Metric analysis of an excellently preserved Bison skull with horn cores recovered from a northern Florida river identifies the specimen as an evolutionarily late representative of Bison antiquus. A fragment of chert protrudes from the right fronto-parietal area of the skull. Radiocarbon and biostratigraphic dating place the age of the Bison at about 11,000 years, thereby documenting an association between the animal and Paleoindians. It is likely that the animal was killed and butchered adjacent to a now-inundated water hole.
But from what nation did those ancients derive their origin? How numerous were they? How long did they occupy these regions? When, and by what means, were they exterminated? Would they have lost the well known arts, especially agriculture, pottery and salt making – arts so easy to preserve, and so necessary? And to imagine that the whole people became extinct by pestilence, or some other awful catastrophe, is an extravagant hypothesis, not supported by any precedent in the annals of mankind. M. FISKE (1820: 305, 307)
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