Science: Minnesota Maid

Newspapers rejoiced last week in a new and different murder story for their front pages. The.victim was a girl. Her remains had lain undiscovered in Minnesota, not just a few hours, but for many years. The number of years was what made the story, as a murder story, a newspaper hoax and a scientist’s delight. Professor Albert Ernest Jenks of the University of Minnesota gave the story its first publication. Speaking before the National Academy of Science meeting at Ann Arbor last week, he set the number of years at some 200 centuries. That would make the Minnesota maid more than 10,000 years older than any human remains yet discovered in North America. She was found under twelve feet of glacial drift in Ottertail County, Minn.—first proof that man lived on this continent during glacial times. Next month Dr. Jenks’s Minnesota maid will be a cynosure at the Atlantic City gathering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Trained eyes will understand why the anthropologists and paleontologists, who for weeks have been studying her skull with microscope and calipers, classify her as a Mongoloid type, more Eskimo than Indian. Professor Jenks puts her age at 17½ years. From a nick on the inner side of her shoulder blade he deduces the “murder.” It may have been caused by a spear or arrow striking through her heart, through her right lung. She may have been crossing the glacial lake at whose bottom her bones were found. Perhaps she was on a raft or in a canoe, or crossing on ice. She was wearing shell pendants in her hair, around her neck. From her waist hung an apron of strung shells. A dagger of antler dangled from a thong. The Minnesota girl’s bones might never have been recovered if a scientific digger had not asked a practical digger for help. Professor Jenks had arranged with the Minnesota State Highway Commission, which was putting a road through Ottertail County, to watch for fossils. Finder of the Minnesota maid was one P. F. Stary, sharp-eyed section boss. Year and a half ago at a dinner in Chicago, some potent businessmen heard Geologist Arthur Keith of the National Research Council and other scholars ask that lay diggers keep their eyes peeled. Instructions were sent out, with the result that Science now has the intelligent co-operation of thousands of railroad engineers, highway contractors, building excavators, brick makers, stone quarriers.*

*The directions: “1) In your excavations watch for all indications of prehistoric life . . . fossilized bones, weapons, tools, implements, ashes, blackened stones or other signs of fire. 2) When you make such a find, stop digging immediately around the objects. Take the greatest care not to move or disturb them. The original position and arrangement may prove to be the only means of determining the time and living conditions of those who left these signs of their life. 3) Report your discovery to the person or company in charge of the excavation, or report by telegraph to the National Research Council the place and general character of the objects discovered. The Council will pay the charges on the telegram; and, if the discovery promises to be of importance, it will direct the nearest competent geologist or archeologist to visit your excavation, remove the objects, and care for them. Your name will be mentioned as the discoverer in all later records of the objects or bones.”