PREHISTORIC MAN IN CALIFORNIA. 29 



of man in this locality, to the time when these relics were 

 made, used and buried under the immense lava flow, and as 

 stone implements are practically indestructible, they would 

 remain intact for centuries after all other evidences of the 

 occupancy of the country by man had disappeared. Why 

 may not man have existed in a rude and savage condition 

 for a long period previous to the deposit of the strata contain- 

 ing these implements? So that the theory that man did not 

 inhabit the country previous to the great volcanic eruption, is 

 only presumable. The surface of the country has undergone 

 an entire change since the time at which we have undoubted 

 evidence of man's occupancy of the region; in fact more than 

 it probably did during the time which is supposed to have 

 intervened between the pliocene deposit, where the skull was 

 found, and the periods when the stone implements and other 

 evidences of the antiquity of man discovered at other times 

 and places in the State, were made or deposited. 



The oldest known evidences of man's occupancy of Europe 

 consist of rude and simple flakes and chips of flint, while those 

 found under Table Mountain are as finely made and finished 

 as the stone implements made within the historic period. 



These facts go to show that the. old relics, including the 

 skull were either not authentic finds, or, that if they are all 

 that they are claimed to be, the geological periods during 

 which they were deposited are not so old as has been supposed, 

 or else, as some scientists and authors claim, and with much 

 to support such views, that the new world is in reality the old, 

 and America, with the lost Atlantis, the cradle of the human 

 race, in which case the Calaveras skull and the Table Moun- 

 tain relics furnish evidence that man was older and had 

 advanced further in the savage arts in America, than his con- 

 temporaries (if he Had any) in Europe. 



NOTES. 



In "Prehistoric America," by the Marquis de Nadaillac, 

 edited by W. H. Dall, published in 1884, both the author and 

 the American editor support Professor Whitney's conclusions 

 in relation to the antiquity of man on the Pacific Coast, and 



