AURIFEROUS GRAVEL MAN IN CALIFORNIA. 425 



But on examination we find that the}' are really of advanced types, 

 and comprise the following- varieties: Mortars (several forms), pestles 

 (numerous forms), platters (dishes, metates), mullers (rubbing stones), 

 hammer stones, ladles, plummet stones, rings of stone, pitted disks, 

 shuttle-shaped stones, grooved pebbles (hammer heads, sinkers), cres- 

 cent stones, spearheads, arrowheads, knives, and broad ])lades, to which 

 may be added stone beads and wampum. 



The series of sketches presented in PI. II will serve to indicate the 

 wide range of form covered by these objects, and the photographic 

 illustrations given in Pis. Ill to XI will convey a definite idea of the 

 character of some of them. The substantial identity of these implements 

 with the familiar relics of our Californian tribes is thus made appar- 

 ent. The assertion that man shaped and used this group of artifacts 

 in Tertiary times and continued to use them without change, without 

 improvement or retrogression, down through the ages, through com- 

 plete transformations of land and sea and the extinction of all known 

 living things, should be supported b}" proof more conclusive than 

 anything yet adduced. 



Again, the supposition that the ancient people disappeared as a result 

 of nature's mutations, leaving their bones and handiwork in the stream 

 beds of the Neocene period, and that another people, springing up or 

 appearing on the same spot in recent 3^ears, has duplicated each and 

 every character, activity, and art form, is hardly to be entertained. 



Another consideration is interesting in this connection. Should we 

 feel compelled to concede the existence of a race of advanced stone-age 

 culture, such as that suggested by the group of artifacts presented, it 

 would necessitate the further concession that the origin of the race 

 is to be looked for in a still earlier period, for the best experience 

 of anthropologists goes to show that early steps in culture are hesitat- 

 ing and slow, that the various stages which, in the normal order of cul- 

 tured progress, precede the era of polished stone, must have been of 

 very great length; and should we adopt the conclusion of Whitney 

 that no considerable advance in culture took place in California between 

 Tertiary times and the present, and take this as a reasonable index of 

 the rate of progress, we should have to look for the cradle of the race 

 somewhere in the remote ages of the Mesozoic. 



It may further be noted that the biologist, accustomed to regard 

 animate nature from the point of view of the theory of evolution, will 

 find it ditiicult to accept conclusions that would place the perfected 

 man, the highest type of the highest class of animal life, the mam- 

 malia, too near the beginning of a series that ought in the natural order 

 of things to show definite indications of progressive change. 



EXAMINATION OF THE IMPLEMENTS PRESERVED. 



Turning now to the objects of art described l)y Whitney and others 

 and preserved in the museum of the Universitv of California and else- 



