528 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



DIVISION EIGHT— SCIENCE. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



Prehistoric Man in Pasadena. — The Glacial Period of Geology . — The ancient town- 

 site on Reservoir Hill. — Human relics as ancient as those of Table Mountain in 

 Calaveras county. — Descriptive list of stone implements found. — Prof. Holder's 

 letter. 



PREHISTORIC MAN IN PASADENA. 



In order that the reader who is not specially versed in geology may 

 have some fair idea of the real force and import of the facts which show 

 that man dwelt in Pasadenaland many thousands of years ago, I must first 

 present extracts from the latest and highest scientific authority on man's ex- 

 istence on the Pacific coast prior to or during the era known in geology as 

 the Glacial period, which was the closing or breaking-up time of the Ter- 

 tiary age. [See Geological Chart, Chapter 29.] The International Scien- 

 tific Series, published by D. Appleton & Co. of New York, is reckoned as 

 first-rank authority in the scientific world. No. 69 of this series treated of 

 "Man and tpie Glacial Period," was published in 1892, and was writ- 

 ten by Geo. Frederick Wright, D. D., LL- D., F. G. S. A., professor in 

 Oberlin Theological Seminary; Asst. on U. S. Geological Survey ; author of 

 " The Ice Age in North America," etc., etc., etc. He is therefore perfectly 

 competent to give us the latest results of scientific research in his chosen 

 field. And from his work on "Man," etc., published in 1892, I quote : 



" Most interesting evidence concerning the antiquity of man in Amer- 

 ica, and his relation to the Glacial period, has come from the Pacific coast. 

 * * These reports did not attract much scientific attention until they 

 came to relate to the grav^el deposits found deeply buried beneath a flow 

 of lava locally known as the Sonora or Tuolumne Table Mountain. This 

 lava issued from a vent near the summit of the mountain range, and flowed 

 down the valley of the Stanislaus river for a distance of fifty or sixty miles, 

 burying everything in the valley beneath it, and compelling the river 

 to seek another channel. * * * It was under this mountain of lava 

 that the numerous implements and remains of man occurred which were re- 

 ported to Prof. J. D. Whitney when he-was conducting the geological sur- 

 vey of California, between i860 and 1870. * * ^ Interest reached a still 

 higher pitch when, in 1866, an entire human skull, with some other human 

 bones was reported to have been discovered under this same lava deposit, a 

 few miles from Sonora, at Altaville, in Calaveras county, and hence known 

 as the ' Calaveras skull. ' * * * >k Xhe forms of animal and vegetable 

 life with which the remains of man under Table Mountain are associated 

 are indeed to a considerable extent species now extinct in California, and 

 some of them no longer exist anywhere in the world. •* * ^i^ 'phe con- 

 nection of these lava-flows on the Pacific coast with the Glacial period is un- 

 questionably close. For some reason which we do not fully understand, the 

 vast accumulation of ice in North America during the Glacial period is cor- 

 related with enormous eruptions of lava west of the Rocky Mountains, and, 



