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NYSAA Bulletin No. 107 — Dogan Point Archaeological Site — Passage 33

Herbert C. Kraft et al. (1994) 228 words View original →

[Herbert C. Kraft et al. (1994)] might as easily have been applied to the Palisades petroglyph: Unfortunately, Monsieur de Mortillet did not inform us concerning the appearance of this prehistoric "bridge," or how Paleolithic humans might have crossed the vast expanse of Atlantic Ocean to Newfoundland. Or, as has been suggested by one of my colleagues: "Might the influence have gone in the other direction?" Might some remote ancestor of the Lenape Indians have used this bridge, or might he/she have paddled a dugout canoe across the Atlantic Ocean and up the Dordogne River to influence the Paleolithic art of Western Europe? Have we perhaps been crediting the Upper Paleolithic peoples of that region with an artistic skill that originated here in Lenapehoking, the "land of the Lenape?" I am not serious, of course. Today we no longer accept such facile conclusions concerning Paleolithic man's appearance in the New World. There is certainly no evidence that Cro-Magnon people had seagoing canoes, let alone ships, and the same is true of the autochthonous Lenape. The "Trenton Gravel Implements" have also been dismissed as being of far more recent, probably Middle Woodland, times (Kraft 1986:25-28, 1993; Meltzer 1993:45-48). How then did the petroglyphs get here? Lascaux Cave Lascaux, one of the more recently discovered Upper Paleolithic caves, was found by four boys in 1940. The paintings on the walls and ceiling of this grotto have been