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ANTIQUITY OF MAN' 
Prof, W, H, Holmes’ Study of the 
Problem in California, 
EBSULTS SOMEWHAT STAETLIfi 
Upsets Long-Cherished Beliefs of 
Many Prominent Scientists. 
T H E NEWEST FAC 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 
ago is again the current subject of doubt 
.and investigation. 
■ In this connection also interrogative in- i 
q.uiry is busy with the alleged evidences of 
the antiquity of “Auriferous Gravel Man,” 
fcnd the conclusion may soon be formulated 
hy authorities upon the subject that it is 
till a myth. 
New and interesting scientific light is 
thrown upon the long-disputed points by 
investigations but just finished by Prof, 
William Id. Holmes, the distinguished an- 
thropologist and one of the head curators 
of the National Museum. Prof. Holmes oc- 
/ copies at present an entirely neutral posi- 
tion with regard to the matter, because he 
has not had time in which to study and 
consider the 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 a 
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 
i 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 lead 
to a revolution among the theories and be- 
liefs upon the subject. It is: 
The Human Race, 
“For a generation past students of his- 
tory have been breaking away from tradi- 
tional notions of the age of the human 
race in the world. In Europe, it is con- 
ceded, there are traces of man in the glacial 1 
formations, carrying our history back a ; 
hundred thousand years or more, and in 
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 t.r 
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 j 
Homo sapiens of the high Sierra babk-so far 
that seven figures are necessary to express 
| the time if years instead of ages are to be 
i 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 
i reader. 
The First 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 discovery of fossil 
mammals, the mastodon, the rhinoceros, the 
horse, the camel and many other forms, and j 
fossil plants, including- petrified trees, and, -I 
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 can the 
mountain. There was, as. a matter of 
course, little appreciation of the character 
and significance of these finds, for the men 
m that day were devoted, soul and body, 
to the search for gold; but 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 James ‘tell in simple lan- 
guage -what I know about the row that i 
broke up our society upon the Stanislaus/ 
Geological Research.. 
“These finds took on a more serious ! 
phase, when about 1800 Prof. J. D. Whit- I 
iiey, director of the state survey of Cali- | 
fornia, took up the work of assembling I 
and interpreting- the evidence and Mr. C. 
D. Voy brought together a collection of j 
the relics in San Francisco. The finds had I 
iiixucio ctxiu mine superm- 
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. Pie was followed by others, and 
there was a pretty general acceptance of 
Ms conclusions among students of an- 
thropology and scholars g'eneraily. 
“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 middie 
tertiary time and extending forward to the 
close of that vast period. Whitney believed 
all to be lace tertiary or early post-tertiarv 
: Wnile 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 antiauitv 
have thought of the glacial age in th« 
Sierras as probably later than that of the 
. pastern side of the continent, thus bring- 
ing the g'eological chronology of man 
down toward that of the biblical chro- 
nology. 
“Now-, however, these delusions are final- 
ly. dispelled by the researches of Lindgren 
i Turner and others, who tell us that the 
' auriferous gravel man of California if he 
: really existed, was vastly older than even 
f Whitney was willing to admit. The inter 
' e&t of the problem is thus greatly enhanced 
