In California’s gold mines, researchers unearthed ancient treasures dating back over 40 million years. During the 19th century, miners stumbled upon stone artifacts and human remains in their tunnels at Table Mountain and other mining sites. Interestingly, in the Eocene era strata, bones and artifacts dating back 38-55 million years were also discovered, as confirmed by Dr. J. D. Whitney in 1880.
The uncovering of valuable minerals in cities like Brandy City, Last Chance, and Lost Camp attracted a diverse group of adventurers. Initially, miners would sift through streambed gravels to find nuggets and flakes. However, as gold-mining operations expanded, they began utilizing more advanced techniques like drilling shafts into mountainsides and using high-pressure water jets to extract gold-bearing gravels. In Tuolumne County, miners also made fascinating discoveries of ancient human bones and artifacts dating back millions of years.
In other words, information should be discarded if it does not support a particular notion. This is exactly what arreped demonstrated. Whitney still highlights some of the fascinating exhibits at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. The practice of Darwinism and other similar beliefs also impacted the way the archaeological site of Hueyatlaco in Mexico was interpreted. In the 1970s, a team of archaeologists led by Cynthia Irwin Williams discovered stone tools near animal remains that were believed to have been slaughtered during excavations at Hueyatlaco.
Geologists, including Virginia Steen McIntyre, collaborated to determine the age of the site. They utilized four methods to establish its age: zircon fission tracks dating on volcanic layers above artifact layers, uranium series dating on butchered bones, zircon thermoluminescence dating on volcanic layers above artifact layers, and tephra-hydration dating on volcanic crystals in layers above artifact layers. Archaeologists began to realize the age of the site, as they believed that no one could have created such artifacts on Earth 250,000 years ago and that North America was not inhabited until around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.
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