Certain skulls from Ecuador seem much more archaic than any of those found in Brazil. These are the Punin specimen found in 1923, and the group discovered at Paltacalo almost twenty years before.[21] Associated with the fossils of extinct horse, camel, and mastodon, they have all the peculiarities of the Lagoa Santa specimens, and in addition they have retreating foreheads, lower vaults, and unusually large teeth.
Far down in Chile long-headed skulls have been found in association with fossils of extinct horse and ground sloth. They are not so extreme in appearance as the Lagoa Santa skulls, though they resemble them. As for their age, Junius Bird, who made the discovery in caves just north of the Strait of Magellan, reckons—in what he calls “a few degrees better than an outright guess”—that they belonged to men who were given cremation burials not more than 5,400 years ago. We now have radiocarbon dates for such caves from 6,500 to 9,000 years ago. Bird did not venture to guess how many years it took these people to travel the 11,000 miles from the strait of Vitus Jonasson Bering to the strait of Ferdinand Magellan.[22]
Since the discovery of human bones in glacial gravels near Trenton, New Jersey, three skeletons of some importance and a number of skulls that resemble those of Lagoa Santa and Punin have been found in the United States.
The three finds of complete skeletons made in Minnesota between 1931 and 1935 have aroused much debate. All three were encountered in road-making or the digging of gravel, and scientists were not present at their discovery. A. E. Jenks’s study of these skeletons has done much to clarify them.[23] “Minnesota man”—really a girl—was found in a geological stratum marked by varves, or thin layers of clay, laid down in successive years by a glacial lake about 11,000 years ago. Antevs believes her body was thrust into this stratum at a later time; but other geological authorities, including Kirk Bryan, Paul MacClintock, G. F. Kay, and M. M. Leighton, deny it and present rather convincing evidence.[24] Hooton unhesitatingly expresses the opinion that “this discovery establishes a very strong probability, though not an absolute certainty, of the existence of _Homo sapiens_ in the New World in Late Glacial times.”[25] Artifacts found with the skeleton—including part of a knife made from an antler—do not give us a radiocarbon date. In the gravel of Browns Valley, where the second skeleton was found, there were also spear points (see illustration, page 158). From geological evidence connected with this find—the most generally accepted of the three in Minnesota—a date between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago seems plausible. The third skeleton, Sauk Valley man, has been the center of much dispute. Some geologists believe that the depth of the occurrence and the presence of a certain sand within the skull argue a considerable antiquity. Like the owner of the Punin skull, “Minnesota man” had a primitive type of teeth, larger even than those of some Old World paleolithic specimens. Jenks and L. A. Wilford find twenty-six archaic traits in the Sauk Valley skull.[26]