COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 



101 



Polished stone pestle. This implement came from the cemented auriferous gravel 

 under the basalt or lava cap of Table Mountain, California. The finder was Mr. 

 Clarence King, then director of the Geological Survey of the United States. 

 He found it in place while searching for fossils. It is fine-grained diabase. No 

 doubt can exist as to the authenticity of the implement, its being of human 

 industry, or its extraction from the original place of deposit. 



Stone implements from the auriferous gravels of California. These are enigmas of 

 prehistoric science in North America. If any reliance can be placed in human 

 testimony, we must believe that these, with mortars and similar objects to the 

 number of several hundred, have been found under volcanic lava beds, and that 

 they belong to a past Geologic period. If thus found, they are among the 

 earliest known implements made by man, and yet they would seem to be of the 

 Neolithic or Polished Stone civilization, and so would belong to prehistoric man 



56 



Fig. 15. 



POLISHED STONE HATCHETS. 



56, hematite, Ohio; 57, greenstone, Indiana; 58, syenite, Illinois; 59, greenstone, Tennessee; 60, chloritic slate, Tennessee mound; 

 61, yellow flint, Louisiana; 62, greenstone, North Carolina. 



in the present Geologic period. The objects are mortars and pestles of hard 

 stone, obsidian leaf-shaped implements, steatite bowls, ladles, and platters, 

 hammers or sinkers with a pecked groove around. These contradictions must 

 await the investigation of the geologist and paleontologist as Avell as the 

 archaeologist. 



Obsidian spearhead from the Walker River Canyon, in the extinct Quaternary Lake 

 Lahontan. Found by Mr. W J McGee, of the Geological Survey, in undis 

 turbed clay deposits, 25 feet beneath the surface, and &quot;associated in such manner 

 with the bones of an elephant or mastodon as to leave no doubt as to their having 

 been buried at approximately the same time.&quot; (Geological History of Lake 

 Lahontau, Vol. XI, p. 246.) Professor Gilbert, chief of the geologic work, says 

 ( Anthrop. Journal, Washington, Vol. II, October, 1889, p. 312) : &quot; This object was 

 indubitably made by man ; was from a well-determined date (the second occupa 

 tion by an ice sheet of the Laurentian basin). It was found in situ and by a 

 trained observer, who recognized the importance of his discovery before he dis 

 turbed the matrix inclosing the implement.&quot; 



