Early Hunter

Atomic physics last week settled another anthropological argument: the age of Folsom Man. Ever since 1926, when a peculiar stone spear point was found at Folsom, N. Mex., U.S. archeologists have debated the antiquity of the culture that produced it. Some argued that the oddly grooved "Folsom points" were made by ancestors of modern Indians only some four or five thousand years ago. Others were sure that they were 10-20,000 years old and were made by nomadic hunters far more primitive than the Indians.

There was not much to judge by. The grooved points have showed up all over the southwest and as far east as Virginia, but Folsom Man apparently built no dwellings, and he did not leave his bones where they would be preserved for modern diggers. Chief argument for his antiquity was that his characteristic spear points are often found associated with the bones of animals, particularly a kind of now-extinct bison (Bison taylori). But not all experts were convinced by such evidence; Bison taylori, they objected, may have been around until fairly recent times.

Last week, Dr. Willard F. Libby of the University of Chicago gave his decision on some charred bison bones sent to him by Dr. Elias Howard Sellards of Austin, Texas, who took them from a deposit full of distinctive Folsom artifacts. Dr. Libby measured the radioactivity of the carbon in the remains of the bones' organic material.* His conclusion: the bison died (and was probably cooked and eaten) about 10,000 years ago. Therefore, Folsom Man must have been a bison-chasing Texan at that remote period.

* Carbon in living organisms comes from the air and is slightly radioactive because of the action of cosmic rays at high altitudes. The longer it is buried, the less radioactive it becomes.

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