One Township's Yesterdays Chapter V  

SETTLING PREHISTORIC PROBLEMS

"It turned into a pig," Alice answered very quietly. . . . Lewis Carroll.

THE 'MARVELS OF THE PREHISTORIC PAST in this region still hold our attention, and before passing on to the historic eras, there are problems to be settled. We find ourselves again in Wonderland, or rather, still there, not having been able to get away. And, being so situated, it is natural that we catch ourselves at the business of wondering about that big tooth that had a tale.

At this point, we are reminded of the conversation Alice had with the Mouse in Carroll's story: "You promised to tell me your history, you know," said Alice . . . "Mine is a long and a sad tale," said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing. "It is a long tail, certainly," said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse's tail.

So we look with wonder at the tale of the tooth that really gave early promise of being a long one, with a happy ending. The tooth actually had a tale, after a fashion, but sad to relate, that tale was cut short when the technicians stepped in and amputated. With the amputation disappeared also the glamour and the romance. But, the March Hare is speaking to Alice, just as he spoke in the book:

"Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?" "Exactly so," said Alice.

Now, the question was: To what sort of creature did the landing field tooth belong? When found in early March during the work of excavating and leveling a projected airport northeast of Lake Maxinkuckee it was saved as a relic, a curiosity, and finally was sent to Field Museum in Chicago for identification. Early beliefs that it might have belonged to some antique, beast like a mastodon or a mammoth, or even a prehistoric pig were sort of shattered when Professor E. S. RIGGS of the museum staff sent sketches, and dimensions of the molar teeth of the mastodon and the mammoth. They did not check satisfactorily with the landing field tooth.



_ Let the Jury consider their verdict," says the King. "We have considered," says the Jury. "The evidence called for something else.. . "But it turned into a pig," Alice interrupts. "Hold your tongue!" says the Queen, turning purple. "I won't!" says "Off with her head!" shouts the Queen. Nobody moves. "Let the Jury consider their verdict," the King repeats for about the twentieth time. "We conclude," says the Jury, in quavering accents, "after hearing the evidence and the expert opinions of the technicians that the tooth didn't belong to a mastodon or a mammoth or even a dinornis [dinosaur]. At first we thought it was one of these, but it ain't. It turned into a horse." "Precisely so," says Alice. "But it might just as well have been a pig. 1 knew I was right all along." "Then say what you mean," says the March Hare. "And mean what you say," adds the Mad Hatter. "Off with their heads!" concludes the Queen.



Is Horse's Tooth.

So, a horse it turned out to be, a big one, maybe a very ancient one, ready for the bone-yard, but at least not quite as ancient as at least supposed. Comparatively modern, it was said to be, and no doubt a friend of white man. It may have been an early settler post-dating the first permanent white settlement in Union Township. It may have been known to those first comers, for its bones were neighborly, having been found not many rods distant from where they established their homes. To stretch a point, it may also have been contemporary with the famous cow that kicked over the lantern that set fire to Chicago. It may have been many other things. Who knows but that it kicked over the traces and refused further to be of economic value to man not long after the rebellious bovine reformer performed a civic favor for the Windy City by permitting the citizens to collect their insurance and build a bigger and better Mid-West metropolis.

"We don't need any more mastodons, anyway," said the technicians. "In this year, 1934, they have become a drug on the market."

"There have been an unusual number of mastodons reported during the past year," said Professor RIGGS. "A mammoth might interest us more."

Technicians' Tricks.

Technicians have been known to play tricks with our prehistoric creatures, turning mastodons into mules, dodos into dickey birds, and even monkeys into men ... and sometimes "back again: Presto chango! History records some marvelous stunts. Cadmus, in olden times, slew a dragon and sewed its teeth; a harvest sprang up in the form of armed men. But that was supposed to be a myth.

BRET HARTE once rhymed in humorous vein about a Pliocene skull of a man, found in a deep shaft in California. He looked upon the skull and commanded it to speak and tell the wondrous secrets of its past existence. Finally, it did speak, after grinding its teeth together, teeth stained with tobacco juices. "My name is Bowers." said the skull, "and my crust was busted falling down a shaft in Calaveras County, but I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces home to old Missouri."

Hereafter, whoever happens to find a horse's tooth that looks old, and maybe is old, should thoroughly question it, and command it to speak. If it says, "This is a horse on you," the inquirer should at first appear cowed, then after a while should write some verses about it and get all the credit for being erudite. And if the tooth says, "I should have been found in a bog, as old bones generally are," just turn up your nose at high ground, dig into the marshes, and you may find a prize.

Mastodon hunting evidently will become tame sport, but it might be well to recognize one when found. It is an extinct mammal, nearly twice as broad as an elephant, although not quite nine feet in height, and is to be found either in the tertiary or more recent deposits. A few remains were found in North America as early as 1705, but not until 1801 was anything like a complete skeleton obtained, when a tolerably whole one was procured from a morass in Orange County, New York. Prehistoric relics were found in Indiana at an early date. David Thomas, who traveled through "the western country" in the summer of 1816, wrote: "We saw the under jaw of a Mammoth, in which the teeth remain."

Ate Vegetables.

The mastodon found in Walnut Township in 1874, the bones of which were carefully collected and sent to the Museum of the Academy of Sciences of Chicago, has already been described. Previous to 1874, bones of the mastodon were found usually in alluvial formations (made by flowing water), at a depth of from five to ten feet in lacustrine deposits (formed in a lake), bogs and beds of infusorial earth (containing organic matter).

The food of the mastodon was entirely vegetable. According to OWEN, mastodons were elephants with molars less complex in structure and adapted for coarser vegetable food. Their range was throughout the tropical and temperate latitudes.

Some thought the mastodon became extinct since the advent of man upon the earth, like, the dinornis [dinosaur](a genus consisting of the typical moas) and the dodo. According to LYELL, the period of their destruction, though geologically modern, must have been many thousand years ago.

To learn the really ancient history of this region, one cannot turn to books. Very little is even recorded in written language. It is true that Assyria and Babylon have stories, partly deciphered from strange characters impressed on tablets of clay and partly from inscriptions carved on monuments and statues, but those were highly civilized nations. And however ancient they may be as we compute time, they are modern if judged by nature's standards. Many older races had no written language and left no inscribed tablets or sculptured stones to tell of their life and achievements.

In like manner, we know about animals that lived still more remotely, by studying mainly their hard parts: shells, teeth or bones, preserved for countless ages in the form of fossils. Animals have been preserved entire, in a few exceptional but only where the animals have lived at a comparatively recent date, and were entombed in ice or frozen ground immediately after death. All that have then thus preserved are a few of the mammoth and one two of the woolly rhinoceros. And both of these animals lived in Europe with early man. Many of the bones of the most ancient animals became in the course of time petrified like rock. Incidentally, fossils and rocks both tell us the history of climatic change.

Having devoted no doubt more time and space than could be spared, to the prehistoric phases of our story and having settled, in an amateurish manner, certain prehistoric problems that arose, we come now to the end of those very ancient eras that passed over Union Township's fair land and to the beginning of the historic periods.