The Calaveras Skull
In February 1866, Mr. Mattison, the principal owner of the Bald Hill mine near Angels Creek in Calaveras County, removed a skull from a layer of gravelly sand 39 meters below the surface, close to the underlying rock layer and beneath several distinct layers of volcanic material. Volcanic eruptions began in this region during the Oligocene (38 million years ago), continued through the Miocene (25 million years ago), and ended in the Pliocene (5 million years ago). Since the skull was found near the bottom of the sand and lava layers, it is very likely that the geological layer where it was located predates the Pliocene.
The skull was examined by J.D. Whitney, the California State Geologist.
On July 16, 1866, Whitney presented a report on the Calaveras skull to the California Academy of Sciences, claiming it had been found in a Pliocene layer, which generated great interest across America.
William Holmes gathered testimonies suggesting that the skull was not a Tertiary fossil but a clever hoax.
However, there is a problem with the hoax hypothesis itself, as there are many versions. Some claimed it was a prank by Mattison's friends; others suggested that the miners themselves had placed a skull, taken from an Indian cemetery, to scare a fellow worker. Others stated that while Mattison had indeed found a skull, the one presented to Whitney was not the original.
Holmes examined the skull, preserved at the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and concluded that “the skull had never been fractured by transportation in a Tertiary stream, had never come from the ancient sands of Mattison’s mine, and in no way represents a race of men from the Tertiary period.”
On the other hand, people like Dr. D. Hall, Ayres, the famous geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey Clarence King, and the paleontologist O.C. Marsh, a pioneer in dinosaur fossil research, repeatedly confirmed the fossil’s authenticity, also verifying the conditions of the discovery site.
It’s worth noting that numerous stone tools and human remains were repeatedly found in deposits near Calaveras. In light of these facts, as Sir Arthur Keith said in 1928, “the story of the Calaveras skull… cannot be dismissed. It is the specter haunting scholars of early man… and it severely tests the faith of all experts.”
