LOST RACE OF AMERICA

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 75, 21 December 1937, Page 7

LOST RACE OF AMERICA

Discovery By Scientists

SAN FEANCISCO, Dec. 2. Skeletons of a lost race far older ] than the ancient Indian,. and possibly the first man to inhabit Western America, have been found in thick alluvial depositSj in. the Sacramento Valley, near Lodi, California. j The ^epartment of Anthropology at j th .> Xjniversity of California has an- j nounc^d that the fossil remains may j represent a previously unidentified human-Jype or culture. j The skeletons were found in de- | pressed. mounds, and some were so j mineralised that ^none of the bone i structure remained. There were enough j traces, however, to reconstruct a type ; of man of massive brows and jaws, j primitive ape-like features, and more ; than ordinarily sturdy frame. | The race was so old that villags and | mounds were covered over completely, | and in one instance a burial site wa! ;{ built upon by a later race which itseli ; is now virtually extinct, but from which \ sprang the Maidu and Midwok Indian' j tribes of the Sacramento Valley. j Mr. Eobert Heizer, who has pre> ; pared a report on the discovery, said that it may disclose the growth oi human cultures and topography changes for thousands of years. Between the newly-discovered race j and the late race which, until now, had been first known to exist on the Pacific Coast, there was a profound geological change which occupied a great period. During this period, all evidences of the earlier culture had been submerged and were found by accident during deep ditch-digging operations. The bow and arrow did not seem to have been known then. The skeletons were found in a red clay substratum, and they had a heavy encrustation. Skulls were crushed, but the burials had been made with great care and ceremony. Articles found consisted of perforated charin stones, disc ornaments, an abundance of quartz mineral and asphaltum objects, curved disc beads, and large, heavy chipped points. The facts contained in the message are a remarkable confirmation of an incident in John Galsworthy's "The Modern Comedy," where the author described interesting mounds near C?!umbia, in the Sacramento Valley, as the burial grounds of a lost tribe, which lived perhaps 1,000,000 years ago.