PDF - Wallace Online
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446 TROPICAL NATUREmortars have been found in similar gravel at a depth of fortyfeet. In Placer County stone platters and dishes have beenfound in auriferous gravels from ten to twenty feet below thesurface. In Nevada County stone mortars and ground discshave been found from fifteen to thirty feet deep in the gravel.In Butte County similar mortars and pestles have been foundin the lower gravel beneath lava beds and auriferous gravel ;and many other similar finds have been recorded. It mustbe noted that the objects found are almost characteristic ofCalifornia, where they are very abundant in graves or on thesites of old settlements, having been used to pound up acorns,which formed an important part of the food of the Indians.They occur literally by hundreds, and are so common thatthey have little value. It seems therefore absurd to supposethat in scores of cases, over a wide area of country and overa long series of years, gold -miners should have taken thetrouble to carry down into their mines or mix with theirrefuse gravel these articles, of whose special scientific interestin the places where found they have no knowledge whatever.It is further noted that many of these utensils found in theold gravels are coarse and rudely finished as compared withthose of more recent manufacture found on the surface. Thefurther objection has been made that there is too great asimilarity between these objects and those made in comparativelyrecent times. But the same may be said of themost ancient arrow and spear heads and those made bymodern Indians. The use of the articles has in both casesbeen continuous, and the objects themselves are so necessaryand so comparatively simple, that there is no room for anygreat modification of form.Human Remains in the Auriferous GravelsWe will now pass on to the remains of man himself. Inthe year 1857 a fragment of a human skull with mastodondebris was brought up from a shaft in Table Mountain,Tuolumne County, from a depth of 180 feet below the surface.The matter was investigated by Professor Whitney, the Stategeologist, who was satisfied that the specimen had been foundin the " pay gravel," beneath a bed three feet thick of cementwith fossil leaves and branches, over which was seventy feet
viii THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN NORTH AMERICA 447of clay and gravel. The most remarkable discovery, however,is that known as the Calaveras skull. In the year 1866 someminers found in the cement, in close proximity to a petrifiedoak, a curious rounded mass of earthy and stony materialcontaining bones, which they put on one side, thinking it wasa curiosity of some kind. Professor Wyman, to whom it wasgiven, had great difficulty in removing the cemented graveland discovering that it was really a human skull nearly entire.Its base was embedded in a conglomerate mass of ferruginousearth, water-worn volcanic pebbles, calcareous tufa, and fragmentsof bones, and several bones of the human foot andother parts of the skeleton were found wedged into theinternal cavity of the skull. Chemical examination showedthe bones to be in a fossilised condition, the organic matterand phosphate of lime being replaced by carbonate. It wasfound beneath four beds of lava, and in the fourth bed ofgravel from the surface and Professor ;Whitney, who afterwardssecured the specimen for the State Geological Museum,has no doubt whatever of its having been found as described.In Professor Whitney's elaborate Eeport on the AuriferousGravels of the Sierra Nevada, from which most of the precedingsketch is taken, he arrives at the conclusion thatthe whole evidence distinctly proves "that man existed inCalifornia previous to the cessation of volcanic activity in theSierra Nevada, to the epoch of greatest extension of theglaciers in that region, and to the erosion of the present rivercanonsand valleys, at a time when the animal and vegetablecreations differed entirely from what they are now, andwhen the topographical features of the State were extremelyunlike those exhibited by the present surface." He elsewherestates that the animal and vegetable remains of these depositsprove them to be of "at least as ancient a date as theEuropean Pliocene."Professor Whitney enumerates two other cases in whichhuman bones have been discovered in the auriferous gravel,and in one of them the bones were found by an educatedobserver, Dr. Boyce, M.D., under a bed of basaltic lava eightfeet thick ;but these are of but little importance when comparedwith the preceding cases, as to which we have such fulland precise details. The reason why these remarkable dis-
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- Page 432 and 433: VIIIndications of Man's Extreme Ant
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- Page 466 and 467: IXTHE DEBT OF SCIENCE TO DARWIN 1Th
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- Page 492 and 493: INDEXABBOTT, C. C., on American pal
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446 TROPICAL NATUREmortars have been found in similar gravel at a depth of fortyfeet. In Placer County stone platters and dishes have beenfound in auriferous gravels from ten to twenty feet below thesurface. In Nevada County stone mortars and ground discshave been found from fifteen to thirty feet deep in the gravel.In Butte County similar mortars and pestles have been foundin the lower gravel beneath lava beds and auriferous gravel ;and many other similar finds have been recorded. It mustbe noted that the objects found are almost characteristic ofCalifornia, where they are very abundant in graves or on thesites of old settlements, having been used to pound up acorns,which formed an important part of the food of the Indians.They occur literally by hundreds, and are so common thatthey have little value. It seems therefore absurd to supposethat in scores of cases, over a wide area of country and overa long series of years, gold -miners should have taken thetrouble to carry down into their mines or mix with theirrefuse gravel these articles, of whose special scientific interestin the places where found they have no knowledge whatever.It is further noted that many of these utensils found in theold gravels are coarse and rudely finished as compared withthose of more recent manufacture found on the surface. Thefurther objection has been made that there is too great asimilarity between these objects and those made in comparativelyrecent times. But the same may be said of themost ancient arrow and spear heads and those made bymodern Indians. The use of the articles has in both casesbeen continuous, and the objects themselves are so necessaryand so comparatively simple, that there is no room for anygreat modification of form.Human Remains in the Auriferous GravelsWe will now pass on to the remains of man himself. Inthe year 1857 a fragment of a human skull with mastodondebris was brought up from a shaft in Table Mountain,Tuolumne County, from a depth of 180 feet below the surface.The matter was investigated by Professor Whitney, the Stategeologist, who was satisfied that the specimen had been foundin the " pay gravel," beneath a bed three feet thick of cementwith fossil leaves and branches, over which was seventy feet
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