Some observations supporting the hoax theory come from persons who examined the matrix of pebbles and earth in which the Calaveras skull had been discovered. Dr. F. W. Putnam of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History said the skull did not bear any trace of gravel from the mines. William J. Sinclair of the University of California also personally examined the skull and said the material attached to it was not gravel from the gold mine. He thought it was the kind of material one might find in a cave, where Indians sometimes placed bodies. On the other hand, Holmes (1899, p. 467) reported: “Dr. D. H. Dall states that while in San Francisco in 1866, he compared the material attached to the skull with portions of the gravel from the mine and that they were alike in all essentials.” And W. O. Ayres (1882, p. 853), writing in the American naturalist, stated: “I saw it and examined it carefully at the time when it first reached Professor Whitney’s hands. It was not only incrusted with sand and gravel, but its cavities were crowded with the same material; and that material was of a peculiar sort, a sort which I had occasion to know thoroughly.” It was, said Ayres, the gold-bearing gravel found in the mines, not a recent cave deposit.
Regarding the skull, Ayres noted (1882, p. 853): “It has been said that it is a modern skull which has been incrusted after a few years of interment. This assertion, however, is never made by anyone knowing the region. The gravel has not the slightest tendency toward an action of that sort. . . . the hollows of the skull were crowded with the solidified and cemented sand, in such a way as they could have been only by its being driven into them in a semi-fluid mass, a condition the gravels have never had since they were first laid down.”
Whitney, in his original description of the fossil, observed that the Calaveras skull was highly fossilized.This is certainly consistent with great age; however, as Holmes pointed out, it is also true that bones can become fossilized over the course of a few hundred or thousand years. Yet geologist George Becker (1891, p. 195) reported: “I find that many good judges are fully persuaded of the authenticity of the Calaveras skull, and Messrs. Clarence King, O. C. Marsh, F. W. Putnam, and W. H. Dall have each assured me that this bone was found in place in the gravel beneath the lava.” Becker added that this statement was made with the permission of the authorities named. Clarence King, as mentioned previously, was a geologist with the U. S. Geological Survey. O. C. Marsh, a paleontologist, was a pioneer dinosaur fossil hunter and served as president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1883 to 1895. But F. W. Putnam of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, as we have seen, later changed his mind, saying that the matrix of the skull appeared to be a cave deposit.
It should, however, be kept in mind that the Calaveras skull was not an isolated discovery. Great numbers of stone implements were found in nearby deposits of similar age. And, as we shall see, additional human skeletal remains were also uncovered in the same region, adding credibility to the Calaveras skull. As Sir Arthur Keith (1928, p. 471) put it: “The story of the Calaveras skull . . . cannot be passed over. It is the
‘bogey’ which haunts the student of early man . . . taxing the powers of belief of every expert almost to the breaking point.”
On January 1, 1873, the president of the Boston Society of Natural History read extracts from a letter by Dr. C. F. Winslow about a discovery of human bones at Table Mountain in Tuolumne County, California. The find was made in 1855 or 1856, and the details were communicated to Winslow by Capt. David B. Akey, who had witnessed it. The discovery took place about 10 years before J. D. Whitney first reported on the famous Calaveras skull.
Winslow (1873, pp. 257–258) gave this account of Akey’s testimony: “He states that in a tunnel run into the mountain at the distance of about fifty feet from that upon which he was employed, and at the same level, a complete human skeleton was found and taken out by miners personally known to him, but whose names he does not now recollect. He did not see the bones in place, but he saw them after they were brought down from the tunnel to a neighboring cabin. . . . He thinks that the depth from the surface at which this skeleton was found was two hundred feet, and from one hundred and eighty to two hundred feet from the opening cut or face of the tunnel. The bones were in a moist condition, found among the gravel and very near the bed rock, and water was running out of the tunnel. There was a petrified pine tree, from sixty to eighty feet in length and between two and three feet in diameter at the butt, lying near this skeleton. Mr. Akey went into the tunnel with the miners, and they pointed out to him the place where the skeleton was found. He saw the tree in place and broke specimens from it.” The gravel just above the bedrock, where the skeleton was found, is between 33 and 55 million years old (Slemmons 1966, p. 200). This must be the age of the skeleton unless it was introduced into the gravels at a later time, and we are not aware of any evidence indicating such an intrusion.
Dr. Winslow did not find any of the bones of the skeleton seen by Akey. But in another case, Winslow did collect some fossils, which he sent to museums in the eastern United States. A skull fragment, characterized by Dr. J. Wyman, a leading craniologist, as human (Holmes 1899, p. 456), was dispatched by Winslow to the Museum of the Natural History Society of Boston. The fossil was labeled as follows: “From a shaft in Table Mountain, 180 feet below the surface, in gold drift, among rolled stones and near mastodon debris. Overlying strata of basaltic compactness and hardness. Found July, 1857. Given to Rev. C. F. Winslow by Hon. Paul K. Hubbs, August, 1857.” Another fragment, from the same skull and similarly labeled, was sent to the Museum of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. The lava cap of Table Mountain is 9 million years old. The oldest gravels below the lava are 55 million years old. The skull fragment could thus be from 9 million to 55 million years old.
When examining a collection of stone artifacts belonging to Dr. Perez Snell, J. D. Whitney noted the presence of a human jaw. The jaw and artifacts all came from gold-bearing gravels beneath the lava cap of Tuolumne Table Mountain. The jaw measured 5.5 inches across from condyle to condyle, which is within the normal human range. Whitney (1880, p. 288) remarked that all the human fossils uncovered in the goldmining region, including this one, were of the anatomically modern type. The gravels from which the jaw came could be anywhere from 9 to 55 million years old. Whitney also reported on other discoveries of human fossils, from deposits of similar age.
In an address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, delivered in August, 1879, O. C. Marsh, president of the Association and one of America’s foremost paleontologists, said about Tertiary man: “The proof offered on this point by Professor J. D. Whitney in his recent work (Aurif. Gravels of Sierra nevada) is so strong, and his careful, conscientious method of investigation so well known, that his conclusions seem irresistible. . . . At present, the known facts indicate that the American beds containing human remains and works of man, are as old as the Pliocene of Europe. The existence of man in the Tertiary period seems now fairly established” (Southall 1882, p. 196).
More evidence for human beings in the early and middle Tertiary comes from Europe. According to Gabriel de Mortillet, M. Quiquerez reported the discovery of a skeleton at Delémont in Switzerland in ferruginous clays said to be Late Eocene. About this find, de Mortillet (1883, p. 72) simply said one should be suspicious of human skeletons found with the bones in natural connection. De Mortillet further stated that one should be cautious about a similarly complete skeleton found by Garrigou in Miocene strata at Midi de France.