Earlier than You Think: A Personal View of Man in America.
By George F. Carter. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1981. Bibliography.
Illustrations. Index. Maps. Tables. Glossary. 348 pages. $19.95.
Reviewed by Paul H. Ezell, Professor Emeritus, Department of
Anthropology, San Diego State University.
This book should be even more popular than its predecessor,
Pleistocene Man at San Diego, for a number of reasons. Interest in the
question of the antiquity of humans in the New World has increased considerably
during the past quarter century. For those who delight in challenging the
"establishment," Carter provides plenty of that. I find Carter in this book
more enjoyable to read than in the earlier one; I find him a bold and daring
thinker even when I interpret the evidence differently.
The book is divided into a Preface and nine chapters
dealing with different, but interrelated, dimensions of the problems of man in the
Americas. I found his Preface well worth reading; in it he presents his own
perception of himself, something not often found in works such as this, much
less in works aimed more narrowly at a "professional" audience. In fact, on p.
xii, he states: ". . .I have not written it for the narrow
scientist. It is meant for the educated layman." Working archaeologists who must
defend their interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations before a Planning Commission
or a Board of Supervisors will, I fear, find it difficult, if not impossible, to
work with it for that reason. In the light of Carter's avowal, I cannot fault
him for the many reference omissions on debatable points, which make the work so
easy to read, but neither can the working archaeologists be faulted for not
using the book.
Carter briefly reviews the thinking about man in the Americas
in the 1939's, when an antiquity for man in the New World of greater than 5,000
years was established. He defends his use of European terms such as Neolithic
and Paleolithic by specifying that he uses them to identify technological-economic
stages with no connotations of age and/or cultural relationships. He follows
this with presentation of his own efforts to win acceptance for his thesis that
humans have occupied "arid" North America for 100,000 years, and a number of
subsidiary themes. One is that a doctorate in
anthropology not only is no help in attacking the problems of the antiquity of
man in America and the recognition of the tools of that earlier time, it is a
positive hindrance. But he also states that one man was ". . . insecure in
archaeology because he lacked professional training and an advanced degree."
Another theme is that of the "establishment" as composed of ideologues more
interested in their careers than in finding the answers to questions and thus
fearful of their colleagues' adverse opinions.
Most of the book is relatively free of such pettishness and I
found this the most interesting part of the work. He provides a useful overview
of the history of developing dating techniques and a similar overview of the
history of the studies in lithic technology. He presents his thesis that tools
of the Middle and Lower Paleolithic stages are to be found in America, drawing
principally on Southern California sites but ranging as far afield as Canada,
New York, and Trans-Pecos Texas. No one whom I have read has so well presented
the various environmental attributes of the land exposed by lowered sea levels
in what is now the Bering Straits, the route commonly accepted as the most
probable one followed by humans entering the Americas before ocean crossing
became possible. He also presents his case for the earliest immigrants into the
New World being of varying physical types instead of one "pure" race and for
there having been a Neanderthaloid component in some of the earlier populations.
While is is understandable that the last chapter should be a
review and summation, I found it a pity that Carter returned to the litany of
complaint against those who persist in reserve, if not skepticism, regarding his
views. Some of that attitude might be brought about by his "hard sell" approach;
I, for one, am left with the uneasy feeling that, were his case as substantial
as he claims, he would not feel compelled to argue it so hard. In spite of that,
I found Earlier Than You Think well worth reading.
