--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 6 number: 7 published: 1903-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "A New People Discovered," *Improvement Era* 6, no. 7 (May 1903): 498–499.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0607unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0607unse start_page: 498 end_page: 499 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1903-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0607unse publication_year: 1903 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1903, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A New People Discovered A NEW PEOPLE DISCOVERED. The state of Utah has unequalled resources in silver and gold, copper and iron, gilsonite and coal, clay, cement and lead, asphal- tum, and many other minerals. Its salt sea, and salt mountains, sugar factories, and fruit farms, are world-famous; while descrip- tions of its box canyons, deserts, cliffs and mountains, read like fairy tales. No less famous and peculiar are its modern pioneers and people. That its ancient inhabitants were also remarkable, and that to Utah's other wonders have been added one more, the fol- lowing extract from Harper's Weekly, testifies: The last of a number of expeditions sent out from the Ameri- can Museum of Natural History to the western lands of America for the purpose of exploring the homes of the cliff dwellers has just returned. Up to this time it has been considered that the Old World paleolithic men of the Seine river caves of France, of the Thames river caves of England, and so on, held undisputed rights to the greatest antiquity. Sir Boyd Dawkins found that the Eski- mo Inuits t )day were using the same reindeer-bone hunting instru- ments and domestic implements, and hence were descendants of paleolithic men who had migrated in glacial times. Haeckel in The Lost Link makes paleolithic men contemporary with the rein- deer of France in the glacial age, 270,000 years ago. He dates Pithecanthropus Erectus, "too high for an ape, too low for a man," the predecessor of paleolithic man, 600,000 years ago. Paleolithic men had for weapons arrow-points, spear-points, and other primi- tive devices. Much greater, then, is the antiquity of the American cave-dwellers just discovered, who possessed no weapons of that type, who lived before arrow-points were invented, and who fought with a throwing stick. Priority is claimed for this most recently unearthed American. He was a finer man than the brutal paleo- lith, even if he must ultimately be classed with him. He possessed an aestheticism wholly unknown to the primitive Europeans. He A NEW PEOPLE DISCOVERED. 499 dressed better than his contemporaries and many of his successors. His burial robe was more superb than that of any pre-historic or historic savage. His art of making mummies shows him abreast with ancient Egypt, even if his process was different. The cave- dweller was no architect, and built no houses for his habitations. Living in glacial times, he naturally sought for his home the most secluded, warmest caves, having a convenient water supply. It has required eight years to get enough of the remains of the American cave-dwellers together to demonstrate the actual existence of paleolithic men on this continent. In 1894,'Mr. Rich- ard Wetherill, of Mancos, Colorado, conceived the idea that the cliff-dwellers of the southwestern canyons might have buried treas- ures under their stone castles. So, selecting a prosperous looking cliff-dwelling in Grand Gulch, Utah, he dug under it. Very soon he found he was excavating in an ancient cave which had been filled up with ashes and debris by the cliff-dwellers as a foundation for their stone house. At the bottom of the cave he uncovered a basket about four feet in diameter. Under the basket was a robe of rabbit skin, and under the robe a mummy, seated. Understand- ing the dryness of the atmosphere and its preservative qualities, the aborigines had left the body in its natural condition. Investi- gations were at once instituted by an expedition sent out on be- half of the American Museum. The remains and culture since found in the Grand Gulch and south to Canyon de Chelle, Arizona, are believed to be ample for the purpose of establishing an Ameri- can cave-dweller as old as those of the Old World, or even older. Some remains of the cave-dwellers have been found under the cliff-dwellings. The skeletons and culture of the two races do not even remotely resemble each other. The shapes of their skulls differ, that of the cliff-dweller being noticeably flat, while that of the cave-dweller is normal, narrow and elongate. The cliff-dweller had for weapons the bow, arrow and arrow-points, like those of the early savages. The cave-dweller lived ages before such things were used; his weapon was the thro wing-stick. The only thing known to resemble it in any way is the atlatl which the early Span- iards found in use about Chihuahua, Mexico. In more modern times the weapon that resembles it most closely is the boomerang of the Australian bushmen and the rabbit stick of the Hopi Indians