474 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 5 



therefore, the reality of a past stone age was demonstrated in 1836 

 for northern Europe, and if the inhabitants of America and other 

 parts of the newly discovered world were carrying on practically 

 without the use or knowledge of metals, the facts could be explained 

 only as the results of degeneration from the original advanced state 

 of culture indicated in the Book of Genesis. As for a prehistoric 

 period of human existence, reaching back into earlier geologic times, 

 that was clearly impossible; and when discoveries were made which 

 demonstrated Quaternary age, such as human relics associated with 

 extinct animal remains laid down in caves or in river deposits, the 

 occurrences were finally explained as the obvious results of the 

 Noahic flood. But, as stated, the old theory of origin by creation, 

 barel}^ 6,000 years ago, at last gave way before the accumulated facts 

 which it could not explain; and, in accordance with the new evolu- 

 tionary conception of life and culture, search for evidences bearing 

 on the extended prehistoric antiquity of man became almost at once 

 world-wide. 



The immediate outcome of this newly acquired freedom of inquiry 

 and of interpretation was in some respects disastrous, both in Europe 

 and in America. In Europe, inside of a decade, crude flints resem- 

 bling artifacts, and as such called " eoliths ", were uncovered which 

 it was thought proved the reality not only of Quaternary man but 

 of a very much earlier tool-using being. At the present time 

 such puzzling evidence has been recovered from even the Eocene for- 

 mations — that is, from the very beginning of Tertiary times, 

 when mammalian creatures were only just coming into being. The 

 result is, naturally, a division of opinion and occasional violent 

 controversy. 



In America the apparent course of progress has been still more 

 startling. Inspired and instructed by European discoveries, our 

 enthusiastic students, professional and amateur, began shortly to 

 search for relics either of the same type or of equal antiquity, and, 

 as might be expected, soon found both kinds of evidence. With 

 respect to antiquity Prof. J. D. Whitney, State geologist of Cali- 

 fornia, led the van. Stimulated perhaps by the alleged discovery of 

 the famous Calaveras skull in 1866, he began that year to investi- 

 gate the many and seemingly well-founded current rumors of hun- 

 dreds of archeological finds made by gold miners during the pre- 

 ceding decade deep in the gravels of the Sierra Nevada slopes, and 

 in 1879 concluded a fairly exhaustive report by declaring his belief 

 in the reality of Pliocene, if not actually Miocene, man in Cali- 

 fornia. At about the same time Middle America * supplied a num- 



* Whitney, J. D., Auriferous gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California, Contributions 

 to American Geology, vol. 1, Mem. Mas. Comp. ZOol., pp. 288-321, Cambridge, 1880. 



