The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1875-09-02
A City One Hundred and Eighty
Thousand Years Old.

In the current number of the Overland
a California geologist reviews the geologl-
cal evidence of the antiquity OF human
settlement near the present town OF Chero-
kee, In that State, and estimates the age OF
that most ancient of discovered towns to
be not less than 10000 years! The data
for all such calculations are necessarily
uncertain, as they are derived from the
present motions of the continents and
present rates of erosion; still, from the
changes that have taken place since the
pioneers of prehistoric California left their
traces on its ancient sea-shore, there can
be no doubt that thousands of centuries
must have come and gone.
The traces in question are numerous
stone mortars, found in undisturbed
white and yellow gravel of subaqueous
formation, not fluviatile, underlying the
vast sheets of volcanic rock of which
Table Mountain is part In one instance
mortar was found standing upright,
with the pestle in it, apparently just as it
had been left by its owner. In some cases
the mortars have been found at the depth
Of forty feet from the surface of the gravel
underlying Table Mountain. The distri-
button Of the mortars is such as to indi-
cate with great positivcness the former
existence of human settlement on that
ancient beach when the water stood near
the level at which they occur; a time an
terror to the volcanic outpouring which
Table Mountain records, and anterior to
the glacial epoch.
The recent geological history of that
region may be briefly summed as fol.
lows: Previous to the placing of the
mortars in the position in which they
have been found, the early and
middle tertiary sea level had receded to
the position of the coal beds underlying
Table Mountain, fully 1000 feet below the
level of Cherokee. Subsequently, in the
pliocene period, there was further subsi'
dence of about 1 800 feet, something like
900 feet occurring after the mortars had
been abandoned. All this, as has beer
noticed, took place before the volcanic out
flows which covered up all the ancien
detritus of the region, including that of the
ancient rivers (whose gravels have fur
nished so much of the gold of California;
| The geological age of the river period was
determined by Lesquereux from specimen:
of vegetation, now extinct, collected in thu
survey of the ancient rivers; specimens in
dicating flora of the pliocene age, re
tanning some characteristic miocene form
After the volcanic period the land ros'
again, the time of emergence embracing
the glacial period and the new erodins
period IN the sierra, during which tn
states and the hard metamorphic green
stones and the GRANTEES were slashed will
canons 5000 feet deep by the action of ic
and running water Taking the rates o
continental movement determined by Lyell
our geologist calculates that the time re
quired for the changes thus outlined coul'
not have been less than 1900 centuries
For period so long preceding the glacia
epoch as the time when ancient Cherokee
was buried by the waters Of the advancing
sea, his estimate is certainly not extrava
giant, though it does transcend so enol
mously the time men have been accus
toned to allow for a mans residence o.
earth.