THE KY EHTNG STAB, 
Panorama. Shoving Lara Cap of Table Mountain (A), and the Gravels of the Buried Eocene River 
Benea th (B). 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
Tlie Hnman Race. 
‘For a generation past students of his- 
Geologiciu itesearcn. 
‘These finds took on a more serious 
, , tory have been breaking away from tradi- phase, when about 1860 Prof. J. D. Whit- 
tional notions of the age of the human ' ney, director of the state survey of Cali- 
Prof. W, H, Holmes’ Study of the race in the world. In Europe, it is con- j-fornia, took up the work of assembling 
* j ceded, there are .traces of man in the glacial j and interpreting the evidence and Mr. C. 
Problem in Oulifornicti! 1 formations, carrying our history back a j D. Voy brought together a collection of 
hundred thousand years or more, and in the relics in San Francisco. The finds had 
RESULTS SOMEWHAT STARTLING 
U 
^Upsets Long-Cherished Beliefs of 
Many Prominent Scientists. 
T H E NEWEST F A 0 T S 
Among the eminent archaeologists of this 
country the genuineness of the .famous 
“Calaveras Skull” as the cranium of one of 
: a race of men existing millions of years 
j. ago is again the current subject of doubt 
! and investigation. 
In this connection also interrogative in- 
quiry is busy with the alleged evidences of 
the antiquity of “Auriferous Gravel Man,” 
and the conclusion may soon be formulated 
by authorities upon the subject that it is 
all a myth. 
New and interesting scientific light . is 
thrown upon the long-disputed points by 
investigations but just finished by Prof. 
William IT. Holmes, the distinguished an- 
thropologist and one of the head curators 
of the National Museum. Prof. Holmes oc- 
cupies at present an entirely neutral posi- 
tion with regard to the matter, because he 
has not had time in which to study and 
consider t lie mass of data, he has secured. 
Authorized by Secretary Langley of the 
Smithsonian Museum, Prof. Holmes went 
to California in September last to study the 
problem of human antiquity, which has 
become somewhat knotty to scientists since 
the alleged finding of the “Calaveras skull” 
and certain fossil remains in Calaveras 
county, California, by the forty-niners dig- 
ging in the earth for gold. 
Prof. Holmes spent nearly two months at 
the work, ' and conducted it with all the 
care and precautions to be expected of him 
as one of the leading authorities in the- 
domain of archaeology. He returned to the 
city recently and has furnished The 
Star the following account of his in- 
vestigation and apparent conclusions. It 
makes one of the most important contribu- 
tions to the literature of anthropology writ- 
ten in recent years, and may possibly lea,d 
to a revolution among the theories and be- 
liefs upon the srrbject. It is: 
eastern North America much evidence has 
been adduced tending to show that this 
continent was occupied at least at the close 
of the glacial period, from ten to twenty 
thousand years ago. California has, how- 
ever, put forth claims to still greater an- 
tiquity, and, as if determined to outdo the 
world in this, as in other things, claims to 
be the cradle of the race, par excellence. 
She is not satisfied with the 5,000 years of 
the orthodox chronology, the twenty thous- 
and claimed for the Trenton man, nor yet. 
the 100,000 or more conceded to the paleo- 
lithic man of England and the continent 
of Europe, but sets her figures for the 
Homo sapiens of the high Sierra back so far 
that seven figures are necessary to express 
the time if years instead of ages are to be 
l.the unit. 
“The story of the discoveries that lead to 
these astonishing conclusions is fascinating 
indeed, and the manner in which geology 
furnishes the chronological key must elicit 
the admiration even of the unscientific 
reader. 
The Fix*st Discoverers. 
“Soon" after the hardihood of the forty- 
niners began to open up the great gold belt 
of the Sierra Nevada there filtered out into 
the outer world rumors of strange finds in 
the gravel beds from which the gold was 
washed. Reports of the gscovery of fossil 
mammals, the mastodon, the rhinoceros, the 
horse, the camel and many other forms, and 
fossil plants, including petrified trees, and, 
finally, traces of man and his arts, were re- 
ported. The best known and most widely 
heralded find was .that of a human cranium, 
known as the Calaveras skull, brought up 
from the depths of a mining shaft on Bald 
mountain, near Angel’s Camp, Calaveras 
county. Other discoveries followed and in- 
cluded implements, utensils and ornaments 
of stone, the mortar and pestle occurring 
most frequently. Many of these objects 
came from the region of the Tuolumne Ta- 
ble mountain, and were reported to have 
been brought out by the miners from deep 
shafts beneath the lava beds that cap the 
mountain. There was, as a matter of 
course, little appreciation of the character 
end significance of these finds, for the 
in that day were devoted, soul and body, 
to the search for gold; hut the occurrence 
of human remains under -flows of lava from 
volcanoes long since extinct was curious 
enough to excite, some interest, and even 
then there were skeptics who said it could 
not be. The discoveries that followed are 
most humorously alluded to by Bret Harte, 
who in ‘The Society Upon the Stanislaus’ 
makes Truthful Janies ‘tell in simple lan- 
guage what I know about the' row that 
Broke up our society upon the Stanislaus.’ 
been made by miners and mine superin- 
tendents, and Whitney visited these peo- 
ple, heard their stories and secured more 
or less valuable affidavits. He was con- 
vinced that the discoveries were genuine, 
and believed the evidence sufficient to es- 
tablish the existence of a pliocene race in 
California. A long report was made, em- 
bodying the evidence and promulgating his 
beliefs. He was followed by others, and 
there was a pretty general acceptance of 
his conclusions amohg students of an- 
thropology and scholars generally. 
“But recent investigations have tended 
to increase rather than to diminish the age 
assigned to the gold-bearing formations. 
Their age has been made out in great de- 
tail by the able geologists of the United 
States geological survey, and the period of 
gravel depositions is shown to be a pro- 
longed one, beginning far back in midd’e 
tertiary time and extending forward to the 
close of that vast period. Whitney believed 
ah to be late tertiary or early post-tertiarv, 
tyhile many others have . preferred to be- 
lieve them of glacial age, and following 
the suggestions of their own beliefs and 
desires' in the matter of human antiquity, 
have thought of the glacial age in the 
Sierras as probably later than that of the 
eastern side of the continent, thus bring- 
ing th© geological chronology of man 
'down toward that of the biblical chro- 
nology. 
“Now, however, these delusions are final- 
ly dispelled by the researches of Lindgren, 
Turner and others, who tell us that the 
auriferous gravel man of California, if he 
really existed, was vastly older than even 
Whitney was willing to admit. The ’ inter - 
jsst of the problem is thus greatly enhanced 
and there is a -very general, desire to have 
the whole question thoroughly aired. 
“Independently of the question of human 
origin and development thus associated 
with the history of the Siera Nevada there 
is not a more fascinating chapter in 
the whole history of . world building 
than that furnished by the orographic 
transformations now so closely made out 
by our geologists. The story may be told 
in a few words, and so simply as to convey 
an understanding of the methods of deter- 
mining age and a realization of the vast 
time involved;, . 
“The richest finds of gold made by the 
forty-niners were in the great valleys that 
cut their way down through mountains, 
plateaus and foot hills from the high 
ranges to the- Sacramento valley. The 
gravel of the present river beds yielded 
much of the precious metal, but the richer 
deposits were in beds of gravel that out- 
cropped in the sides of the valleys from 
one to two thousand feet' above the river., 
beds. These bodies of gravel were found 
to extend in attenuated - hands far into the 
