Article Calaveras Skull
Type: Hoax.
Summary: A practical joke by miners confused scientists for decades.
Front view of the Calaveras SkullOn February 25, 1866 workers found a human skull buried deep inside a mine on Bald Mountain in Calaveras County, California. The skull was located 130 feet below the surface, beneath a layer of lava.
The owner of the mine, James Mattison, gave the skull to a merchant who in turn passed it on to a local physician until it eventually found its way into the possession of J.D. Whitney, the State Geologist of California and Professor of Geology at Harvard University.
Whitney cleaned the skull and officially announced its discovery on July 16, 1866 at a meeting of the California Academy of Science. He claimed that it was evidence of the existence of Pliocene age man in North America. This made it the oldest known record of human existence in North America.
However, the authenticity of the skull was immediately attacked, and what ensued was a long controversy between those who insisted that the skull had been planted at the mine, and those who insisted that it was a genuine find.
A San Francisco newspaper, for instance, declared in 1869 that: “We believe the whole story worthy of no scientific credence… a minister… told us that the miners freely told him that they purposely got up the whole affair as a joke on Professor Whitney.”
The Evening Star noted in 1898 that, “All were delighted to have the joke on Whitney, who, being an Easterner of very reserved demeanor, was unpopular with the miners.”
Nevertheless, Whitney continued to believe that the skull was genuine. He was eventually replaced at Harvard by F.W. Putnam, who also argued for the skull’s authenticity.
In 1901 Putnam was in California trying to determine once and for all the authenticity of the skull. He was told a story to the effect that in 1865 a number of Indian skulls had been dug up from a nearby Indian burial site. One of these skulls had been planted in the Bald Mountain mine so that workers would later find it. Despite hearing this story, Putnam was still not ready to declare the skull a fake. Instead he simply conceded that “It may be impossible ever to determine to the satisfaction of the archaeologist the place where the skull was actually found.”
To confuse the matter, a careful comparison of the skull with descriptions of the skull at the time it had originally been found, led investigators to conclude that the two were not the same. In other words, at some point between the time that it had been dug up and the time that it had come into the possession of Whitney, the skull had been switched.
It now seems clear that neither the skull found in the mine, nor the skull acquired by Whitney, were genuine ancient skulls. The skulls were simply too modern in character to be from the Pliocene age, and in addition, the sediment attached to them was not from the mine deposit, indicating that they had been planted.
Ralph Dexter concludes that “The desire on the part of miners to play a practical joke, the anxiety of archaeologists to prove the existence of early humankind in North America, the firm convictions and good faith of those involved in an honest mistake, and the confusion resulting from a mix-up of skulls, led to this long drawn-out controversy, unique in the annals of American archaeology.”
References
- Dexter, Ralph W. “Historical Aspects of the Calaveras Skull Controversy.” American Antiquity. 51, no.2 (1986): 365-69.
