Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [261]
Occasionally, the miners would find stone artifacts, and, more rarely, human fossils (Section 6.2.6). 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.
The finds occurred in three situations: (1) in surface deposits of gravel; (2) in gravels washed from hillsides by hydraulic mining; and (3) in underground deposits of gravel reached by mine shafts and tunnels. The artifacts from surface deposits and hydraulic mining were of doubtful age, but the artifacts from deep mine shafts and tunnels could be more securely dated because the gold-bearing gravels lay underneath thick layers of volcanic material.
5.5.1 The Age of the Auriferous Gravels
J. D. Whitney thought the geological evidence indicated the auriferous 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.
According to Paul C. Bateman and Clyde Wahrhaftig (1966), R. N. Norris (1976), and William B. Clark (1979), the majority of the gold-bearing gravels were laid down in stream channels during the Eocene and Early Oligocene. These are called the prevolcanic auriferous gravels. 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.
Although intense at times, the volcanic activity in the Sierra Nevada Mountains was not continuous, allowing rivers to carve new channels and canyons. These rivers often redistributed old gravels laid down in the Eocene and Early Oligocene periods. So below the volcanic formations, the most recent of which are Early Pleistocene (Jenkins 1970, p. 25), there can now be found auriferous gravel deposits that were laid down in stream beds during the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods. 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.
5.5.2 Discoveries of Doubtful Age
Before discussing the most significant discoveries, the ones made in mines extending into gold-bearing gravels beneath ancient lava flows, let us briefly examine why it is not possible to attribute any great age to the artifacts found elsewhere in the gold mining region.
Some stone implements were found in the sluices of the hydraulic mines, where powerful jets of water were directed at entire hillsides. William H. Holmes, of the Smithsonian Institution, pointed out that recently abandoned Indian villages were often found on the slopes above the open mines and that it was quite possible that modern stone implements were washed into the Tertiary gravels below (1899, p. 445).
Other artifacts were found deep within surface deposits of Tertiary gravel. For example, at Gold Springs, a little west of Columbia, Mr. Lot Cannell stated that he discovered