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History See other History Articles Title: ANOMALOUS DISCOVERIES FROM THE CALIFORNIA GOLD MINES In 1849, gold was discovered in the gravels of ancient riverbeds on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in central California, drawing hordes of rowdy adventurers to places like Brandy City, Last Chance, Lost Campe, You Bet, and Poker Flat. Occasionally, the miners would find stone artifacts, and more rarely, human fossils. Altogether, miners found hundreds of stone implements - mortars, pestles, platters, grinders, and so forth. Many of the specimens found their way into the collection of Mr. C.D. Voy, a part-time employee of the California Geological Survey. Voy's collection eventually came into the possession of the University of California, and the most significant artifacts were reported to the scientific community by J.D. Whitney, then the state geologist of California. J.D. Whitney thought the geological evidence indicated the auriferous--or gold-bearing-- gravels, and the sophisticated stone tools found in them, were at least Pliocene in age. But modern geologists think some of the gravel deposits, which lie beneath volcanic formations, are much older. The Age of the Auriferous Gravels The majority of gold-bearing gravels were laid down in stream channels during the Eocene and Early Oligocene. During the Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, volcanic activity in the same region covered some of the auriferous gravels with deposits of rhyolite, andesite, and latite. In particular, widespread andesitic mudflows and conglomerates were deposited during the Miocene. These attained a considerable thickness, varying from more than 3,000 feet along the crest of the Sierras to 500 feet in the foothills. The volcanic flows were so extensive that they almost completely buried the bedrock landscape of the northern Sierra Nevada mountain region. Over the course of time, rivers carved deep channels up to a couple of thousand feet below the level of the prevolcanic gravels. This allowed Gold Rush miners to reach the auriferous gravels by digging horizontal tunnels into the sides of the channels. The advanced stone tools found in these tunnels could be from Eocene to Pliocene in age. California State Geologist J. D. Whitney concluded that modern man existed in California previous to the cessation of volcanic activity in the Sierra Nevada. Anomalous Finds at Tuolumne Table Mountain Finds from mine shafts can be dated more securely than those from hydraulic mines and surface deposits of gravel. Many shafts were sunk at Table Mountain in Tuolumne County. Whitney and others reported that miners found stone tools and human bones there, in the gold-bearing gravels sealed beneath thick layers of a volcanic material called latite. Discoveries from the auriferous gravels just above the bedrock are probably 33.2 to 55 million years old. The more important discoveries from Table Mountain add up to a considerable weight of evidence. J.D. Whitney personally examined a collection belonging to Dr. Snell, consisting of stone spoons, handles, spearheads, and a human jaw - all found in the auriferous gravels beneath the latite cap of Tuolumne Table Mountain. Whitney remarked that all the human fossils uncovered in the gold-mining region, including this one, were of the anatomically modern type. Writing 11 years before the discovery of the Java ape-man, Pithecanthropus erectus, Whitney concluded that, "Man, thus far, is nothing but man, whether found in Pliocene, Post-pliocene, or recent formations." Mortar and Pestle from Table Mountain This mortar and pestle were found by J.H. Neale in tertiary deposits dating 33-55 million years old. On August 2, 1890, J.H. Neale signed the following statement about his discoveries: "In 1877 Mr. J.H. Neale was superintendent of the Montezuma tunnel Company, and ran the Montezuma tunnel into the gravel underlying the lava of Table Mountain, Tuolumne County....At a distance of between 1400 and 1500 feet from the mouth of the tunnel, or of between 200 and 300 feet beyond the edge of the solid lava, Mr. Neale saw several spear-heads, of some dark rock and nearly one foot in length. On exploring further, he himself found a small mortar three or four inches in diameter and of irregular shape. This was discovered within a foot or two of the spear-heads. He then found a large well-formed pestle.... "...Mr. Neale declares that it is utterly impossible that these relics can have reached the position in which they were found excepting at the time the gravel was deposited, and before the lava cap formed. There was not the slightest trace of any disturbance of the mass or of any natural fissure into it by which access could have been obtained either there or in the neighborhood." The Calaveras Skull The most notorious fossil discovered in the Gold Rush mines of California was the Calaveras skull. In February 1866, Mr. Mattison, the principal owner of the mine on Bald Hill, near Angels Creek, removed this fossilized skull from a layer of gravel 130 feet below the surface. The gravel was near the bedrock, underneath several distinct layers of volcanic material. It was examined by J.D. Whitney, State Geologist of California, who presented a report on the Calaveras skull to the California Academy of Sciences on July 16, 1866, affirming that it was found in Pliocene strata. This discovery caused a huge sensation in America and many believed it was a hoax. Broken stone pestle from Table Mountain In 1891, George F. Becker told the American Geological Society that in the spring of 1869, Clarence King, director of the Survey of the Fortieth Parallel, and a respected geologist, was conducting research at Tuolumne Table Mountain. Becker stated: "At one point, close to the high bluff of basalt capping, a recent wash had swept away all talus and exposed the underlying compact, hard, auriferous gravel beds, which were beyond all question in place. In examining the exposure for fossils, he [King] observed the fractured end of what appeared to be a cylindrical mass of stone. The mass he forced out of its place with considerable difficulty on account of the hardness of the gravel in which it was tightly wedged. It left behind a perfect cast of itself in the matrix and proved to be part of a polished stone implement, no doubt a pestle." Becker added: "Mr. King is perfectly sure this implement was in place and that it formed an original part of the gravels in which he found it. It is difficult to imagine a more satisfactory evidence than this of the occurrence of implements in the auriferous, pre-glacial, sub-basaltic gravels." From this description and the modern geological dating of the Table Mountain strata, it is apparent that the object was over 9 million years old. William H. Holmes Challenges J.D. Whitney Some of the Calaveras skull hoax stories were propagated by scientists such as William H. Holmes, anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution. Upon examining the actual Calaveras skull at the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he concluded 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." Holmes also discredited Whitney's dating of anomalous stone tools discovered at the California gold mines, asserting they were from the local Digger Indians. One might ask why Holmes and others were so determined to discredit Whitney's evidence for the existence of Teritary humans. The following statement by Holmes provides an essential clue: "If these forms are really of Tertiary origin, we have here one of the greatest marvels yet encountered by science; and perhaps if Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human evolution as it is understood to-day, he would have hesitated to announce the conclusions formulated, notwithstanding the imposing array of testimony with which he was confronted." In other words, if the facts do not fit the favored theory, the facts, even an imposing array of them, must go.
Poster Comment: All of the evidence for the above article is held by the University of California at Berkeley. When a documentary was to be made, the University refused to make it available even though the film makers offered to pay the costs for experts to bring the exhibits out of storage.
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