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^[[Dec. 18, 1898]] The Evening Star,

[[image - drawing of Table Mountain; [[caption]] Panorama Showing Lava Cap of Table Mountain (A), and the Gravels o the Buried Eocene River Beneath (B)[[/caption]]

ANTIQUITY OF MAN
Prof. W. H. Holmes' Study of the Problem in California
RESULTS SOMEWHAT STARTLING
Upsets Long-Cherished Beliefs of Many Prominent Scientists
THE NEWEST FACTS

Among the eminent archaeologists of this country the genuineness of the famous "Calaveras Skull" as the cranium of one of a race of men existing millions of years ago is again the current subject of doubt and investigation.

In this connection also interrogative inquiry is busy with the alleged evidences of the antiquity of "Auriferous Gravel Man," and the conclusion may soon be formulated by authorities upon the subject that it is all a myth.

New and interesting scientific light is thrown upon the long-disputed points by investigations but just finished by Prof. William H. Holmes, the distinguished anthropologist and one of the head curators of the National Museum. Prof. Holmes occupies at present an entirely neutral position with regard to the matter, because he has not had time in which to study and consider the mass of data he has secured.

Authorized by Secretary Langley of the Smithsonian Museum, Prof. Holmes went to California in September last to study the problem of human antiquity, which has become somewhat knotty to scientsts since the alleged finding of the "Calaveras skull" and certain fossil remains in Calaveras county, California, by the forty-niners digging in the earth for gold.

Prof. Holmes spent nearly two months at the work, and conducted it with all the care and precautions to be expected of him as one of the leading authorities in the domain of archaeology.  He returned to the city recently and has furnished The Star the following account of his investigation and apparent conclusions. It makes one of the most important contributions to the literature of anthropology written in recent years, and may possibly lead to a revolution among the theories and beliefs upon the subject. It is:

The Human Race.

"For a generation past students of history have been breaking away from traditional notions of the age of the human race in the world. In Europe, it is conceded, there are traces of man in the glacial formations, carrying our history back a hundred thousand years or more, and in eastern North America much evidence has been adduced tending to show that this continent was occupied at least at the close of the glacial period, from ten to twenty thousand years ago. California has, however, put forth claims to still greater antiquity, and, as if determined to outdo the world in this, as in other things, claims to be the cradle of the race, par excellence. She is not satisfied with the 5,000 years of the orthodox chronology, the twenty thousand claimed for the Trenton man, nor yet the 100,000 or more conceded to the paleolithic man of England and the continent of Europe, but sets her figures for the Homo sapiens of the high Sierra back so far that seven figures are necessary to express the time if years instead of ages are to be the unit.

"The story of the discoveries that lead to these astonishing conclusions is fascinating indeed, and the manner in which geology furnishes the chronological key must elicit the admiration even of the unscientific reader.

The First Discoverers.

"Soon after the hardihood of the forty-niners began to open up the great gold belt of the Sierra Nevada there filtered out into the outer world rumors of strange finds in the gravel beds from which the gold was washed.  Reports of the discovery of fossil mammals, the mastodon, the rhinoceros, the horse, the camel and many other forms, and fossil plants, including petrified trees, and, finally, traces of man and his arts, were reported. The best known and most widely heralded find was that of a human cranium, known as the Calaveras skull, brought up from the depths of a mining shaft on Bald mountain, near Angel's Camp, Calaveras county.  Other discoveries followed and included implements, utensils and ornaments of stone, the mortar and pestle occurring most frequently.  Many of these objects came from the region of the Tuolumne Table mountain, and were reported to have been brought out by the miners from deep shafts beneath the lava beds that cap the mountain.  There was, as a matter of course, little appreciation of the character and significance of these finds, for the men in that day were devoted, soul and body, to the search for gold; but the occurrence of human remains under flows of lava from volcanoes long since extinct was curious enough to excite some interest, and even then there were skeptics who said it could not be.  The discoveries that followed are most humorously alluded to by Bret Harte, who in 'The Society Upon the Stanislaus' makes Truthful James 'tell in simple language what I know about the row that broke up our society upon the Stanislaus.'

Geological Research

"These finds took on a more serious phase, when about 1860 Prof. J. D. Whitney, director of the state survey of California, took up the work of assembling and interpreting the evidence and Mr. C. D. Voy brought together a collection of the relics in San Francisco. The finds had been made by miners and mine superintendents, and Whitney visited these people, heard their stories and secured more or less valuable affidavits. He was convinced that the discoveries were genuine, and believed the evidence sufficient to establish the existence of a pliocene race in California. A long report was made, embodying the evidence and promulgating his beliefs.  He was followed by others, and there was a pretty general acceptance of his conclusions among students of anthropology and scholars generally.

"But recent investigations have tended to increase rather than to diminish the age assigned to the gold-bearing formations.  Their age has been made out in great detail by the able geologists of the United States geological survey, and the period of gravel depositions is shown to be a prolonged one, beginning far back in middle tertiary time and extending forward to the close of that vast period.  Whitney believed all to be late tertiary or early post-tertiary, while many others have preferred to believe them of glacial age, and following the suggestions of their own beliefs and desires in the matter of human antiquity, have thought of the glacial age in the Sierras as probably later than that of the eastern side of the continent, thus bringing the geological chronology of man down toward that of the biblical chronology.

"Now, however, these delusions are finally dispelled by the researches of Lindgren, Turner and others, who tell us that the auriferous gravel man of California, if he really existed, was vastly older than even Whitney was willing to admit. The interest of the problem is thus greatly enhanced and there is a very general desire to have the whole question thoroughly aired.

"Independently of the question of human origin and development thus associated with the history of the Siera [sic] Nevada there is not a more fascinating chapter in the whole history of world building than that furnished by the orographic transformations now so closely made out by our geologists.  The story may be told in a few words, and so simply as to convey an understanding of the methods of determining age and a realization of the vast time involved.

"The richest finds of gold made by the forty-niners were in the great valleys that cut their way down through mountains, plateaus and foot hills from the high ranges to the Sacramento valley.  The gravel of the present river beds yielded much of the precious metal, but the richer deposits were in beds of gravel that out-cropped in the sides of the valleys from one to two thousand feet above the river beds. These bodies of gravel were found to extend in attenuated bands far into the

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