To the Pliocene Skull

Bret Harte (1836–1902)

A Geological Address

“A human skull has been found in California, in the pliocene formation. This skull is the remnant, not only of the earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being…. The skull was found in a shaft one hundred and fifty feet deep, two miles from Angel’s, in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Matson, who gave it to Mr. Scribner, a merchant, and he gave it to Dr. Jones, who sent it to the State Geological Survey…. The published volume of the State Survey on the Geology of California states that man existed contemporaneously with the mastodon, but this fossil proves that he was here before the mastodon was known to exist.”—Daily Paper.

“SPEAK, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil!

Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,

Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum

Of Volcanic tufa!

“Older than the beasts, the oldest Palæotherium;

Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogamia;

Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions

Of earth’s epidermis!

“Eo—Mio—Plio—whatsoe’er the ‘cene’ was

That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,—

Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,—

Tell us thy strange story!

“Or has the Professor slightly antedated

By some thousand years thy advent on this planet,

Giving thee an air that ’s somewhat better fitted

For cold-blooded creatures?

“Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest,

When above thy head the stately Sigillaria

Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant

Carboniferous epoch?

“Tell us of that scene,—the dim and watery woodland,

Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect,

Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club-mosses,

Lycopodiacea—

“When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus,

And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus,

While from time to time above thee flew and circled

Cheerful Pterodactyls.

“Tell us of thy food,—those half-marine refections,

Crinoids on the shell, and Brachipods au naturel,—

Cuttle-fish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo

Seems a periwinkle.

“Speak, thou awful vestige of the earth’s creation,—

Solitary fragment of remains organic!

Tell the wondrous secrets of thy past existence,—

Speak! thou oldest primate!”

Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla

And a lateral movement of the condyloid process,

With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication,

Ground the teeth together;

And from that imperfect dental exhibition,

Stained with expressed juices of the weed Nicotian,

Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs

Of expectoration:

“Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted

Falling down a shaft, in Calaveras County,

But I ’d take it kindly if you ’d send the pieces

Home to old Missouri!”

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