PRELIMINARY REVISION OF THE EVIDENCE RE- LATING TO AURIFEROUS GRAVEL MAN
IN CALIFORNIA
By WILLIAM H. HOLMES SECOND PAPER INTRODUCTION
The main features of the problem of Auriferous Gravel man in California stand out in bold relief. On the one hand the evi- dence is interpreted as establishing the existence of a Tertiary, man of high type physically and mentally, equal or superior to the Indian tribes of the region today, and occupying a culture plane corresponding to the polished stone age of Europe. It is assumed that this remotely ancient man continued to live and thrive, without perceptible advance or retrogression, while nature passed through a thousand centuries of revolution ; or that, as an alternative proposition, if the Tertiary race did not persist but disappeared along with the other mammalian fauna of the time, a new race sprang up, duplicating the physical characters and culture of a former geologic period. There are those high in the councils of anthropologic and geologic science who profess to see no reason for rejecting these bold and extraordinary proposi- tions. On the other hand, there are those who hold that the facts adduced do not warrant either of these conclusions, who see in the whole body of observations and assumptions only a mass of errors and misinterpretations. Thus for a number of years the opposing views have stood without apparent change, the proofs, though strong, not being sufficiently decisive to carry full con- viction with regard to a proposition of such exceptional magni-
614
�� �
