Apart from specific information concerning individual sites it is possi- ble to reconstruct from physical analysis some idea of the broad environment of prehistoric times. This remains true, even if that environment is at pre- sent radically different and even if no direct documentary or ethnographic data are available.. Thus from the twenty-odd sites we have studied we could deduce that they encompassed four clearly distinct, habitats.. Thus the Central Valley mounds with their content low in rock, moderate in charcoal, high in fish and bird bone with traces of shell bespeak a river bank culture with much alluvial land, rich in aquatic food-but without forest resources. The Bay region sites demonstrate the presence of a hilly or rocky terrain, with good wood supply and enormous reserves of food in the form of-shellfish.- The Mendocino County deposits with their huge residues of rock and charcoal indi- cate a hilly, brushy or forested region with chief dependence upon plant food and mammals. The Santa Barbara deposits show again a costal area where inland the topography and biota resemble the Bay region but where the aquatic fauna was different. This in turn seems to be reflected in cultural divergencies. Not only geographical but temporal deductions may be made. Of these the most important is that the Central Valley habitat appeared to undergo no significant change with respect to living conditions from the inception of the earliest known cultures down to the advent of the white man. Clearly such conclusions can be couched only in terms of the broadest: generalities. As refinements in technique, however, permit us to draw finer and finer distinctions it should become feasible to derive a reasonably. clear idea of many aspects of lost civilizations which elude conventional qualita- tive and purely descriptive examination. The examples just cited give a fair preliminary indication of the type of information which may be secured by subjecting midden deposits to a careful quantitative analysis. 2. OBSERVATIONS ON EARLY MAN IN CALIFORNIA* Robert F. Heizer More than forty discoveries of hun skeletal reamins or man-made arti- facts claimed as ancient have been made in California in the past century.1 Not one of these has been unqualifiedly accepted by American archaeologists as constituting evidence of early man or the Paleo-Indian in the same sense that the foremost student of the subject, F..H. Ho Roberts, employs the word. The celebrated hoax in the form of the Calaveras skull, said to have come from the Pliocene gravels in a mine shaft-near.Altaville at a depth of 130 feet, was finally disposed of by the investigation of W. H. Holmes of the Bureau of American Etbnology about 1900.. Not one of the numerous finds of chipped and ground stone implements claimed to have.been recovered from the auriferous gravels of the Sierra Nevadas has been authenticated, yet as *This paper has also been printed in No. .l of the Kroeber-Anthropological Society Papers, pp. .28-35, 1950. - 6 - recently as 1948 Ruggles-Gates in his Huna Ancestry expresses the belief that they may yet prove to be of equal antiquity to the Tertiary and Quater- nary gravels from which they were claimed to have been excavated. The several cayes in the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas excavated or reported upon by Merriam, Furlong, Putnam, Sinclair, and Stock, and known as Potter Creek (Sha-48), Samwell (Sha-L49), Stone Man (Sha-50), Mercer (Cal-ill )3, and Hawver (Eld-i6) caves yielded no reasonably credible artifacts 'of human remains of Pleistocene date, though considerable discussion was printed regarding the possibility of certain chipped stonie tools and possible bone artifacts as having been made by human hands and being contemporaneous with the remains of extinct animals also recovered from the caves. At Borax Lake (Lak-36), near Clear Lake, M. R. Harrington believes-he has recovered evidence of the Folsom, and perhaps a pre-Folsom culture.2 The dating of the site by Antevs was based largely upon the artifacts found. Antevs in 1939. concluded that the Borax Lake site was occupied sometime be- tween 35,000 and 10,000 B. C. Ten years later he revised his opinion and now dates the site from the period 5000 to 2500 B. C.o.If Antevs is now correct in his dating of the Borax Lake site, the whole construct of typological- chronological teleconnexion established by Harrington falls Harrington, following the hazardous method of equating typological similarity of two lots of artifacts widely separated geographically with chronological equivalence, was led to believe that the Borax Lake site was occupied at the same time the true Folsom culture was in operation further east and south. Not only have other students pointed out that the typological similarity of the fluted Borax Lake specimens and those of classic Folsom form is not at all closeh but in addition the Borax Lake site, in a large number of its traits, rem sembles closely that of the Middle Horizon culture of the Sacramento Valley which probably does not date farther back than 1000 B. C.5 When the archaeo- logical complex of one site can be reasonably assigned a position in a well established local sequence, the necessity for dating it with reference to a series of sites 500 to 1000 miles distant is not apparent. I am not here primarily concerned with classifying the Borax Lake site pr se, but to make the point clear that the Borax Lake site cannot, at this time, be held up as an example of the presence of the Paleo-Indian. I also wish to make clear the fact that I am not criticizing Mr. Harrington's work or his report which I believe he wrote in good faith and with the reservation that future work might correct or alter the conclusions at which he arrived. In the interior desert of Southern California two independent groups of investigators have come to widely variant conclusions in regard to the dating of the lithic complexes believed to be associated with strand lines and ter- races of former Pleistocene and Postpluvial Lakes. Malcolm Rogers' Playa culture is the Lake Mohave culture of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell who, when their study was made, were associated with the Southwest Museum. To the Pinto Basin culture first named and described by the Campbells, Rogers adds the Gypsum Cave complex as contemporaneous in time and partly concurrent in dis- tribution. Rogers believes the Playa or Lake Mohave culture to be about 3000 years old; the Campbelis date this culture as at least 15,000 years old on the strength of Antevsal' study in 1937 of the geology. Antevs is at present of the opinion that the Lake Mohave culture probably dates from 9 to 10,000 years ago. Aside from this notable lack of agreement by Rogers and Antevs concerning the dating of these stone tools, the injection of the Gypsum complex as coeval with the Pinto complex presents sat11 an ther temporal problem. Harrington in his report published in 1933' dates Gypsum Cave at about 8500 B.C.- or roughly 10,000 Be.. by employing a standard method .in.. archaeology of calculating the time rsquared fore ,a-refuse deposit -to acoumu- late where -some idea of the rate of accumulation can be estimated. In.room 1 of Gypsum Cave, the type site of the Gypsum Culture complex, the Basketmaker culture was represented in the lower 'part 'of layer No. ;1. Two fireplaees associated with remains of the extinet.ground llath yorthrOth51U la di- rectly beneath lit a depth of three tints that of th 'kea v l The Basketaker culture was dated at B.C. by Iarrington in 1933 and by multiplying this figure by.the depoh-of-deposit factor of 3, he calculated the age of the ground slQth-wfireplace level at 10,500 Be.P or- 8500B.&.. Basketmaker II culture is .now ,believed to date from about 100-500 A.]., 'or from about 14o,0-1800 years ago. Multiplying this latter figure by 3 yields- a corrected figure of 5400 elapsed yeazrss .r a date of 34z50 B. Co for the Gypsum Cave culture. When this date of 3450o B.C.- is compared, with Malcolm Rogerst Pinto-Gypsum date of ca. 800 B.C. - 00 A.D,.we still have. adisorpancy amounting to about 2500 to 3000 years. Apparently emust withhold .a deci- sion on the attribution of the Southern California desert cultures as. truly representing remains of ancient man Lf age estimates by authorities are as- widely vaZrianit as these appear to .be As a constructive. observation, I may say that the Pinto-Gypsum culture blend identified by Rogers is of great potential importance. to the study of Early Man in California for the reason that the Pinto culture stands as the only one which: can be reasonably liked- t a site outside California which has ;-yielded.; cultural remans in associ- ation with extinct animals' . Whether the ground sloth lingered at . Gypsum. Cave into the very recent 'pericOd as it did at Sandia Cave in New Mexico or: whether the. Gypsum Cave culture is to be dated by the corrected Basketmaker tree ring dates as mentioned above, or whether the -Gypsum -culture actually proves to be 10,500 years -old, it furnishes, I believe. the mast hopeful possibility. for arriving at some true dating for at least one of t surface archaeological cultures of the Southern California desert regiona This review of cultures, sites and dates might be extended at aome length, but the main point I consider to have been now made.. This is the fact that we have a considerable number of finds which have bqen confidently claimed to be ancient, but in each instance one or more alternative opinions, or facts pointing to the relative recency of the find are at hand and must also be considered. Since a definitive conclusion cannot be reached in these- cases, the 'find must of necessity remain at that twilight position where it is labelled lpossible, but not-proven.e . If it were possible to get a few Carbon 14 dates for- some of these discoveries, we should then- have some temporal framework in which we scould place the various culture. Possibly the Stahl site at ILittle.Lake (Iny-82), Gypsum Cave, and discoveries which still. lie in the future will give us the much needed date references, now so, widely. variable. Let me illustrate this point with a concrete example.. If Rogers' proposal that the Gypsum and Pinto cultures overlapped in time in the Southern- California desert is generally accepted, and a date for the Gypsum Cavle site is secured by the Carbon lL1 method, the Pinto culture will- be automatically dated. The Gypsum date might then be expected. to -correlate. with a Carbon . date from the Stahl site, a Pinto oulJarw occupation site whieh will prObably yield charoal. Dating of the Pito culture my then asmuto l renewed, ineetiga-7 twons into 'the relationship between the Pinto and Playa' or Lake No'have-u lthire. Rogers suggests that the terminal Playa culture is contempordneous with Pinto- Gypsum, and the Campbells agree with this-to the extent of attributing to the Lae Mohave culture greater. antiquity than to the Pinto cJulture... By this sort of analysis', both pre-w and' posto!. into"3ypsum cultures might 'be guess-dated .- 8 4& and a culture chronology which would be generally acceptable would resulti At least to dates, such as those suggested above, would be required for drawing up such a chronology* From in and around Los Angeles have come three finds of skeletal material recovered under conditions suggestive of considerable antiquity None has been adequately described, either as to the geological conditions, or- s to the exact morphological nature of, the bony remains. I refer to the skeleton from Pit 10 in the La Brea asphaltdeposit (LAno159) and attributed to the Recent or Postglacial period; the Angeles Mesa skeletons, six in number, re- covered in 1924 from depths of 19 to 20 feet (LAn4171); and the skeleton found at a depth of 12 or 13 feet near Inglewood (LAn472) in 1936, and known as Los Angeles mane The last two finds in particular seem deserving of further study by qualified investigators in the Los Angeles area, since any human remains buried at such depths were almost certainly interred when the land level was lower than at present. After calling attention to so many doubtful finds, it would be less than fair if I did not enter the lists as the champion of a discovery which I feel may, but hasten to add, does not certainly, represent the remains of a California Indian of respectable antiquity. I refer to the Stanford Skull discovered in 1922 on the Stanford University campus (SCN-33) by a student. The student, Mr, Bruce Seymour, found the skull in the verticalbank of San Francisquito Creek, imbedded in a gravel layer at a depth of 20 feet from the surface And about 7 feet above the them present bed of the creek. The details of the stratigraphy and anthropometric observations on the calvarium are con- taied in a brief report which has just been issued by the University of California Archaeological Survey.7 The gravel layer in which the skull lay firmly cemented- marks the bed of a former stream later buried under the Stanford alluvial cone and subsequently cat through, at right angles to the older buried channel, by the present creek. Dr. Bailey Willis and his col- leagues (~uwalda, Stock, and Lawson) agree that the skull t'was an indigenous boulder in the formation". Since the alluvial deposit non-conformably under- lying the gravel is identified as the Santa Clara formation of Lower Pleistocene age, the gravel containing the skull is probably to be considered post-Pleistocene. Dr. Willis was of the opinion that the skull might be Woo0 years old, and because of the impossibility of now rechecking the original observations we may accept his date with the understanding that it is the opinion of one observer, eminently qualified in geology and conditioned against foolish claims of ancient man through his association in the field Gnd in publication with Hrdlicka in the investigation of claims of ancient man in South America. I believe this skull to constitute as acceptable an instance of relatively old human remains as any so far known in California, though if the Los Angeles or Angeles Mesa remains were adequately and. cri- tically reviewed they might hold as strong or even stronger claim to really ancient evidence of man in this state. A further observation seems worthy makings What we should keep looking for is buried finds, because such discoveries offer more and varied approaches to estimating their antiquity than surface finds., Any implements, hearths, bones of food animals or of man himself thus interred may be dated by one or several of-the various methods now known.. Invertebrate remains, pollen, soil horizons paleotology, conchology, geology, flourine content of bones, Carbon 14 content of organic materials or residues, and the like may yield a fairly definite date of the horizon in which the artifact or skeletal remains .9 lie. Such discoveries are probably being made every month in California as an incidental result of the enormous amount of earth moving attendant upon road construction, irrigation and flood control projects, excavations for in- dustrial and home sites, and the like. When such finds are made, the only way in which the archaeologist can learn of them is by advertising the fact -among the general public that these- discoveries are important and should be imiediately reported to--the nearest museum or university Secondly, each such report should be checked. Fpr us to pass on this duty to the next generation as the last generation did to us, is to admit that archaeology is unimportant, and not worth the wrk it involves. Education of the general public which then acquires a sense of awareness and value of such discoveries will, by itself,- be instrumental in creating a source for the necessary funds for salaries and field expenses with which to carry out the needed investiga- tion of Califorrda's fast disappearing prehistoric record. NOTES 1. Heizer, R. F., '.A Bibliography, of Ancient Man in California. Reports of the California Archaeological Sry, No- 2, Berkeley, 191*. Site numbers employedare those in the files of The University of California Archaeological Survey. 2. Harrington, M. R.,. An Anciantt.Site. at Borax Lake.C f , Southwest Museum Papers NO rrington .R., Pre-Folsom Man in California."e Masterkey, val. 12, Los Angeles, 1938, pp 173-175. 3. Letter to the author, January 1, 1949. Also see, Worminigton H.. M., An~cient Man in North KAmeria Denver Museum of. Natural Hi'stodry, Ui.,iesNo Dener, 1948i p. -104. 4. - Wormingtonj ops. cit. pp 48,- 101-l5; -Roberts, F. H.- H., "Dt elopments in the Problem of the North American Paleo-Indian." h., thso4an ..st On .s . . -. Institution Miacellaneous Collections, vo. 100, pp. 7 Wahington., T3940D, pp. 9 2-94. S. Heizers R. -F., The Archaeolo of Central California :v . the Early orizon. University of Califraogica Records, -vol. 12,N Berkeley, -1949, pp.. 374.39. 6. Hdrrington, 4.- M ., Gypsum Cave, Nevada, Southwest Museum Papers, No. 8, Los Angeles, 193l 6av Since this paper was written, I have received notice from Mr. Harrington that the Carbon 14 age determination of Gypsum Cave has actually been made. Now with a ypsum Cave date it becomes most desirable to ;reinrestWi- gate "the Pinto-Gypsum culture complex, and to ascertain the Carbon 14 date of the Pinto culture itself in California. Mr. A. Treganzuts re- -cent field investigations in coastal and d&esert Southern California will, when published,- show that some of the evidence of Mr. N. Rogers' conclusion that the Pintoand Gypsum cultures are contemporaneous is open to serious question. ^7. Heiser,-R. -F., -and-Mc~own, T. D., The. Stantod SkuJll a Probable Zarly Man froa Santa Clarae Count Califora. 'Reports of the University of a lifornia Archaeo-ogia I - vey, Q. 6, Berkeley, -1950.