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about Dr. Snell’s collection, there is not much in the way of direct testimony about the discoverers and original stratigraphic positions of the implements. There was, however, one exception. “This was,” wrote Whitney (1880, p. 264), “a stone muller, or some kind of utensil which had apparently been used for grinding. It was carefully examined by the writer, and recognized as unquestionably of artificial origin. In regard to this implement Dr. Snell informed the writer that he took it with his own hands from a car-load of ‘dirt’ coming out from under Table Mountain.” A human jaw, inspected by Whitney, was also present in the collection of Dr. Snell. The jaw was given to Dr. Snell by miners, who claimed that the jaw had came from the gravels beneath the basalt cap at Table Mountain in Tuolumne County (Becker 1891, p. 193).

5.5.5 The Walton Mortar

A better-documented discovery from Tuolumne Table Mountain was made by Mr. Albert G. Walton, one of the owners of the Valentine claim. Walton found a stone mortar, 15 inches in diameter, in gold-bearing gravels 180 feet below the surface and also beneath the latite cap. Significantly, the find of the mortar occurred in a “drift,” a mine passageway leading horizontally from the bottom of the main vertical shaft of the Valentine mine. This tends to rule out the possibility that the mortar might have fallen in from above. Furthermore, the vertical shaft “was boarded up to the top, so that nothing could have fallen in from the surface during the working under ground” (Whitney 1880, p. 265). In fact, Walton, who found the mortar, was the carpenter responsible for timbering the shaft. A piece of a fossil human skull was also recovered from the Valentine mine (Section

6.2.6.3).

William J. Sinclair (1908, p. 115) later claimed that many of the drift tunnels from other mines near the Valentine shaft were connected. Sinclair granted that the Valentine vertical shaft may have been, as Whitney stated, securely boarded up to the top, so that nothing could fall in from the surface. But he proposed that objects still could have found their way into the Valentine underground tunnel from some other tunnels. Sinclair did not, however, offer any specific evidence that any tunnels were connected with the Valentine drift tunnels at the time the discoveries were made. In fact, Sinclair admitted that when he visited the area in 1902 he was not even able to find the Valentine shaft. It appears that Sinclair simply used his vague retrospective conjectures about possible invalidating circumstances to dismiss Walton’s report of his discovery. Operating in this manner, one could find good reason to dismiss any paleoanthropological discovery ever made.

Another author suggested that prehistoric miners, perhaps from the known culture centers in Mexico or Central America, left the stone artifacts in the course of gold-mining operations conducted in California (Southall 1882, p. 197). We are, however, aware of only a single report of a mine existing before the California Gold Rush of the 1850s. This one mine (Southall 1882, p. 198) is insufficient to explain mortars and other implements found in many separated locations. The proposal that there may have been numerous mines that were collapsed and therefore escaped detection is highly improbable. The Gold Rush miners, being expert in such matters, would most likely have detected them, especially since collapsed mine shafts would have posed a threat to their lives in the form of cave-ins.

Some critics have contended that the mortars were carried by Indians into mines dug during the Gold Rush days. But the Indians of those times did not possess portable mortars (Section 5.5.13). And even if they did possess portable mortars, it is unlikely they would have carried them into the mines. Mortars were generally used for the grinding of raw acorns, a laborious, time-consuming task not likely to have been performed in the cramped, dark, dangerous confines of a working mine shaft.

The mortars found in the mines do resemble those used by some California Indians in