Chapter XI: Tertiary Man (2)

The flora also, which is well preserved in the white clays formed from the volcanic ash, comprises forty-nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs, all distinct from those now living, without a single trace of the pines, firs, and other conifera which are now the prevalent trees throughout California.

Tried by any test, therefore, of fauna, flora, and of immensely long deposit before the present drainage and configuration of the country had begun to be established, Professor Whitney's contention that the auriferous gravels are of Tertiary origin seems to be fully established. It can only be met by obliterating all definite distinction between the Quaternary and the Pliocene, and adding to the former all the time subtracted from the latter. And even if we apply this to the physical changes, it would upset all our standards of geological formations characterized by fossils, to suppose that a fauna comprising the elatherium, hipparion, and auchenia could be properly transferred to the Quaternary. In fact no one would have thought of doing so if human implements and remains had not been found in them.

The discovery of such implements was first reported in 1862, and since then a large number have been found, but their authenticity has been hotly contested. The most common were stone mortars very like those of the Indians of the present day, only ruder, and it was objected, first, that they were ground and not chipped, and therefore belonged to the neolithic age; secondly, that they might have slipped down from the surface or been taken down by miners. The difficulty in meeting these objections was that the implements had been found not by scientific men _in situ_, but by ignorant miners, who were too keen in the pursuit of gold to notice the particulars of the find, and only knew that they had picked them out in sorting loads of the gravels, and generally thrown them aside. This, however, had occurred in such a number of instances, over such wide areas, and with such a total absence of any motive on the part of the miners to misrepresent or commit a fraud, that the cumulative evidence became almost irresistible; and we cannot sum it up better than in the words of the latest and best authority, Professor Wright, in an article in the _Century_ of April 1891, which is the more important because only two years previously, in his _Ice Age in North America_, he had still expressed himself as retaining doubts.

He says, "But so many of such discoveries have been reported as to make it altogether improbable that the miners were in every case mistaken; and we must conclude that rude stone implements do actually occur in connection with the bones of various extinct animals in the undisturbed strata of the gold-bearing gravel."

Fortunately the most important human remains have been found in what may be considered as a test case, where it was physically impossible that they could have been introduced by accident, and where the evidence of a common workman as to the locality of the find is as good as that of a professed geologist.

During the deposition of the auriferous gravel on the western flanks of the Sierra there were great outbursts of volcanoes near the summits of that range. Towards their close a vast stream of lava flowed down the shallow valley of the ancient Stanislas river, filling up its channel for forty miles or more, and covering its extensive gravel deposits. The modern Stanislas river has cut across its former bed, and now flows in a gorge from 1200 to 2000 feet deeper than the old valley which was filled up by the lava stream, the surface of which appears as a long flat-topped ridge, known as Table Mountain. In many places the sides of the valley which originally directed the course of the lava have been worn away, so that the walls on either side present a perpendicular face one hundred feet or more in height.

The gravel of the ancient Stanislas river being very auriferous, great efforts have been made to reach the portion of it which lies under Table Mountain. Large sums have been spent in sinking shafts from the top through the lava cap, and tunnelling into it from the sides. Great masses of gravel have been thus quarried and removed, and a considerable amount of gold obtained, though in most cases not enough to meet the expenses, and the workings have been mostly discontinued.

_b_, lava; _G_, gravel; _S_, slate; _R_, old river-bed; _R´_,
present river-bed. (Le Conte.)]

It is evident that objects brought from a great depth below this lava cap must have remained there undisturbed since they were deposited along with the gravels, and that the evidence of the simplest miner, who says he brought them with a truck-load of dirt from the bottoms of shafts, or ends of tunnels pierced for hundreds of feet through the solid lava, is, if he speaks the truth, as good as if a scientist had found them _in situ_. And this evidence, together with that of mining inspectors and respectable residents who took an interest in scientific subjects, has been forthcoming in such a large number of instances as to preclude any supposition of mistake or fraud. Three of the latest of these discoveries were reported at the meeting of the Geological Society of America on the 30th December, 1890, and they seem to be supported by very first-class evidence.[14] Mr. Becker, one of the staff of the United States Geological Survey, to whom has been, committed the responsible work of reporting upon the gold-bearing gravels of California, exhibited to the Society a stone mortar, and some arrow or spear-heads, with the sworn statement from Mr. Neale, a well-known mining superintendent, that he took them with his own hands from undisturbed gravel in a mine of which he had charge under the lava of Table Mountain.

[14] Professor Wright in _Century_, April 1891.

A second object exhibited was a pestle found by Mr. King, who was at one time General Director of the United States Geological Survey, and is an expert whose judgment on such matters should be final, and who had no doubt that the gravel in which he found the object must have lain in place ever since the lava came down and covered it. The third object was a mortar taken from the old gravel at the end of a tunnel driven diagonally 175 feet from the western edge of the basalt cliff, and 100 feet or more below the surface of the flat top of Table Mountain, as supported by evidence entirely satisfactory to Professor Wright, who had just visited the locality and cross-examined the principal witnesses. This may prepare us to consider the case of the celebrated Calaveras skull as by no means an isolated or exceptional one, but antecedently probable from the number of human implements found in the same gravels, under the same beds of basalt and lava, at Table Mountain and numerous other places.

Professor Wright in the article already referred to, which is the latest on the subject, and made after his visit to California in 1890, which he says enabled him to add some important evidence, sums up the facts as follows--

"In February 1866, Mr. Mattenson, a blacksmith living near Table Mountain, in the county Calaveras, employed his spare earnings in driving a tunnel under the portion of the Sierra lava flow known as Bald Hill. At a depth of 150 feet below the surface, of which 100 feet consisted of solid lava, and the last fifty of interstratified beds of lava, gravel, and volcanic tuffs, he came upon petrified wood, and an object which he at first took for the root of a tree, thickly encased in cemented gravel. But seeing what he took for one of the roots was a lower jaw, he took the mass to the surface, and gave it to Mr. Scribner, the agent of an express company, and still living in the neighbourhood, and highly respected. Mr. Scribner, on perceiving what it was, sent it to Dr. Jones, a medical gentleman of the highest reputation, now living at San Francisco, who gave it to Professor Whitney, who visited the spot, and after a careful inquiry was fully satisfied with the evidence. Soon afterwards Professor Whitney took the skull home with him to Cambridge, where, in conjunction with Dr. Wynam, he subjected it to a very careful investigation to see if the relic itself confirmed the story told by the discoverer, and this it did to such a degree that, to use Professor Wright's words, the circumstantial evidence alone places its genuineness beyond all reasonable question."

This is not a solitary instance, for the Professor reports as the result of his personal inquiries only a year ago in the district, that "the evidence that human implements and fragments of the human skeleton have been found in the stratum of gravel underneath the lava of Table Mountain seems to be abundantly sufficient;" among others a fragment of a skull which came up with a bucketful of dirt from 180 feet below the surface of Table Mountain at Tuolumne.

Dr. Wallace, in an article on the "Antiquity of Man in North America," in the _Nineteenth Century_ of November 1887, thus enumerates some of the principal instances--

"In Tuolumne county from 1862 to 1865 stone mortars and platters were found in the auriferous gravel along with bones and teeth of mastodon 90 feet below the surface, and a stone muller was obtained in a tunnel driven under Table Mountain. In 1870 a stone mortar was found at a depth of 60 feet in gravel under clay and 'cement,' as the hard clay with vegetable remains (the old volcanic ash) is called by the miners. In Calaveras county from 1860 to 1869 many mortars and other stone implements were found in the gravels under lava beds, and in other auriferous gravels and clays at a depth of 150 feet. In Amador county stone mortars have been found in similar gravel at a depth of 40 feet. In Placer county stone platters and dishes have been found in auriferous gravels from 10 to 20 feet below the surface. In Nevada county stone mortars and ground discs have been found from 15 to 30 feet deep in the gravel. In Butte county similar mortars and pestles have been found in the lower gravel beneath lava beds and auriferous gravel; and many other similar finds have been recorded....

"Even these Californian remains do not exhaust the proofs of man's great antiquity in America, since we have the record of another discovery which indicates that he may, possibly, have existed at an even more remote epoch. Mr. E. L. Berthoud has described the finding of stone implements of a rude type in the Tertiary gravels of the Crow Creek, Colorado. Some shells were obtained from the same gravels, which were determined by Mr. T. A. Conrad to be species which are 'certainly not older than Older Pliocene, or possibly Miocene.'"

I do not dwell on the discoveries which have been made of human implements and skeletons in the cases of Minas Geraes in Brazil, and in the drift or loess of the pampas of Buenos Ayres, for although associated with extinct animals usually considered as Pliocene, there is a difference of opinion among competent geologists, whether the deposits are really Tertiary or only early Quaternary.

There is, however, one discovery, made since the date of these above recorded, of human work below the great basalt cap of North-Western America, brought up from a great depth of underlying gravels and sands of a silted-up lake, formerly forming part of the course of the Snake river at Nampa in Idaho, which is as startling in its way as that of the Calaveras skull. The following account of it is given on the authority of Professor Wright, who, having visited the locality in the summer of 1890, states that he found "abundant confirmatory evidence"--

The Nampa image was brought up in boring an Artesian well, at Nampa in Ada county, Idaho, through a lava-cap 15 feet thick, and below it about 200 feet of the quicksands and clays of a silted-up lake, formed in a basin of the Snake river, which joins the Columbia river, and flows into the Pacific, forming part, therefore, of the same geographical and drainage system as the Californian gravels. At this depth the borers came down to a stratum of coarse sand, mixed with clay balls at the top, and resting at the bottom on an ancient vegetable soil, and the image came up from the lower part of this coarse sand. The borer, or liner of the well, was a six-inch iron tube, and the drill was only used in piercing the lava, while the sands below it were all extracted by a sand pump. Mr. King, a respectable citizen of Nampa, who was boring the well, states that he had been for several days closely watching the progress of the well and passing through his hands the contents of the sand pump as they were brought up, so that he had hold of the image before he suspected what it was. Mr. Cumming, superintendent of that portion of the Union Pacific Railway, a highly-trained graduate of Harvard College, was on the ground next day and saw the image, and heard Mr. King's account of the discovery, and Mr. Adams, the president of the railway, happening to pass that way about a month later, he brought it to the notice of some of the foremost geologists in the United States. The image was sent to Boston by Mr. King, who gave every information, and it was found to be modelled from stiff clay, like that of the clay balls found in the sand, slightly if at all touched by fire, and incrusted like those balls with grains of oxide of iron, which Professor Putnam considers to be a conclusive proof of its great antiquity. Mr. Emmons, of the State Geological Society, gives it as his opinion that the strata in which this image is said to have been found, is older by far than any others in which human remains have been discovered, unless it be those under Table Mountain, in California, from which came the celebrated Calaveras skull. So much for the authenticity of the discovery, which seems unassailable, but now comes the remarkable feature of it, which to a great extent revolutionizes our conception of this early palæolithic age. The image, or rather statuette, which is scarcely an inch and a half long, is by no means a rude object, but on the contrary more artistic, and a better representation of the human form, than the little idols of many comparatively modern and civilized people, such as the Phoenicians. It is in fact very like the little statuettes so abundantly found in the neighbourhood of the old temple-pyramids of Mexico, which are generally believed to be not much older than the date of the Spanish Conquest.

FRONT VIEW. BACK VIEW.

THE NAMPA IMAGE--ACTUAL SIZE.

(Drawn from the object by J. D. Woodward.)]

In the face of this mass of evidence, from both the Old and New Worlds, it seems more like obstinate incredulity than scientific caution to deny the existence of Tertiary man. Indeed the objections put forward by those who still cling to the notion that any proofs of greater antiquity of man take them further back from the orthodox standpoint of Genesis, are sufficient of themselves to show the straits to which they are driven to explain the facts. A conspiracy has been imagined of many hundreds of ignorant miners, living hundreds of miles apart, to hoax scientists, or make a trade of forging implements, which is about as probable as the theory that the palæolithic remains of the Old World were all forged by the devil, and buried in Quaternary strata in order to discredit the Mosaic account of creation. It is enough to say that the great majority of the implements had been thrown away as rubbish, and that not a single instance has ever been adduced in which money was asked or offered for any of them.

Another equally wild theory is that gold-mining tunnels had been driven by some race of prehistoric Indians through hundreds of feet of solid basalt and quicksands, who left their implements in them; and this on the face of the fact that no such tunnels or evidences of ancient mining have ever been found in California, and that gold was unknown there until its recent discovery.

In accepting, however, the evidence for Tertiary man, we must accept with it conclusions which are much opposed to preconceived opinions. In the two best authenticated instances in which human skulls have been found in presumably Tertiary strata, those of Castelnedolo and Calaveras, it is distinctly stated that they present no unusual appearance, and do not go nearly as far in a brutal or pithecoid direction as the Quaternary skulls of Neanderthal and Spy, or as those of many existing savage races. The Nampa image also appears to show the existence of considerable artistic skill at a period which, if not Tertiary, must be of immense antiquity. How can this be reconciled with the theory of evolution and the descent of man from some animal ancestor common to him and the other quadrumana? Up to a certain point, viz. the earliest Quaternary period, the evidence of progression seems fairly satisfactory. If we take the general average of this class of skulls as compared with modern skulls, we find them of smaller brain-capacity, thicker and flatter, with prominent frontal sinuses, receding foreheads, projecting muzzles, and weaker chins. The brain is decidedly smaller, the average being 1150 cubic centimètres as compared with 1250 in Australians and Bushmen, and 1600 in well-developed Europeans; and of this smaller capacity a larger proportion is contained in the posterior part.[15] Other parts of the skeleton will tell the same story, and in many of the earliest and most extreme instances, as those of Neanderthal and Spy, a very decided step is made in the direction of the "missing link."

[15] Quatrefages and Hamy, _Crania Ethnica_.

But if we accept the only two specimens known of the type of Tertiary man, the skulls of Castelnedolo and Calaveras, which are supported by such extremely strong evidence, it would seem that as we recede in time, instead of getting nearer to the "missing link," we get further from it. This, and this alone, throws doubt on evidence which would otherwise seem to be irresistible, and without a greater number of well-authenticated confirmations we must be content to hold our judgment to a certain extent in suspense. This, however, it must be remarked, extends only to the type of man as shown by these two skulls, and does not at all affect the fact that man, of some type or other, did exist in the Pliocene and Miocene periods, which is established beyond reasonable doubt by the numerous instances in which chipped implements and cut bones have been found by experienced observers, and pronounced genuine by the highest authorities.

All we can say with any certainty is, that if the Darwinian theory of evolution applies to man, as it does to all other animals, and specially to man's closest kindred, the other quadrumana, the common ancestor must be sought very much further back, in the Eocene, which inaugurated the reign of placental mammalia, and in which the primitive types of so many of the later mammals have been found. Nor will this appear incredible when we consider that man's cousins, the apes and monkeys, first appear in the Miocene, or even earlier in the Eocene, and become plentiful in the later Pliocene, and that even anthropoid apes, and one of them, the Hylobates, scarcely if at all distinguishable from the Gibbon of the present day, have been found at Sansan and other Miocene deposits in the south of France, at OEningen in Switzerland, and Pikermi in Greece; while if Professor Ameghino's discoveries are to be credited, anthropoids already existed in the Eocene, and their development may be traced from the oldest Eocene forms.