Catalog no. | LAN-171 [1] |
---|---|
Common name | Angeles Mesa Skeletons or Haverty Skeletons |
Species | Homo sapiens |
Age | Before 3000 BC |
Place discovered | “Ballona Plain,” Los Angeles, California |
Date discovered | 1924 |
Discovered by | George Sherman (Haverty site foreman), George Hess (VP of Haverty Construction), Chester Stock, W.A. Bryan, et al. |
Angeles Mesa Skeletons or Haverty Skeletons are two common names for permineralized prehistoric human remains comprising eight individuals (three males, three females, two individuals of uncertain sex) [2] that were found in loose sands and sandy clays at the base of the Baldwin Hills between Culver City and Los Angeles in Southern California in 1924. [3] [4] Angeles Mesa is the neighborhood where they were found; Haverty Construction Company was the business that initially uncovered the site. [3]
“Several of these individuals are represented by nearly complete cranial and post-cranial materials, an extremely rare occurrence in pre-contact Native American remains,” noted a 2013 summary of the decades-long effort to determine the age of the bones. [2] They likely date from before 3000 BC. [5]
On March 24, 1924, the Stockton Independent retold the story of the initial find by an unnamed laborer: [6]
On March 25, 1924, the Los Angeles Daily News reported: [7]
On March 28, 1924, the San Luis Obispo Tribune published a four-day-old story with a March 24 dateline: [8]
A March 27 report credited to the United Press that appeared in at least two California papers suggested that the bones belonged to a “pygmy” because the vertebrate and ribs were very small. Nearby prehistoric camel bones were mentioned. [9]
On April 11, in a column of the La Jolla Light and La Jolla Journal that was headlined Scripps Institution Notes, it was reported that: [10]
According to a full-page April 1924 report in the Los Angeles Times, the skeletons were found 20 to 24 feet below the surface “just west of the intersection of the Santa Monica Air Line Railway and Mesa Drive” between West Adams Boulevard and Vernon Avenue in southwestern Los Angeles. [11]
Chester Stock clarified in the Science paper that what Hill calls Mesa was Angeles Mesa Drive. Angeles Mesa Drive was later renamed Crenshaw Boulevard, and the Air Line became Exposition Boulevard what is now the E Line, so Stock is describing the intersection where Expo/Crenshaw station sits now. Following Stock’s measurements, the bones were found under the block now bounded by Obama Boulevard, West Boulevard, Coliseum Street, and Buckingham Road. [12] However, Hill’s map published in the Los Angeles Times puts one of the four locations at Mesa and Vernon, which (if he means today’s Crenshaw Blvd. and Vernon Ave.) is some 1.7 mi (2.7 km) from the location described in Stock’s paper. [12] Crenshaw and Vernon is essentially today’s Leimert Park Plaza. The distance from Expo/Crenshaw to Leimert Park Plaza is 1.5 mi (2.4 km).
Geologist Robert T. Hill examined the excavation site and reported, “All precedents regarding the nature of the deposits in which they were found suggests that they are many thousands of years old.” He sent the following telegram to Henry F. Osborn:
A photo included with the April 6, 1924 report in the L.A. Times shows vertebrae and limb bones, et al. [13]
Chester Stock wrote a paper that was read at an April 29, 1924, meeting of the National Academy of Sciences and printed in the issue of Science dated July 4, 1924. [12] He reported that “at least six individuals…were found in an area of not more than 12 sq ft (1.1 m2).” [12] A 1955 paper on Southern California human archaeology, seemingly relying on Stock (1924) says, “The osseous material was not scattered, all coming from an area of not more than 12 square feet.” [5] This conflicts with initial newspaper reports and Hill’s map, which show material spread over a distance of nearly 2 mi (3.2 km). In fact it is almost the exact same distance as between the Angeles Mesa/Haverty site (Obama & West) and the 1936 Los Angeles Man find (Obama & La Cienega) as mapped on page 62 of Brooks (1990). [14]
At the time of discovery, Hill called these bones “Los Angeles Man” but that common name was also later (and more permanently) applied to prehistoric human remains found by a WPA crew in 1936. [15]
The remains were found with “a bone awl fragment, a quartzite core tool, and some freshwater gastropods.” [1]
A 1948 bibliography from the Berkeley Dept. of Anthropology reported, “Remains of six skeletons” (with no accompanying vertebrate animals) were found 19 to 23 feet below the surface. “The dating of the human remains is uncertain, though they are almost certainly ancient. A full report on the stratification, skeletons and few artifacts has not yet appeared. The remains are in the Los Angeles County Museum in Exposition Park.” [3] The bibliographer quotes a 1937 book Environment, Race, and Migration by one G. Taylor that states that the Angeles Mesa finds “seem to date from Interglacial times.”
According to Brooks (1990), “In 1961, the Haverty skeletons, records, newspaper accounts, and related photographs were transferred from LAMSA to the Department of Anthropology, University of Southern California.” [14]
Later methods of dating yielded a very wide range of results suggesting that the remains were anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 years old.
As reported in the journal Radiocarbon in 1983:
A further radiocarbon test of one of the bones by UCLA was reported in Radiocarbon in 1989, with a conclusion that they were between 8,500 and 12,500 years old: [17]
A 1997 analysis asserts that the skeletons are 4,000 to 5,000 years old. [18]
A book on the history of radiocarbon dating noted of the wildly varying age estimates that “The view that the Haverty skeletons are all essentially the same age may be in error.” [2]
If the bones are 7,000-4,000 BP that would place them in the Milling Stone period of California history; if they date to more than 7,000 years before 1950 they would be assigned to the Paleocoastal period. According to a 2018 archeological report, “Some of the oldest human skeletons found in the Americas were discovered at the Haverty Site…A more recent study of the Haverty skeletons concludes that at least some of the skeletons may be of 'terminal Pleistocene age.'” [19]
”Back of the whole subject, however, as in every science, is the misty beginning, and no one yet knows but that prior to the American Indian imported from Asia, there may have been American indigene, the discovery of which may someday be sprung on us just as were the unsuspected animal fauna of La Brea, and knowledge of the wonderful Cro-Magnon race of Europe in the caverns of Altamira in Spain were but recently suddenly and unexpectedly revealed.”
— Robert T. Hill (1924)
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