EARLY MAN IN AMERICA. 347 
The objects themselves point to a directly opposite conclusion. The stone mor- 
tars, pestles, polished stone axes, beads, etc., found at various depths, are ident- 
ical with those scattered over the surface, and used by the Indian tribes of Cali- 
fornia, described by Bancroft in his "Native Races of the Pacific States," and 
more recently by various writers in the seventh volume of the United States Geo- 
graphical Survey under the direction of Captain Wheeler. The human bones are 
indistinguishable from those of the Red Indians. The famous Calaveras skull, 
according to Prof. Wyman, is related to the Indian type, with a doubtful affinity 
with the Eskimos. It was obtained from a shaft sunk through three alternate 
layers of gravel and basalt, at a depth of one hundred and thirty-two feet from 
the. surface, was associated with the remains of other individuals, and had been 
buried along with shell-beads of the kind usually met with in Indian interments. 
Had these remains been found near the surface they would have been undoubt- 
edly classified with the ordinary traces of Indians, and their occurrence at so 
great a depth is the sole cause of their being the object of special interest. 
Nor have we to go far to account for their presence at great depths. It is 
very strange that Prof. Whitney should have ignored the fact that mining opera- 
tions have been carried on in those very districts long before the time of " the 
forties." "In 1849," writes Schoolcraft ("Archaeology," Vol. I, p. 105), "the 
gold-diggers at one of the mountain diggings, called Murphy's, were surprised, 
in examining a high, barren district of mountain, to find an old site of a mine, 
with a shaft two hundred and ten feet deep, at the bottom of which were a 
human skeleton, an 'altar,' and other remains of an ancient people, — probably 
Indian." In other ancient mines in the Western States, as Dr. Southall has 
recently pointed out, human skeletons have been met with, which prove that 
gold mining was extensively carried on long before the discovery of gold in the 
present century. The whole group of human rem.ains, therefore, in the aurifer- 
ous deposits, instead of proving the existence of Red Indians in California in the 
Pliocene age, belong to a comparatively modern period. Some are probably the 
results of interments which took place in deep mines or in superficial deposits, 
while others have found their way by accident into the auriferous gravels from 
the surface at various times. -^ i^ -^ -^ -^ 
The remains, looked at purely from the archaeological point of view, are Neolithic, 
and identical with those which unmistakably belong to the ancient Indian tribes 
of North America. We cannot seriously entertain the idea that mankind first 
appeared on the earth in the Neolithic stage of culture, identical, so far as we 
know, in every respect with the ancestors of the present Red Indians, at a time 
when there were but few living species of the higher mammalia, and that he 
lived in California before canons from two to three thousand feet had been cut 
by the existing streams out of the solid rock. Neither in the New nor in the Old 
World is there any trace of Pliocene man revealed by modern discovery. 
We come now in our inquiry to the succeeding period, when the higher 
Mammalia, now contemporary with man, appeared in force on the earth, and 
man himself may be reasonably looked for. We will take the point of view, first 
