Case file · Folklore / legend
The Calaveras Skull
In February 1866 miners said they found a human skull 40 metres down a mine shaft at Bald Mountain near Angels Camp, in gravels of the Pliocene era. State Geologist Josiah Whitney accepted it as proof of humans in America millions of years ago.
1866 CE · 38.14, -120.47 · status: hoax
The account
Bret Harte mocked it in a poem. Local accounts later said miners had planted a skull from a Native burial as a prank on Whitney.
The sceptical view
Radiocarbon dating in 1992 gave an age of about 1,000 years; the skull is a recent Native American one.