Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Methodist Quarterly Review, 1881, Vol. 63: Fourth Series, Volume XXXIII
Several circumstances raise a suspicion of the, extreme age of this skull. The gravel in which it is found is a surface deposit covering the face of the country in some regions, and there fore a man of the present day might leave his skull in it. But it was found under one hundred and fifty feet of lava. True. And how long a period would it take a volcano to deposit that amount of lava? W'ithin the present century volcanoes have deposited as much as six hundred feet of lava in a single erup tion. The important question is not, how thick is the lava, but how long has it been in site The United States geological survey of the Territories, 1871, 1872, declares that the effusion of the basal is a modern event, occurring for the most part near the commencement of our present period, after the entire surface reached nearly, or quite, the present elevation. Volcanoes still exist in the Pacific region, and from recent signs at Pike's Peak and elsewhere it is not improbable that this generation may wit ness eruptions in many old craters whose fires have been sup posed extinct. Earthquakes are not uncommon in California, and the hot springs, which are numerous, are looked upon by geologists as the last of a series of volcanic events. So that the thickness of the lava above the Calaveras skull shows nothing but that the. Bones were deposited before any white man visited those regions. As for the gi'avelly matrix, any bones depos ited in the gravel where the warm waters of a geyser may per colate to them, will become incrusted with a gravelly matrix. All along the lllinois River bones, brickbats, and even bits of wood may be found cemented to the river pebbles by carbonate of lime.
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