ANCIENT MAN IN NORTH AMERICA 285 
gravels in Calaveras county. These gravels lie buried 
under tides of lava which swept the western flanks of the 
Sierra Nevada in the Miocene and Pliocene periods. 
There are the most circumstantial accounts of the 
discovery, in the gravel beds of these ancient Pliocene 
streams, of stone mortars, stone pestles, hammer stones, 
spear heads, etc., not only by miners, but by expert and 
reliable geologists. Indeed, were such discoveries in 
accordance with our expectations, if they were in harmony 
with the theories we have formed regarding the date of 
man's evolution, no one would ever dream of doubting 
them, much less of rejecting them. The consequence of 
accepting the discoveries of Calaveras county as genuine 
have been well expressed by Professor W. H. Holmes, 
when he presented the results of his investigations to the 
Smithsonian Institution in 1899.^ "To suppose that 
man could have remained unchanged physically, mentally, 
socially, industrially, and assthetically for a million of 
years, roughly speaking (and all this is implied by the 
evidence furnished), seems in the present state of our 
knowledge hardly less than admitting a miracle." It is 
equally diflicult to believe that so many men should have 
been mistaken as to what they saw and found. In the 
meantime, and until the matter of Pliocene man in 
California has been finally settled by a new and systematic 
exploration, we must be content to return the same 
verdict for Calaveras as for Castenedolo — the Scottish 
verdict of " not proven." 
The reader must not think, because our journey across 
the States along a tract of country which at one time lay 
buried beneath an extension of the Arctic ice sheet has 
revealed no strange, primitive, or new type of human 
being, that it has been made in vain. On the contrary, 
we have received the most ample confirmation of the 
conclusions forced on us by the evidence in Europe, viz., 
that the antiquity of the modern type of man is much 
greater than is usually supposed. 
' " Review of the Evidence relating to Auriferous Gravel Man in 
California," Smithsonian Report, 1899, pp. 419-472 (issued 1901). 
