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Figure 5.13. This mortar and pestle (Holmes 1899, plate XIII) were found by J. H. Neale, who removed them from a mine tunnel penetrating Tertiary deposits (33–55 million years old) under Table Mountain, Tuolumne County, California.

The position of the artifacts in gravel “close to the bed-rock” at Tuolumne Table Mountain indicates they were 33–55 million years old. In 1898, William H. Holmes decided to interview Neale and in 1899 published the following summary of Neale’s testimony: “One of the miners coming out to lunch at noon brought with him to the superintendent’s office a stone mortar and a broken pestle which he said had been dug up in the deepest part of the tunnel, some 1500 feet from the mouth of the mine. Mr. Neale advised him on returning to work to look out for other utensils in the same place, and agreeable to his expectations two others were secured, a small ovoid mortar, 5 or 6 inches in diameter, and a flattish mortar or dish, 7 or 8 inches in diameter. These have since been lost to sight. On another occasion a lot of obsidian blades, or spear-heads, eleven in number and averaging 10 inches in length, were brought to him by workmen from the mine. They had been found in what Mr. Neale called a ‘side channel,’ that is, the bed of a branch of the main Tertiary stream about a thousand feet in from the mouth of the tunnel, and 200 or 300 feet vertically from the surface of the mountain slope. . . . Four or five of the specimens were given to Mr. C. D. Voy, the collector. . . . Some had one notch, some had two notches, and others were plain leaf-shaped blades” (Sinclair 1908, pp. 118–119; Holmes 1899, pp. 452– 453).

As can be seen, there are significant differences between the account given by Holmes and the earlier affidavit of Neale. In particular, Holmes (1899, p. 453) said: “In his conversation with me he did not claim to have been in the mine when the finds were made.” This might be interpreted to mean that Neale had lied in his original statement. Here, however, the following points need to be carefully considered. The just-quoted passages from Holmes are not the words of Neale but of Holmes (1899, p. 452), who said: “His [Neale’s] statements, written down in my notebook during and immediately following the interview, were to the following effect.” It is not clear what liberties Holmes may have taken in his representation of Neale’s conversations with him. It is interesting that Holmes did not say that Neale denied that he entered the mine; Holmes merely said he did not positively state that he did enter, which leaves open the possibility that perhaps he did. It is thus debatable whether one should place more confidence in Holmes’s indirect summary of Neale’s words than in Neale’s own notarized affidavit, signed by him. Significantly, we have no confirmation from Neale himself that Holmes’s version of their conversation was correct.

That Holmes may have been mistaken is certainly indicated by a subsequent interview with Neale conducted by William J. Sinclair in 1902. Summarizing Neale’s remarks, Sinclair (1908, p. 119) wrote: “A certain miner (Joe), working on the day shift in the Montezuma Tunnel, brought out a stone dish or platter about two inches thick. Joe was advised to look for more in the same place. At the time, they were working in caving ground. Mr. Neale went on the night shift and in excavating to set a timber, ‘hooked up’ one of the obsidian spear points. With the exception of the one brought out by Joe, all the implements were found personally by Mr. Neale, at one time, in a space about six feet in diameter on the shore of the channel. The implements were in gravel close to the bed-rock and were mixed with a substance like charcoal.” When all the testimony is duly weighed, it appears that Neale himself did enter the mine and find stone implements in place in the gravel.

As in the case of the Pierce discoveries, Sinclair (1908, p. 119) observed “there is involved the anomaly of two late volcanic rock types, andesite