Sandia Man

The family of primates called man reached human status in Asia, Africa, or Europe (possibly in all three), came relatively late to North America. Scattered fossils of individuals--notably the famed "Minnesota Maid" who apparently fell or was thrown into a Glacial Period lake --have been dated as having lived 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. But even this modest antiquity has been denied by the Smithsonian Institution's doughty Ales Hrdlicka. Until recently the earliest known American "culture" was that of mysterious Folsom Man, whose first tools and campsites were encountered near Folsom, N. Mex. No remains of the man himself were found.

Geological evidence indicates that a Folsom campsite in Colorado may be as much as 25,000 years old. After Folsom Man there is a long gap to the remains of Siberian immigrants, perhaps 4,000 or 5,000 years old, found by Hrdlicka in Alaska. Then come the "Basket-Makers" who lived in the southwestern U. S. about 15 centuries B. C. and who preceded the Indians whom white invaders found.

Last week scientists attending a regional meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Tucson, Ariz, heard of a new addition to U. S. anthropology--Sandia Man, whose culture is even older than Folsom. Evidence for Sandia Man's greater antiquity is simple and clear: his culture level was found underneath a typical Folsom culture. Since the maximum age given for Folsom Man is 25,000 years, Sandia Man may be 30,000 years old.

Sandia Man's old home is a cave on the side of a canyon in New Mexico's rugged Sandia mountains. It was discovered in 1935, has since been cleared for more than 150 yards under the direction of Archeologist Frank Cummings Hibben of the nearby University of New Mexico. The floor, as found, was littered with droppings of rats and bats. Under that was a stalagmite formation made of limestone dissolved from the roof; under that a Folsom layer containing typical Folsom spearpoints, charcoal, bones of sloths and catlike carnivores not yet identified; under that a layer of "sterile" yellow ochre (containing no bones or implements), showing that the cave was uninhabited during a wet spell; under that the Sandia layer (see cut), containing lance or javelin points, remains of fires, bones of elephants, horses, camels, sloths and bison.

Unlike Folsom points, which at the butt ends are square and barbed, Sandia points are pointed at both ends, have a characteristic indentation or "shoulder" on one side. Apparently Sandia Man built fires at the cave mouth to cook the animals he killed, and ate them inside. Like Folsom Man, he is a ghost--no human skeletal material has been found. But Dr. Hibben plans further excavation this summer, hopes that remains of Sandia Man, or of Folsom Man, or of both, may come to light.

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