevada obsidian. So the

otherwise doubtful evidence of the discovery gains strength from the con-

sistent and cumulative evidence of other discoveries in different parts of
the land.

In inductive science the sufficiency of a given body of evidence

varies inversely with the importance of the conclusion to which it leads:
A single fossil or a dozen fossils may suffice to determine the age of

a local formation in which a score of students are theoretically interested
(and the restricted significance of the conclusion is intuitively, though
perhaps unconsciously, recognized by the students when it is formed),

yet tens of thousands of fossils have not sufficed to satisfy conserva-

tive geologists that any great rock group of America is exactly coeval with
the corresponding group in Europe; every naturalist had long recognized,

and none disputed, the existence of individual variation among plants and
animals, yet when the law governing such variation was formulated and im-
planted in the philosophy of science by Darwin, it required the carefully
recorded and freely discussed observations of a generation of naturalists
to establish the conclusion; in early days the testimony of the ever-
varying hand or foot or forearm or stride sufficed to settle questions

of linear measure, but with the increase in value of lands and commodities
the bases of linear measure have been refined to a degree incomprehensible

to uncivilized man; and while idle figments of untrained imagination formed
a sufficient basis for primitive folk-lore, the best efforts of the

highest powers of observation and reasoning are required to form the basis
of its colossal offspring, the philosophy of modern science. In exact
thought conclusions are not of like weight,and demonstrations are not
of equal facility; judgment is not a tangible entity which exists but

once and for all time, but an ever-varying standard of measure; and the
acceptability of every conclusion depends in part upon its consequences.
Now anthropology is perhaps the foremost branch of science, and perhaps
the most important question in anthropology relates to the origin and

antiquity of man; and by reason of the perhaps unequalled importance of

the question, it is desirable that evidence concerning it should be care-

fully scanned as to quality and carefully measured as to quantity.

-36.

Moreover, such evidence may be insufficient concerning one phase of the
subject, yet at the same time sufficient concerning another phase --

it would be logical to accept the testimony of the Nevada obsidian
as to the cultural status of a possible Pleistocene man and at the same

time to reject its unsupported testimony as to the existence of Pleisto-
cene man; or it would be logical to reject the testimony of the implement
as a basis for any sweeping conclusion as to the origin, antiquity, or
early condition of man, and yet place it on record as a silent witness
whose testimony may become of value with further research.

In inductive science every conclusion is tentative: The primary ob-
ject of research is to determine the relations among phenomena, first,
through observation, and second, through generalization. But it fre-

quently happens that the generalization based on a limited number of ob-
servations is materially modified by one or two additional observations,
and so the conservative student learns to proceed cautiously, to con-

stantly spur observation and check generalization, and to modify his judg-
ment with each new acquisition of evidence. In the days of the Lyellian
classification of the Tertiary formations by ratios of contained fossils,
certain formations of the Atlantic slope were thrown alternately into the
Miocene and Pliocene, according to the varying success of successive

collectors in gathering and identifying the fossils; the asteroid hunter
carefully notes the position of the unfamiliar celestial body, and then
calmly awaits opportunity for further observation before making final

entry in the record of the known solar family; and the naturalist pene-

trating previously untrodden wilds fixes mentally the habitats of a score
of species as tentatively determined by each day's study, yet makes no

final record of any until his work is done, and then holds his conclusions
subject to modification by any subsequent observer. Indeed, no conclusion
in inductive science can be final and unassailable until the cosmos is

encompassed and all the relations of each natural phenomenon to all other
phenomena are made known. Now the Nevada obsidian is an isolated and in-
congrous phenomenon, and any judgment concerning it must be of relatively
little weight and subject to modification with new discoveries, and it

is perfectly logical to accept the verity of the association and record
the fact of its finding, yet to withhold immediate judgment as to its

significance and allow the interpretation placed upon it to vary with the
progress of discovery, either in the same deposit or in other parts of the
country.

By reason of his recognition of the foregoing principles the dis-
coverer of the Nevada obsidian was long disposed to confine the record

of the finding to his note-book pending further discovery, and it was with
reluctance that the record was first published; but, still in accordance
with these principles, he considers the testimony of the object to have
acquired value through the corroborative testimony of other discoveries;
and, again, in accordance with the same principles, he to-day regards'it
as indicating feebly the contemporaneity of man with the elephant, ox,

and camel of the later Pleistocene lake epoch, and almost as feebly (in
view of the weight and a priori improbability of the conclusion), that
this early man was Neolithic.

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The substance of the above paper was read before the (Anthropologi-
cal Society (of Washington) November 16, 1886. In the discussion which
followed Mr. Qilbert (see page 33) remarked, in part, as follows:

"The striking peculiarity of the Walker find is the rare, if not
unique, conibination of circumstances affecting its authenticity as an

evidence of the geologic antiquity of man. The object is one indubitably
made by man; it was found in situ; it was found in a formation of well-
determined date; it was found by a trained observer; and finally, that

observer recognized the importance of the discovery before he disturbed
the matrix inclosing the implement."

The end.

NOTES

1. This article, reprinted from the American Anthropologist, Vol. II,

October, 1889, is an excellent example of the careful consideration
given to an isolated archaeological find. Its particular value
lies in its treatment of a subject which was and is to this day

sometimes fraught with emotion or premature enthusiasm: the antiquity
of man in the New World.

2. William John McGee (1853-1912), signed his name W J McGee, without

periods. He was connected with the U.S. Geological Survey from 1883
to 1893. Fromn 1893 to 1903 his affiliation was with the Bureau of
American Ethnology, where he served for a time as acting director,
during part of Major J.W. Powell's tenure as director.

3. This site has been assigned the symbol 26-Mli--7 in the files of the

University of California Archaeological Survey.

4. The specimen is illustrated also in Holmes, W.H. Handbook of

Aboriginal American Antiquities.  Smithsonian Institution - Bureau
of American Ethnology, Bulletin 60, p. 68. Washington, D.C., 1919.

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