The Mystery of the Calaveras Skull

When one thinks of the eminent Josiah Whitney, that noble and esteemed
scientist of the eighteen hundreds, it is fairly safe to assume that
the mental image of Cave Men dressed in animal skins wielding clubs
and hunting giant extinct mammals would probably not spring to your
mind as a part of your vision of that great man. Yet you probably
didn’t know that this now forgotten link between Whitney’s World of
Geology and that Primitive World of Cave Men does indeed  exist, which
just goes to show how little you know about history.

If one were to ask anyone in contemporary California what the name
Josiah Whitney means to them, they would probably answer with
something regarding the mountain peak which bears his name - Mount
Whitney – the highest point in the continental United States which is
now surrounded by Sequoia National Park. And they would be correct.
But if one were to have asked this question to a Californian of a
century and a half ago the answer would probably also have included
something about the Geological Survey which Whitney headed; the one
which mapped and named much of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range during
the mid to late eighteen hundreds.

Yet the odds are that almost no one, be it in 1866 or in 2016, would
respond by telling you a story about Whitney in which Early Man
inhabited California tens of millions of years ago; that humans at
that time shared this Golden State with giant and long extinct
creatures; and that, based on his geological research and recognized
historical expertise, Josiah Whitney was a leading proponent of this
controversial view of North American History. And yet he was just
that, and – according to him - he had the evidence to prove it.

If, at this point in the story, your mind is leaping back to the no
doubt historically accurate vision of Raquel Welch in the movie One
Million Years B.C., then you have at last made the leap to the link
which I inferred, and one which would have been a most valid leap from
Whitney’s point of view. However, poor Josiah Whitney did not have the
benefit of the Hollywood Imagination Machine to help him conjure
images of primitive men and women in California. What he did have was
somewhat less attractive yet nevertheless even more intriguing – he
had the skull of an early hominid creature found deep in a mine shaft
in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; a skull found in geological strata so
old that it proved that its human-like owner had walked this land with
the long extinct creatures millions of years ago. So Whitney set out
with determination and gusto on the difficult path of trying to
convince the scientific establishment of this newly discovered fact.
The scientific establishment was not impressed.

The story begins in February of 1866 when a man named Mattison who was
partial owner of a gold mine near Angels uncovered some bones buried
in the mine, in a layer of gravel about 130 feet below the surface.
The bones were lying between volcanic material above them and bedrock
below. Volcanic activity in this area had occurred five to forty
million years ago, and since the skull had most of the volcanic
material on top of it and had lain undisturbed until the time of its
discovery, this indicated that it would have been from the older end
of that age spectrum.

Mattison removed the bones, which he could see formed a skull, and
brought the bones to a friend of his at the Wells, Fargo & Company
office in Angel’s. There they cleaned up the bones and reassembled
them, and they clearly saw that it was a human skull. So the skull was
then sent to a Doctor Jones at the nearby mining camp of Murphy’s, in
the hopes of a determination being made as to its age and manner of
death. Besides being a medical doctor Jones was also a collector of
all things antiquarian and recognized the skull as definitely being of
antiquarian origin. He wrote a letter to the Geological Survey, whose
office was in San Francisco, informing them of the find. And who
happened to be opening the office mail that day? None other than
Josiah Whitney.

After reading the letter describing the find, Whitney immediately set
out to Murphy’s and Angel’s to speak face to face with all of the
individuals involved in the discovery. He was already acquainted with
Doctor Jones and knew him as an individual whose testimony he thought
could be trusted as both accurate and reliable. Whitney then returned
to San Francisco and wrote a paper on the bones, which became known as
the Calaveras Skull, and presented that paper to the California
Academy of Sciences in July of 1866, a mere four months after its
discovery. Unlike today, apparently such dissertations weren’t subject
to months of delay and peer review, yet Whitney was prestigious enough
to have avoided such things anyway. In his paper he firmly stated that
the skull had been unearthed within geological strata from the
Pliocene Era, making its age probably between five and twenty-five
million years old. This paper caused quite a stir, because then as now
current belief held that Native Americans had only been in this area
for a few thousand years – perhaps ten thousand at most. So a lot of
coughing, winking, and elbow-nudging was no doubt going on in that
audience as Whitney’s fellow scientists felt that he had probably
crossed the line which demarked the scientific from the incredulous.

Nevertheless, Whitney stuck to his guns. But Christian church pastors
and the Christian press – both very vocal and influential groups -
immediately jumped on the story and angrily argued that it simply was
not credible. They claimed it was a hoax and, in a thin attempt to
acknowledge Whitney’s scientific prestige, they claimed that the hoax
had been perpetrated upon him as a joke by rowdy mountain miners.
Whitney was, after all, a man of considerable scientific achievement,
and there was a much stronger chance of discrediting the evidence if
they excluded him from the charge of fraud – even if that was what
many of them privately believed. The western writer Bret Harte also
got into the spirit of the controversy and wrote a humorous poem
titled ‘The Pliocene Skull’.

Whitney acknowledged that many were opposed to his views and replied
that the age of the skull was being primarily disparaged by religious
critics, not scientific ones.  In response to this Doctor William
Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution decided that he should
investigate the matter. He made the trip to California and interviewed
everyone he could find who had been involved in the story, some of
whom propounded the idea that the whole thing had just been a joke
that had gotten out of control. On the other hand Mr. Mattison, who
had found the skull, swore that it was genuine, as did Mr. Scribner of
the Wells, Fargo & Company who had assisted in cleaning and
reassembling it. Yet now there came a hint that there was also some
indication that the skull of which Whitney took possession may not
have been the original skull found in the mine shaft; that there may
have been a switch which took place either at the Wells, Fargo station
or at Doctor Jones’ office. Doctor Jones was a collector of such
artifacts, and some assumed that when he’d received the original older
skull from Mattison he had surreptitiously replaced it with another,
keeping the original for his private collection. Yet there was never
any direct evidence that this had actually happened. After countless
interviews of conflicting testimonies, Doctor Holmes of the
Smithsonian gave up and returned to Washington, unable to reach a
definite conclusion about the origin or age of the skull.

The Calaveras Skull (or one of the Calaveras Skulls, if a switch had
indeed taken place) then got shipped to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
there at the Peabody Museum Doctor Holmes finally got to examine it.
He concluded that it was in fact the skull of a more modern human and
did not show the evolutionary characteristics of Early Man, and that
it probably wasn’t more than a thousand years in age. This presented a
quandary for the religious protestors: on the one hand Holmes was
supporting their position by saying it wasn’t as old as stated; on the
other hand he was basing that decision on supposed evolutionary
characteristics which were in direct opposition to the basic beliefs
of Christianity. Should the pastors support this statement by Holmes,
or should they decry it instead? No one seemed to know. It was a
‘Damned if we do or damned if we don’t’ situation. In the meantime the
director of the Peabody Museum – Doctor F. Putnam – expressed his view
that the skull was indeed the Real Deal, and that it presented proof –
albeit controversial proof – that humans had existed in California for
millions of years longer than previously believed. So he came out in
direct opposition to Doctor Holmes of the Smithsonian. Also offering
his support to Whitney was Clarence King, a famous geologist in
California scientific circles and destined to become the first
director of the United States Geological Survey; a man whose
professional accomplishments came to be overshadowed by details of his
personal life after his death but who nevertheless had impeccable
scientific credentials. Another heavyweight weighing in on Whitney’s
side was Doctor O. Marsh, a well-known paleontologist who was the
President of the National Academy of Sciences. On both sides of the
issue men (yes - always men, no women) were adamant. The scientists
cloaked their fiery opinions with the pretense of professional
behavior, while those whose opinions were based in religion were just
fiery; often openly contemptuous.

Actually, it was surprising that Whitney got as much support from the
scientific community as he did. Scientists are notoriously
conservative and generally unaccepting of any ideas which challenge
their traditional values. In the instance of humans abiding in
California millions of years ago this same prejudice continues to this
day, with the Accepted Doctrine being that this area had no human
presence until Early Man (and woman) migrated to North America across
the Bering Land Bridge about ten thousand years ago and then spread
south; that Modern Man evolved only in one place – that being the
so-called Cradle of Civilization in Africa - and then expanded from
there to populate the world. This insular attitude is jealously and
tenaciously guarded, and evidence to the contrary demonstrating that
the story of human development is perhaps much more varied and
convoluted is often ridiculed or summarily dismissed. So the
skepticism faced by Whitney was not surprising to him, for the
evolution of humans into creatures with more intelligent minds than
Early Man does not necessarily include that those modern men have also
developed more open minds.

And in support of Whitney’s stand there is other archaeological
evidence contrary to accepted scientific doctrine, one instance of
which was found a bit farther to the north yet still in California. In
a mine shaft in Placer County known as the Missouri Tunnel a human leg
bone was discovered, and studies of samples from the surrounding soil
revealed an age of almost nine million years. In the mining camp of
Cherokee several stone mortars were unearthed in deep mining shafts in
1853, also in levels dating back millions of years. In 1860 and again
in 1869 stone mortars, in conjunction with other human tools, were dug
up near the town of San Andreas – again dating back well before humans
were supposed to be walking those hills.

Another instance of discovery took place about ten years before the
Calaveras Skull was discovered and yet not too far away. In 1856 Dr.
C. Winslow of California submitted a deposition to the Boston Society
of Natural History of an amazing discovery in a mine located near
Table Mountain. He stated that miners digging tunnels beneath Table
Mountain had, at a depth of about two hundred feet below the surface,
unearthed a complete human skeleton. The gravel and volcanic deposits
within which it lay were estimated to be of an age from thirty-three
to fifty-five million years old. From this same mine at Table
Mountain, and at the same level of those human remains, numerous other
bones from Mastodons were also discovered. This later discovery wasn’t
exactly earth-shaking in itself because mastodons were known to have
existed in California until about ten thousand years ago when they
then became extinct, presumably due to over-hunting by humans. Yet
that raised another question – if humans had only arrived here about
ten thousand years ago, then how did they manage to kill off the
entire population of North American Mastodons almost immediately upon
their arrival, and do it with only roughly cut spears? To many this
discrepancy supported the thesis that humans had indeed been here for
far longer than rigid scientific thought would admit, and that they
had evolved systems of hunting, and perhaps even of civilization,
which were far in advance of the accepted views.

Then again in 1868, also beneath Table Mountain, two skull fragments
were discovered at a depth of 180 feet in a horizontal side-shaft
leading off of a deep vertical hole known as the Valentine Shaft,
which angled off steeply into the mountain. It was found amongst
gold-bearing gravel and also in association with mastodon bones. Also
found near the skull was a large stone mortar, an obvious early human
artifact; a tool which supposedly had not been developed in this area
until relatively recent eras of history. Yet the strata in which the
skull fragments and mortar were found dated from ten to fifty million
years ago. From those same mine shafts beneath Table Mountain a jaw
bone was also found in that same strata of ten to fifty million years
of age. Table Mountain appears to have been a popular gathering place
for Early Man and perhaps it is ironic that what today attracts crowds
of humans to Table Mountain is the gambling casino run there by Native
Americans, local descendants of those who once walked that mountain on
those old bones found from millions of years ago.

If you were to do research on the Calaveras Skull today you will find
that most scientific sources would still immediately dismiss it as a
hoax; a gag perpetrated upon an eager and gullible scientist by miners
with a sense of humor as coarse and creative as their homemade
alcoholic brew. And perhaps that might be the case. Critics would
state this opinion now just as they said it when the skull was
discovered; claiming that tests were not accurate, witnesses were
unreliable, bone fragments were carelessly catalogued, or perhaps even
that the original skull disappeared into a private collection almost
as soon as it had been discovered to be replaced by an obvious
pretender. Yet it would seem that there is strong evidence that humans
have indeed thrived in what is now California for many millions of
years; for far longer than the scientific community would acknowledge
to Josiah Whitney a hundred and fifty years ago or that they would
even grudgingly acknowledge today. Ironically those two opposing
forces - those who adhere to a strict interpretation of the bible have
this in common with those who adhere to a narrow interpretation of the
scientific data – they both deny the evidence of the presence of
humans in the Sierra Nevada Mountains dating back into antiquity.

Interestingly, in Spanish the word ‘Calaveras’ means skull, and this
part of California had that prescient name long before Josiah Whitney
stood before the California Academy of Sciences and showed the
scientists there assembled the skull of his ancient friend. Perhaps
there is an older, as yet unknown reason why this area of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains had this name. Perhaps skulls have populated this
part of the mountains for a very, very long time, and they
occasionally rise to the surface to whisper to us a bit of ancient
history. Instead of turning away with deaf ears, perhaps we should
choose to listen to what they have to tell us. A deep mine shaft when
once excavated may contain more than one type of treasure; but a
closed mind which refuses to open to the evidence of the past contains
nothing of value whatsoever.