MINERS DISCOVER SOME SKULLS IN CALAVERAS COUNTY

Tina Picotes visits Calaveras County, California

Today, The Grandma is resting at home. She has received news from Tina Picotes, one of her closest friends. Tina is visiting California and she has sent her some photos and information about the Calaveras County Skulls a controversial story ocurred in those lands when on a day like today in 1866 a skull was found there.

Some scientists believed these skulls belonged to ancient humans while other think they are a fake. It does not matter for The Grandma because she appreciates the idea of something that has become a legend and every legend has lights and shadows, trues and lies.

The Calaveras Skull was a human skull found by miners in Calaveras County, California, which was purported to prove that humans, mastodons, and elephants had coexisted in California. It was later revealed to be a hoax. Coincidentally, calaveras is the Spanish word for skulls.

On February 25, 1866, miners claimed to have found a human skull in a mine, beneath a layer of lava, 40 m below the surface of the earth, which made it into the hands of Josiah Whitney, then the State Geologist of California as well as a Professor of Geology at Harvard University.

More information: Calaveras County

 

A year before the skull came to his attention, Whitney published the belief that humans, mastodons, and mammoths coexisted; the skull served as proof of his convictions. After careful study, he officially announced its discovery at a meeting of the California Academy of Sciences on July 16, 1866, declaring it evidence of the existence of Pliocene age man in North America, which would make it the oldest known record of humans on the continent.

Its authenticity was immediately challenged. In 1869 the San Francisco Evening Bulletin reported that a miner had told a minister that the skull was planted as a practical joke. Thomas Wilson of Harvard ran a fluorine analysis on it in 1879, the first ever usage of such on human bone, with the results indicating it was of recent origin. It was so widely believed to be a hoax that Bret Harte famously wrote a satirical poem called To the Pliocene Skull in 1899.

More information: Go Calaveras

Whitney did not waver in his belief that it was genuine. His successor at Harvard, F. W. Putnam, also believed it to be real. By 1901 Putnam was determined to discover the truth and he headed to California. While there, he heard a story that in 1865 one of a number of Indian skulls had been dug up from a nearby burial site and planted in the mine specifically for miners to find. 

Putnam still declined to declare the skull a fake, instead conceding, It may be impossible ever to determine to the satisfaction of the archaeologist the place where the skull was actually found. Others, such as adherents of Theosophy, also were unwavering in their belief in the authenticity of the skull.

The Calaveras Skull

To further complicate the issue, careful comparison of the skull with descriptions of it at the time of its discovery revealed that the skull Whitney had in his possession was not the one originally found.

Anthropologist William Henry Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution investigated around the turn of the century. He determined that the plant and animal fossils that had been discovered near the skull were indeed genuine, but the skull was too modern, and concluded that to suppose that man could have remained unchanged... for a million years, roughly speaking... is to suppose a miracle. Likewise, J. M. Boutwell, investigating in 1911, was told by one of the participants in the discovery that the whole thing was indeed a hoax. The miners of the Sierra Nevada apparently did not greatly like Whitney, being an Easterner of very reserved demeanor, and were delighted to have played such a joke on him.

Furthermore, John C. Scribner, a local shopkeeper, claimed to have planted it, and the story was revealed by his sister after his death. Radiocarbon dating in 1992 established the age of the skull at about 1,000 years, placing it in the late Holocene age.

Despite evidence to the contrary, the Calaveras Skull continues to be cited by some creationists as proof that paleontologists ignore evidence that does not fit their theories, although others have acknowledged that the Calaveras Skull is a hoax.

More information: Archaeology

Calaveras County, officially the County of Calaveras, is a county in the northern portion of the U.S. state, California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 40,171. The county seat is San Andreas. Angels Camp is the only incorporated city in the county.

Calaveras is the Spanish word for skulls; the county was reportedly named for the remains of Native Americans discovered by the Spanish explorer Captain Gabriel Moraga.

 

Tina Picotes visits the Calaveras County Archives

Calaveras Big Trees State Park, a preserve of giant sequoia trees, is in the county several miles east of the town of Arnold on State Highway 4. Credit for the discovery of giant sequoias here is given to Augustus T. Dowd, a trapper who made the discovery in 1852 while tracking a bear. When the bark from the Discovery Tree was removed and taken on a tour around the world, the trees became a worldwide sensation and one of the county's first tourist attractions. The uncommon gold telluride mineral calaverite was discovered in the county in 1861 and is named for it.

Mark Twain set his story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, in the county. The county hosts an annual fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee, featuring a frog-jumping contest, to celebrate the association with Twain's story. Each year's winner is commemorated with a brass plaque mounted in the sidewalk of downtown Historic Angels Camp and this feature is known as the Frog Hop of Fame.

The Spanish word calaveras means skulls. The county takes its name from the Calaveras River; it was said to have been named by Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga, during his 1806–1808 expeditions, when he found many skulls of Native Americans along the banks of the stream. He believed they had either died of famine or been killed in tribal conflicts over hunting and fishing grounds. A more likely cause was a European epidemic disease, acquired from interacting with other tribes near the Missions on the coast.

More information: Creation History

The Stanislaus River, which forms the southern boundary, is named for Estanislao, a Lakisamni Yokut who escaped from Mission San Jose in the late 1830s. He is reported to have raised a small group of men with crude weapons, hiding in the foothills when the Mexicans attacked. The natives were quickly decimated by Mexican gunfire.

In 1836, John Marsh, Jose Noriega, and a party of men, went exploring in Northern California. They made camp along a river bed in the evening, and when they woke up the next morning, discovered that they had camped in the midst of a great quantity of skulls and bones. They also gave the river the appropriate name: Calaveras.

The writer Mark Twain spent 88 seminal days in the county, during which time he heard the story that became The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County in the Angel Hotel in 1865. This short story kicked off Mark Twain's career and put Calaveras County on the map. 

The Calaveras Skull

Calaveras County was one of the original counties of the state of California, created in 1850 at the time of admission to the Union. Parts of the county's territory were reassigned to Amador County in 1854 and to Alpine County in 1864.

The county's geography includes beautiful landmarks, rolling hills, and giant valleys. It is also known for its friendly communities, and businesses such as agriculture management and construction engineering. It has numerous caverns, such as Mercer Caverns, California Cavern and Moaning Cavern that are national destinations for tourists from across the country. Other attractions include a thriving wine making industry, including the largest of the Calaveras wineries: Ironstone Vineyards, mountain sports recreation and the performing arts.

Gold prospecting in Calaveras County began in late 1848 with a camp founded by Henry Angel. Angel may have first arrived in California as a soldier, serving under Colonel Frémont during the Mexican War. After the war's end, he was found themselves in Monterey where he heard of the fabulous finds in the gold fields. He joined the Carson-Robinson party of prospectors and set out for the mines.

The company parted ways upon reaching what later became known as Angels Creek. Henry Angel tried placer mining but soon opened a trading post. By the end of the year, over one hundred tents were scattered about the creek and the settlement was referred to as Angels Trading Post, later shortened to Angels Camp.

More information: Sequoia Parks Conservacy

Placer mining soon gave out around the camp, but an extensive gold-bearing quartz vein of the area's Mother Lode was located by the Winter brothers during the mid-1850s, and this brought in the foundations of a permanent town. This vein followed Main Street from Angels Creek up to the southern edge of Altaville.

Five major mines worked the rich vein: the Stickle, the Utica, the Lightner, the Angels, and the Sultana. These mines reached their peaks during the 1880s and 1890s, when over 200 stamp mills crushed quartz ore brought in by hand cars on track from the mines. By the time hard rock mining was done, the five mines had producing a total of over $20 million in gold.

The telluride mineral calaverite was first recognized and obtained in 1861 from the Stanislaus Mine, Carson Hill, Angels Camp, in Calaveras Co., California. It was named for the County of origin by chemist and mineralogist Frederick Augustus Genth who differentiated it from the known gold telluride mineral sylvanite, and formally reported it as a new gold mineral in 1868.

A California Department of Forestry report lists the county's area in acres as 663,000, although the exact figure would be 2,685.00000 km2. There are a number of caverns located in Calaveras County.

More information: The Museum of Hoaxes

There's a saying among prospectors:

'Go out looking for one thing,

and that's all you'll ever find.'

Robert J. Flaherty