Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/710

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��holmes] A V RIFE ROUS GRA VEL MAN 64 1

I looked forward with much interest to this glimpse of the specimen about which so much has been said and upon which so much has been predicated, and was prepared to be duly im- pressed with its character as a fossil, but I was distinctly dis- appointed. The importance of the skull as an index of antiquity has been over-estimated. I find myself confirmed in the conclu- sions forced upon me by a consideration of the evidence already presented, namely, that the skull was never carried and broken in a Tertiary torrent, that it never came from the old gravels in the Mattison mine, and that it does not in any way represent a Tertiary race of men. If the existence of Tertiary man in Cali- fornia is finally proved, it will be on evidence other than that furnished by the Calaveras skull.

SUMMARY

A brief summary of the arguments for and against the great antiquity of man in California may well be presented here for convenience of reference. The principal considerations arrayed in support of the affirmative are as follows :

(1) During the three or four decades succeeding the discovery of gold in California the miners of the Auriferous belt reported many finds of implements and human remains from the mines. The formations most prominently involved are of Neocene age ; that is to say, the middle and later portions of the Tertiary.

(2) Most of the objects came from surface mines, but some were apparently derived from tunnels entering horizontally or obliquely and to great depths and distances beneath mountain summits capped with Tertiary lavas, leading to a belief in their great age.

(3) The finds were very numerous and were reported by many persons, at various times, and from sites distributed over a vast area of country. They were made by inexpert observers — by miners in pursuit of their ordinary calling, — but the statements made by them are reasonably lucid and show no indications of intentional exaggeration or attempted deception.

AM. ANTM. N. S., I— 41.

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