The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-08-06
A City One Hundred and Eighty
thousand Years Old.

In the current number of the Over
land. q Californian geolog' st reviews the
geological evidence of the antiquity of
a human settlement near the present
town of Cherokee in that state, and esti-
mates the age of that most ancient of
discovered towns to be not less than
$50, 900 years
The data for all such calculations are
necessarily uncertain, as they are de-
rived from the present motions of the
continents and present state 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 a subague-
GUS formation, not fuviatile, underlying
the vast sheets of volcanic rock of which
Table Mountain is part. In one in
stance mortar was found standing up
right, 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 sur
face of the gravel underlying Table
Mountain. The distribution of the NOR
tars is such as to indicate with great
pCsitiveness the former existence of a
human settlement on that ancient beach
when the water stood near the level at
which they occur; time anterior to the
volcanic outpouring which Table Noun
tain 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 Noun
tain, fully one thousand feet below the
level of Cherokee. subsequently, in
| the pliocene period, there was further
subsistence of about fifteen hundred
feet, something like six hundred feet
occurring after the mortars had been
abandoned. All this, as has been
noticed, took place before the volcanic
outfiows which covered up all the an
cient detTituS of the region, including
that of the ancient rivers (whose gravels
have furnished so much of the gold of
California;. The geological age of the
river period was determined by Les
quereux from specimens of vegetation,
now extinct, collected in the survey of
the ancient rivers; specimens indicating
a flora of the Fliocene age, retaining
some characteristic miocene forms.
After the volcanic period the land rose
again, the time of emergence embracing
the glacial period and the new eroding
period in the sierra, during which the
states, and the hard metamorphic green
stones, and the GRANTEES were slashed
with cRnons three thousand feet deep
by the action of ice and running water.
Taking the rates of continental move.
ment determined by Lyell, our geologist
calculates that tue time required for the
changes thus outlined could not have
been less than eighteen hundred centu-
ries. For a period SO long preceding
the glacial epoch as the time when an
cient Cherokee was buried by the waters
of the advancing sea, his estimate is GER
tainly not extravagant, though it does
transcend so enormously the time men
have been accustomed to allow for mans
residence on earth.