INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In 1979, researchers at the Laetoli, Tanzania, site in East
Africa discovered footprints in volcanic ash deposits over 3.6
million years old. Mary Leakey and others said the prints were
indistinguishable from those of modern humans. To these
scientists, this meant only that the human ancestors of 3.6
million years ago had remarkably modern feet. But according to
other scientists, such as physical anthropologist R. H. Tuttle
of the University of Chicago, fossil bones of the known
australopithecines of 3.6 million years ago show they had feet
that were distinctly apelike. Hence they were incompatible with
the Laetoli prints. In an article in the March 1990 issue of
Natural History, Tuttle confessed that "we are left with
somewhat of a mystery." It seems permissible, therefore, to
consider a possibility neither Tuttle nor Leakey mentioned--that
creatures with anatomically modern human bodies to match their
anatomically modern human feet existed some 3.6 million years
ago in East Africa. Perhaps, as suggested in the illustration on
the opposite page, they coexisted with more apelike creatures.
As intriguing as this archeological possibility may be, current
ideas about human evolution forbid it.
Knowledgeable persons will warn against positing the existence
of anatomically modern humans millions of years ago on the slim
basis of the Laetoli footprints. But there is further evidence.
Over the past few decades, scientists in Africa have uncovered
fossil bones that look remarkably human. In 1965, Bryan
Patterson and W. W. Howells found a surprisingly modern humerus
(upper arm bone) at Kanapoi, Kenya. Scientists judged the
humerus to be over 4 million years old. Henry M. McHenry and
Robert S. Corruccini of the University of California said the
Kanapoi humerus was "barely distinguishable from modern Homo."
Similarly, Richard Leakey said the ER 1481 femur (thighbone)
from Lake Turkana, Kenya, found in 1972, was indistinguishable
from that of modern humans. Scientists normally assign the ER
1481 femur, which is about 2 million years old, to prehuman Homo
habilis. But since the ER 1481 femur was found by itself, one
cannot rule out the possibility that the rest of the skeleton
was also anatomically modern. Interestingly enough, in 1913 the
German scientist Hans Reck found at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, a
complete anatomically modern human skeleton in strata over 1
million years old, inspiring decades of controversy.
Here again, some will caution us not to set a few isolated and
controversial examples against the overwhelming amount of
non-controversial evidence showing that anatomically modern
humans evolved from more apelike creatures fairly
recently--about 100,000 years ago, in Africa, and, in the view
of some, in other parts of the world as well.
But it turns out we have not exhausted our resources with the
Laetoli footprints, the Kanapoi humerus, and the
ER 1481 femur.
Over he past eight years, Richard Thompson and I, with the
assistance of our researcher have amassed an extensive body of
evidence that calls into question current theories of human
evolution. Some of this evidence, like the Laetoli footprints,
is fairly recent. But much of it was reported by scientists in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And as you can
see, our discussion of this evidence fills up quite a large
book.
Without even looking at this older body of evidence, some will
assume that there must be something wrong with it--that it was
properly disposed of by scientists long ago, for very good
reasons. Richard and I have looked rather deeply into that
possibility. We have concluded, however, that the quality of
this controversial evidence is no better or worse than the
supposedly non-controversial evidence usually cited in favor of
current views about human evolution.
But Forbidden Archeology is more than a well-documented catalog
of unusual facts. It is also a sociological, philosophical, and
historical critique of the scientific method, as applied to the
question of human origins and antiquity.
We are not sociologists, but our approach in some ways resembles
that taken by practitioners of the sociology of scientific
knowledge (SSK), such as Steve Woolgar, Trevor Pinch,
Michael Mulkay, Harry Collins, Bruno Latour, and
Michael Lynch.
Each of these scholars has a unique perspective on SSK, but they
would all probably agree with the following programmatic
statement. Scientists’ conclusions do not identically correspond
to states and processes of an objective natural reality.
Instead, such conclusions reflect the real social processes of
scientists as much as, more than, or even rather than what goes
on in nature.
The critical approach we take in Forbidden Archeology also
resembles that taken by philosophers of science such as Paul Feyerabend, who holds that science has attained too privileged a
position in the intellectual field, and by historians of science
such as J. S. Rudwick, who has explored in detail the nature of
scientific controversy. As does Rudwick in The Great Devonian
Controversy, we use narrative to present our material, which
encompasses not one controversy but many
controversies--controversies long resolved, controversies as yet
unresolved, and controversies now in the making. This has
necessitated extensive quoting from primary and secondary
sources, and giving rather detailed accounts of the twists and
turns of complex paleoanthropological debates.
For those working in disciplines connected with human origins
and antiquity, Forbidden Archeology provides a well- documented
compendium of reports absent from many current references and
not otherwise easily obtainable.
One of the last authors to discuss the kind of reports found in
Forbidden Archeology was Marcellin Boule. In his book
Fossil Men
(1957), Boule gave a decidedly negative review. But upon
examining the original reports, we found Boule’s total
skepticism unjustified. In Forbidden Archeology, we provide
primary source material that will allow modern readers to form
their own opinions about the evidence Boule dismissed. We also
introduce a great many cases that Boule neglected to mention.
From the evidence we have gathered, we conclude, sometimes in
language devoid of ritual tentativeness, that the now-dominant
assumptions about human origins are in need of drastic revision.
We also find that a process of knowledge filtration has left
current workers with a radically incomplete collection of facts.
We anticipate that many workers will take Forbidden Archeology
as an invitation to productive discourse on
(1) the nature and
treatment of evidence in the field of human origins and
(2) the
conclusions that can most reasonably drawn from this evidence.
In the first chapter of Part I of Forbidden Archeology, we
survey the history and current state of scientific ideas about
human evolution. We also discuss some of the epistemological
principles we employ in our study of this field. Principally, we
are concerned with a double standard in the treatment of
evidence.
We identify two main bodies of evidence. The first is a body of
controversial evidence (A), which shows the existence of
anatomically modern humans in the uncomfortably distant past.
The second is a body of evidence (B), which can be interpreted
as supporting the currently dominant views that anatomically
modern humans evolved fairly recently, about 100,000 years ago
in Africa, and perhaps elsewhere.
We also identify standards employed in the evaluation of
paleoanthropological evidence. After detailed study, we found
that if these standards are applied equally to A and B, then we
must accept both A and B or reject both A and B. If we accept
both A and B, then we have evidence placing anatomically modern
humans millions of years ago, coexisting with more apelike
hominids. If we reject both A and B, then we deprive ourselves
of the evidential foundation for making any pronouncements
whatsoever about human origins and antiquity.
Historically, a significant number of professional scientists
once accepted the evidence in category A. But a more influential
group of scientists, who applied standards of evidence more
strictly to A than to B, later caused A to be rejected and B to
be preserved. This differential application of standards for the
acceptance and rejection of evidence constitutes a knowledge
filter that obscures the real picture of human origins and
antiquity.
In the main body of Part I (Chapters 2-6), we look closely at
the vast amount of controversial evidence that contradicts
current ideas about human evolution. We recount in detail how
this evidence has been systematically suppressed, ignored, or
forgotten, even though it is qualitatively (and quantitatively)
equivalent to evidence favoring currently accepted views on
human origins. When we speak of suppression of evidence, we are
not referring to scientific conspirators carrying out a satanic
plot to deceive the public. Instead, we are talking about an
ongoing social process of knowledge filtration that appears
quite innocuous but has a substantial cumulative effect. Certain
categories of evidence simply disappear from view, in our
opinion unjustifiably.
Chapter 2 deals with anomalously old bones and shells showing
cut marks and signs of intentional breakage. To this day,
scientists regard such bones and shells as an important category
of evidence, and many archeological sites have been established
on this kind of evidence alone.
In the decades after
Darwin introduced his theory, numerous
scientists discovered incised and broken animal bones and shells
suggesting that tool-using humans or human precursors existed in
the Pliocene (2-5 million years ago), the Miocene (5-25 million
years ago), and even earlier. In analyzing cut and broken bones
and shells, the discoverers carefully considered and ruled out
alternative explanations--such as the action of animals or
geological pressure--before concluding that humans were
responsible. In some cases, stone tools were found along with
the cut and broken bones or shells.
A particularly striking example in this category is a shell
displaying a crude yet recognizably human face carved on its
outer surface. Reported by geologist H. Stopes to the British
Association for the Advancement of Science in 1881, this shell,
from the Pliocene Red Crag formation in England, is over 2
million years old. According to standard views, humans capable
of this level of artistry did not arrive in Europe until about
30,000 or 40,000 years ago. Furthermore, they supposedly did not
arise in
their African homeland until about 100,000 years ago.
Concerning evidence of the kind reported by Stopes, Armand de Quatrefages wrote in his book
Hommes Fossiles et Hommes Sauvages
(1884):
"The objections made to the
existence of man in the
Pliocene and Miocene seem to habitually be more related to
theoretical considerations than direct observation."
The most rudimentary stone tools, the eoliths ("dawn stones")
are the subject of Chapter 3. These implements, found in
unexpectedly old geological contexts, inspired protracted debate
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
For some, eoliths were not always easily recognizable as tools.
Eoliths were not shaped into symmetrical implemental forms.
Instead, an edge of a natural stone flake was chipped to make it
suitable for a particular task, such as scraping, cutting, or
chopping. Often, the working edge bore signs of use.
Critics said eoliths resulted from natural forces, like tumbling
in stream beds. But defenders of eoliths offered convincing
counterarguments that natural forces could not have made
unidirectional chipping on just one side of a working edge.
In the late nineteenth century, Benjamin Harrison, an amateur
archeologist, found eoliths on the Kent Plateau in southeastern
England. Geological evidence suggests that the eoliths were
manufactured in the Middle or Late Pliocene, about 2-4 million
ago. Among the supporters of Harrison’s eoliths were Alfred
Russell Wallace, cofounder with Darwin of the theory of
evolution by natural selection; Sir John Prestwich, one of
England’s most eminent geologists; and Ray E. Lankester, a
director of the British Museum (Natural History).
Although Harrision found most of his eoliths in surface deposits
of Pliocene gravel, he also found many below ground level during
an excavation financed and directed by the British Association
for the Advancement of Science. In addition to eoliths, Harrison
found at various places on the Kent Plateau more advanced stone
tools (paleoliths) of similar Pliocene antiquity.
In the early part of the twentieth century, J. Reid Moir, a
fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and president of
the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, found eoliths (and more
advanced stone tools) in England’s Red Crag formation. The tools
were about 2.0-2.5 million years old. Some of Moir’s tools were
discovered in the detritus beds beneath the Red Crag and
could be anywhere from 2.5 to 55 million years old.
Moir’s finds won support from one of the most vocal critics of
eoliths, Henri Breuil, then regarded as one of the world’s
preeminent authorities on stone tools. Another supporter was
paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, of the American Museum of
Natural History in New York. And in 1923, an international
commission of scientists journeyed to England to investigate
Moir’s principal discoveries and pronounced them genuine.
But in 1939, A. S. Barnes published an influential paper, in
which he analyzed the eoliths found by Moir and others in terms
of the angle of flaking observed on them. Barnes claimed his
method could distinguish human flaking from flaking by natural
causes. On this basis, he dismissed all the eoliths he studied,
including Moir’s, as the product of natural forces. Since then,
scientists have used Barnes’s method to deny the human
manufacture of other stone tool industries. But in recent years,
authorities on stone tools such as George F. Carter, Leland W.
Patterson, and A. L. Bryan have disputed Barnes’s methodology
and its blanket application. This suggests the need for a
reexamination of the European eoliths.
Significantly, early stone tools from Africa, such as those from
the lower levels of Olduvai Gorge, appear identical to the
rejected European eoliths. Yet they are accepted by the
scientific community without question. This is probably because
they fall within, and help support, the conventional spatio-temporal framework of human evolution.
But other Eolithic industries of unexpected antiquity continue
to encounter strong opposition. For example, in the 1950s, Louis
Leakey found stone tools over 200,000 years old at Calico in
southern California. According to standard views, humans did not
enter the sub-arctic regions of the New World until about 12,000
years ago. Mainstream scientists responded to Calico
with predictable claims that the objects found there were
natural products or that they were not really 200,000 years old.
But there is sufficient reason to conclude that the Calico finds
are genuinely old human artifacts. Although most of the Calico
implements are crude, some, including a beaked graver, are more
advanced.
In Chapter 4, we discuss a category of implements that we call
crude paleoliths. In the case of eoliths, chipping is confined
to the working edge of a naturally broken piece of stone. But
the makers of the crude paleoliths deliberately struck flakes
from stone cores and then shaped them into more recognizable
types of tools. In some cases, the cores themselves were shaped
into tools. As we have seen, crude paleoliths also turn up along
with eoliths. But at the sites discussed in Chapter 4, the paleoliths
are more dominant in the assemblages.
In the category of crude paleoliths, we include Miocene tools
(5-25 million years old) found in the late nineteenth century by
Carlos Ribeiro, head of the Geological Survey of Portugal. At an
international conference of archeologists and anthropologists
held in Lisbon, a committee of scientists investigated one of
the sites where Ribeiro had found implements. One of the
scientists found a stone tool even more advanced than the better
of Ribeiro’s specimens. Comparable to accepted Late Pleistocene
tools of the Mousterian type, it was firmly embedded in a
Miocene conglomerate, in circumstances confirming its Miocene
antiquity.
Crude paleoliths were also found in Miocene formations at Thenay,
France. S. Laing, an English science writer, noted:
"On the
whole, the evidence for these Miocene implements seems to be
very conclusive, and the objections to have hardly any other
ground than the reluctance to admit the great antiquity of man."
Scientists also found crude paleoliths of Miocene age at
Aurillac, France. And at Boncelles, Belgium, A. Rutot uncovered
an extensive collection of paleoliths of Oligocene age (25 to 38
million years old).
In Chapter 5, we examine very advanced stone implements found in
unexpectedly old geological contexts. Whereas the implements
discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 could conceivably be the work of
human precursors such as Homo erectus or Homo habilis, given
current estimates of their capabilities, the implements of
Chapter 5 are unquestionably the work of anatomically modern
humans.
Florentino Ameghino, a respected Argentine paleontologist, found
stone tools, signs of fire, broken mammal bones, and a human
vertebra in a Pliocene formation at Monte Hermoso, Argentina.
Ameghino made numerous similar discoveries in Argentina,
attracting the attention of scientists around the world. Despite
Ameghino’s unique theories about a South American
origin for the hominids, his actual discoveries are still worth
considering.
In 1912, Ales Hrdlicka, of the Smithsonian Institution,
published a lengthy, but not very reasonable, attack on
Ameghino’s work. Hrdlicka asserted that all of Ameghino’s finds
were from recent Indian settlements.
In response, Carlos Ameghino, brother of Florentino Ameghino,
carried out new investigations at Miramar, on the Argentine
coast south of Buenos Aires. There he found a series of stone
implements, including bolas, and signs of fire. A commission of
geologists confirmed the implements’ position in the Chapadmalalan formation, which modern geologists say is
3-5
million years old. Carlos Ameghino also found at Miramar a stone
arrowhead firmly embedded in the femur of a Pliocene species of
Toxodon, an extinct South American mammal.
Ethnographer Eric Boman disputed Carlos Ameghino’s discoveries
but also unintentionally helped confirm them. In 1920, Carlos
Ameghino’s collector, Lorenzo Parodi, found a stone implement in
the Pliocene seaside barranca (cliff) at Miramar and left it in
place. Boman was one of several scientists invited by Ameghino
to witness the implement’s extraction. After the implement (a
bola stone) was photographed and removed, another discovery was
made.
"At my direction," wrote
Boman, "Parodi continued to
attack the barranca with a pick at the same point where the bola
stone was discovered, when suddenly and unexpectedly, there
appeared a second stone ball. . . . It is more like grinding
stone than a bola."
Boman found yet another implement 200 yards
away. Confounded, Boman could only hint in his written report
that the implements had been planted by Parodi. While this might
conceivably have been true of the first implement, it is hard to
explain the other two in this way. In any case, Boman produced
no evidence whatsoever that Parodi, a longtime employee of the
Buenos Aires Museum of Natural History, had ever behaved
fraudulently.
The kinds of implements found by Carlos Ameghino at Miramar
(arrowheads and bolas) are usually considered the work of Homo
sapiens sapiens. Taken at face value, the Miramar finds
therefore demonstrate the presence of anatomically modern humans
in South America over 3 million years ago. Interestingly enough,
in 1921 M. A. Vignati discovered in the Late Pliocene
Chapadmalalan formation at Miramar a fully human fossil jaw
fragment.
In the early 1950s, Thomas E. Lee of the National Museum of
Canada found advanced stone tools in glacial deposits at Sheguiandah, on Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron.
Geologist John Sanford of Wayne State University argued that the
oldest Sheguiandah tools were at least 65,000 years old and
might be as much as 125,000 years old. For those adhering to
standard views on North American prehistory, such ages were
unacceptable.
Thomas E. Lee complained:
"The site’s discoverer [Lee] was
hounded from his Civil Service position into prolonged
unemployment; publication outlets were cut off; the evidence was
misrepresented by several prominent authors . . . ; the tons of
artifacts vanished into storage bins of the National Museum of
Canada; for refusing to fire the discoverer, the Director of the
National Museum, who had proposed having a monograph on the site
published, was himself fired and driven into exile; official
positions of prestige and power were exercised in an effort to
gain control over just six Sheguiandah specimens that had not
gone under cover; and the site has been turned into a tourist
resort. . . . Sheguiandah would have forced embarrassing
admissions that the Brahmins did not know everything. It would
have forced the rewriting of almost every book in the business.
It had to be killed. It was killed."
The treatment received by Lee is not an isolated case. In the
1960s, anthropologists uncovered advanced stone tools at Hueyatlaco, Mexico. Geologist
Virginia Steen-McIntyre and other
members of a U.S. Geological Survey team obtained an age of
about 250,000 years for the sites implement-bearing layers. This
challenged not only standard views of New World anthropology but
also the whole standard picture of human origins. Humans capable
of making the kind of tools found at Hueyatlaco are not thought
to have come into existence until around 100,000 years ago in
Africa.
Virginia Steen-McIntyre experienced difficulty in getting her
dating study on Hueyatlaco published.
"The problem as I see it
is much bigger than Hueyatlaco," she wrote to Estella Leopold,
associate editor of Quaternary Research.
"It concerns the
manipulation of scientific thought through the suppression of
’Enigmatic Data,’ data that challenges the prevailing mode of
thinking. Hueyatlaco certainly does that! Not being an
anthropologist, I didn’t realize the full significance of our
dates back in 1973, nor how deeply woven into our thought the
current theory of human evolution has become. Our work at
Hueyatlaco has been rejected by most archaeologists because it
contradicts that theory, period."
This pattern of data suppression has a long history. In 1880,
J.
D. Whitney, the state geologist of California, published a
lengthy review of advanced stone tools found in California gold
mines. The implements, including spear points and stone mortars
and pestles, were found deep in mine shafts, underneath thick,
undisturbed layers of lava, in formations that geologists now
say are from 9 million to over 55 million years old. W. H.
Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution, one of the most vocal
nineteenth-century critics of the California finds, wrote:
"Perhaps if Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of
human evolution as it is understood today, he would have
hesitated to announce the conclusions formulated [that humans
existed in very ancient times in North America], notwithstanding
the imposing array of testimony with which he was confronted."
In other words, if the facts do not agree with the favored
theory, then such facts, even an imposing array of them, must be
discarded.
In Chapter 6, we review discoveries of anomalously old skeletal
remains of the anatomically modern human type. Perhaps the most
interesting case is that of Castenedolo, Italy, where in the
1880s, G. Ragazzoni, a geologist, found fossil bones of several
Homo sapiens sapiens individuals in layers of Pliocene sediment
3 to 4 million years old. Critics typically respond that the
bones must have been placed into these Pliocene layers fairly
recently by human burial. But Ragazzoni was alert to this
possibility and carefully inspected the overlying layers. He
found them undisturbed, with absolutely no sign of burial.
Modern scientists have used radiometric and chemical tests to
attach recent ages to the Castenedolo bones and other
anomalously old human skeletal remains. But, as we show in
Appendix 1, these tests can be quite unreliable. The carbon 14
test is especially unreliable when applied to bones (such as the Castenedolo bones) that have lain in museums for decades. Under
these circumstances, bones are exposed to contamination that
could cause the carbon 14 test to yield abnormally young dates.
Rigorous purification techniques are required to remove such
contamination. Scientists did not employ these techniques in the
1969 carbon 14 testing of some of the Castenedolo bones, which
yielded an age of less than a thousand years.
Although the carbon 14 date for the Castenedolo material is
suspect, it must still be considered as relevant evidence. But
it should be weighed along with the other evidence, including
the original stratigraphic observations of Ragazzoni, a
professional geologist. In this case, the stratigraphic evidence
appears to be more conclusive.
Opposition, on theoretical grounds, to a human presence in the
Pliocene is not a new phenomenon. Speaking of the Castenedolo
finds and others of similar antiquity, the Italian scientist G. Sergi wrote in 1884:
"By means of a despotic scientific
prejudice, call it what you will, every discovery of human
remains in the Pliocene has been discredited."
A good example of such prejudice is provided by
R. A. S.
Macalister, who in 1921 wrote about the Castenedolo finds in a
textbook on archeology: "There must be something wrong
somewhere." Noting that the Castenedolo bones were anatomically
modern, Macalister concluded:
"If they really belonged to the
stratum in which they were found, this would imply an
extraordinarily long standstill for evolution. It is much more
likely that there is something amiss with the observations."
He
further stated:
"The acceptance of a Pliocene date for the Castenedolo skeletons would create so many insoluble problems
that we can hardly hesitate in choosing between the alternatives
of adopting or rejecting their authenticity."
This supports the
primary point we are trying to make in Forbidden Archeology,
namely, that there exists in the scientific community a
knowledge filter that screens out unwelcome evidence. This
process of knowledge filtration has been going on for well over
a century and continues right up to the present day.
Our discussion of anomalously old human skeletal remains brings
us to the end of Part I, our catalog of controversial evidence.
In Part II of Forbidden Archeology, we survey the body of
accepted evidence that is generally used to support the
now-dominant ideas about human evolution.
Chapter 7 focuses on the discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus by
Eugene Dubois in Java during the last decade of the nineteenth
century. Historically, the Java man discovery marks a turning
point. Until then, there was no clear picture of human evolution
to be upheld and defended. Therefore, a good number of
scientists, most of them evolutionists, were actively
considering a substantial body of evidence (cataloged in Part I)
indicating that anatomically modern humans existed in the
Pliocene and earlier. With the discovery of Java man, now
classified as Homo erectus, the long-awaited missing link turned
up in the Middle Pleistocene. As the Java man find won
acceptance among evolutionists, the body of evidence for a human
presence in more ancient times gradually slid into disrepute.
This evidence was not conclusively invalidated. Instead, at a
certain point, scientists stopped talking and writing about it.
It was incompatible with the idea that apelike Java man was a
genuine human ancestor.
As an example of how the Java man discovery was used to suppress
evidence for a human presence in the Pliocene and earlier, the
following statement made by W. H. Holmes about the California
finds reported by J. D. Whitney is instructive. After asserting
that Whitney’s evidence "stands absolutely alone," Holmes
complained that,
"it implies a human race older by at least
one-half than Pithecanthropus erectus, which may be regarded as
an incipient form of human creature only."
Therefore, despite
the good quality of Whitney’s evidence, it had to be dismissed.
Interestingly enough, modern researchers have reinterpreted the
original Java Homo erectus fossils. The famous bones reported by
Dubois were a skullcap and femur. Although the two bones were
found over 45 feet apart, in a deposit filled with bones of many
other species, Dubois said they belonged to the same individual.
But in 1973, M. H. Day and T. I. Molleson determined that the
femur found by Dubois is different from other Homo erectus
femurs and is in fact indistinguishable from anatomically modern
human femurs. This caused Day and Molleson to propose that the
femur was not connected with the Java man skull.
As far as we can see, this means that we now have an
anatomically modern human femur and a Homo erectus skull in a
Middle Pleistocene stratum that is considered to be 800,000
years old. This provides further evidence that anatomically
modern humans coexisted with more apelike creatures in
unexpectedly remote times. According to standard views,
anatomically modern humans arose just 100,000 years ago in
Africa. Of course, one can always propose that the anatomically
modern human femur somehow got buried quite recently into the
Middle Pleistocene beds at Trinil. But the same could also be
said of the skull.
In Chapter 7, we also consider the many Java Homo erectus
discoveries reported by G. H. R. von Koenigswald and other
researchers. Almost all of these bones were surface finds, the
true age of which is doubtful.
Nevertheless, scientists have
assigned them Middle and Early Pleistocene dates obtained by the
potassium-argon method. The potassium-argon method is
used to date layers of volcanic material, not bones. Because the
Java Homo erectus fossils were found on the surface and not
below the intact volcanic layers, it is misleading to assign
them potassium-argon dates obtained from the volcanic layers.
The infamous Piltdown hoax is the subject of Chapter 8. Early in
this century, Charles Dawson, an amateur collector, found pieces
of a human skull near Piltdown. Subsequently, scientists such as
Sir Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin participated with Dawson in excavations that
uncovered an apelike jaw, along with several mammalian fossils
of appropriate antiquity. Dawson and Woodward, believing the
combination of humanlike skull and apelike jaw represented a
human ancestor from the Early Pleistocene or Late Pliocene,
announced their discovery to the scientific world. For the next
four decades, Piltdown man was accepted as a genuine discovery
and was integrated into the human evolutionary lineage.
In the 1950s, J. S. Weiner, K. P. Oakley, and other British
scientists exposed Piltdown man as an exceedingly clever hoax,
carried out by someone with great scientific expertise. Some
blamed Dawson or Teilhard de Chardin, but others have accused
Sir Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum, Sir Arthur
Keith of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal Collee of Surgeons,
William Sollas of the geology department at Cambridge, and Sir
Grafton Eliot Smith, a famous anatomist.
J. S. Weiner himself noted:
"Behind it all we sense, therefore,
a strong and impelling motive... There could have been a mad
desire to assist the doctrine of human evolution by furnishing
the ’requisite’ ’missing link’... Piltdown might have
offered irresistible attraction to some fanatical biologist."
Piltdown is significant in that it shows that there are
instances of deliberate fraud in paleoanthropology, in addition
to the general process of knowledge filtration.
Finally, there is substantial, though not incontrovertible,
evidence that the Piltdown skull, at least, was a genuine
fossil. The Piltdown gravels in which it was found are now
thought to be 75,000 to 125,000 years old. An anatomically
modern human skull of this age in England would be considered
anomalous.
Chapter 9 takes us to China, where in 1929 Davidson Black
reported the discovery of Peking man fossils at Zhoukoudian
(formerly Choukoutien). Now classified as Homo erectus, the
Peking man specimens were lost to science during the Second
World War. Traditionally, Peking man has been depicted as a cave
dweller who had mastered the arts of stone tool manufacturing,
hunting, and building fires. But a certain number of influential
researchers regarded this view as mistaken. They saw Peking man
as the prey of a more advanced hominid, whose skeletal remains
have not yet been discovered.
In 1983, Wu Rukang and Lin Shenglong published an article in
Scientific American purporting to show an evolutionary increase
in brain size during the 230,000 years of the Homo erectus
occupation of the Zhoukoudian cave. But we show that this
proposal was based on a misleading statistical presentation of
the cranial evidence.
In addition to the famous Peking man discoveries, many more
hominid finds have been made in China. These include, say
Chinese workers, australopithecines, various grades of Homo
erectus, Neanderthaloids, early Homo sapiens, and anatomically
modern Homo sapiens. The dating of these hominids is
problematic. They occur at sites along with fossils of mammals
broadly characteristic of the Pleistocene. In reading various
reports, we noticed that scientists routinely used the
morphology of the hominid remains to date these sites more
precisely.
For example, at Tongzi, South China, Homo sapiens fossils were
found along with mammalian fossils. Qiu Zhonglang said:
"The
fauna suggests a Middle-Upper Pleistocene range, but the
archeological [i.e., human] evidence is consistent with an Upper
Pleistocene age."
Qiu, using what we call morphological dating,
therefore assigned the site, and hence the human fossils, to the
Upper Pleistocene. A more reasonable conclusion would be that
the Homo sapiens fossils could be as old as the Middle
Pleistocene. Indeed, our examination of the Tongzi faunal
evidence shows mammalian species that became extinct at the end
of the Middle Pleistocene. This indicates that the Tongzi site,
and the Homo sapiens fossils, are at least 100,000 years old.
Additional faunal evidence suggests a maximum age of about
600,000 years.
The practice of morphological dating substantially distorts the
hominid fossil record. In effect, scientists simply arrange the
hominid fossils according to a favored evolutionary sequence,
although the accompanying faunal evidence does not dictate this.
If one considers the true probable date ranges for the Chinese
hominids, one finds that various grades of Homo erectus and
various grades of early Homo sapiens (including Neanderthaloids)
may have coexisted with anatomically modern Homo sapiens in the
middle Middle Pleistocene, during the time of the Zhoukoudian
Homo erectus occupation.
In Chapter 10, we consider the possible coexistence of primitive
hominids and anatomically modern humans not only in the distant
past but in the present. Over the past century, scientists have
accumulated evidence suggesting that humanlike creatures
resembling Gigantopithecus, Australopithecus, Homo erectus, and
the Neanderthals are living in various wilderness areas of the
world.
In North America, these creatures are known as
Sasquatch.
In Central Asia, they are called Almas. In Africa, China,
Southeast Asia, Central America, and South America, they are
known by other names. Some researchers use the general term "wildmen"
to include them all. Scientists and physicians have reported
seeing live wildmen, dead wildmen, and footprints. They have
also catalogued thousands of reports from ordinary people who
have seen wildmen, as well as similar reports from historical
records.
Myra Shackley, a British anthropologist, wrote to us:
"Opinions
vary, but I guess the commonest would be that there is indeed
sufficient evidence to suggest at least the possibility of the
existence of various unclassified manlike creatures, but that in
the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to comment
on their significance in any more detail. The position is
further complicated by misquotes, hoaxing, and lunatic fringe
activities, but a surprising number of hard core anthropologists
seem to be of the opinion that the matter is very worthwhile
investigating."
Chapter 11 takes us to Africa. We describe in detail the cases
mentioned in the first part of this introduction (Reck’s
skeleton, the Laetoli footprints, etc.). These provide evidence
for anatomically modern humans in the Early Pleistocene and Late
Pliocene.
We also examine the status of Australopithecus. Most
anthropologists say Australopithecus was a human ancestor with
an apelike head, a humanlike body, and a humanlike bipedal
stance and gait. But other researchers make a convincing case
for a radically different view of Australopithecus. Physical
anthropologist C. E. Oxnard wrote in his book Uniqueness and
Diversity in Human Evolution (1975):
"Pending further evidence
we are left with the vision of intermediately sized animals, at
home in the trees, capable of climbing, performing degrees of
acrobatics, and perhaps of arm suspension."
In a 1975 article in
Nature, Oxnard found the australopithecines to be anatomically
similar to orangutans and said,
"it is rather unlikely that any
of the Australopithecines . . . can have any direct phylogenetic
link with the genus Homo."
Oxnard’s view is not new. Earlier in this century, when the
first australopithecines were discovered, many anthropologists,
such as Sir Arthur Keith, declined to characterize them as human
ancestors. But they were later overruled. In his book The Order
of Man (1984), Oxnard noted:
"In the uproar, at the time, as to
whether or not these creatures were near ape or human, the
opinion that they were human won the day. This may well have
resulted not only in the defeat of the contrary opinion but also
the burying of that part of the evidence upon which the contrary
opinion was based. If this is so, it should be possible to
unearth this other part of the evidence."
And that, in a more
general way, is what we have done in Forbidden Archeology. We
have unearthed buried evidence, evidence which supports a view
of human origins and antiquity quite different from that
currently held.
In Appendix 1, we review chemical and radiometric dating
techniques and their application to human fossil remains,
including some of those discussed in Chapter 6. In Appendix 2,
we provide a limited selection of evidence for ancient humans
displaying a level of culture beyond that indicated by the stone
tools discussed in Chapters 3-5. And in Appendix 3, we provide a
table listing almost all of the discoveries contained in
Forbidden Archeology.
Some might question why we would put together a book like
Forbidden Archeology, unless we had some underlying purpose.
Indeed, there is some underlying purpose.
Richard Thompson and I are members of the Bhaktivedanta
Institute, a branch of the International Society for Krishna
Consciousness that studies the relationship between modern
science and the world view expressed in the Vedic literature.
This institute was founded by our spiritual master, His Divine
Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who encouraged us to
critically examine the prevailing account of human origins and
the methods by which it was established. From the Vedic
literature, we derive the idea that the human race is of great
antiquity. To conduct systematic research into the existing
scientific literature on human antiquity, we expressed the Vedic
idea in the form of a theory that various humanlike and apelike
beings have coexisted for a long time.
That our theoretical outlook is derived from the Vedic
literature should not disqualify it. Theory selection can come
from many sources--a private inspiration, previous theories, a
suggestion from a friend, a movie, and so on. What really
matters is not a theory’s source but its ability to account for
observations.
Our research program led to results we did not anticipate, and
hence a book much larger than originally envisioned. Because of
this, we have not been able to develop in this volume our ideas
about an alternative to current theories of human origins. We
are therefore planning a second volume relating our extensive
research results in this area to our Vedic source material.
Given their underlying purpose, Forbidden Archeology and its
forthcoming companion volume may therefore be of interest to
cultural and cognitive anthropologists, scholars of religion,
and others concerned with the interactions of cultures in time
and space.
At this point, I would like to say something about my
collaboration with Richard Thompson. Richard is a scientist by
training, a mathematician who has published refereed articles
and books in the fields of mathematical biology, remote sensing
from satellites, geology, and physics. I am not a scientist by
training. Since 1977, I have been a writer and editor for books
and magazines published by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.
In 1984, Richard asked his assistant to begin collecting
material on human origins and antiquity. In 1986, Richard asked
me to take that material and organize it into a book.
As I reviewed the material provided to me by the assistant, I
was struck by the very small number of reports from 1859, when
Darwin published The Origin of Species, until 1894, when
Dubois
published his report on Java man. Curious about this, I asked
Stephen to obtain some anthropology books from the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In these books,
including an early edition of Boule’s Fossil Men, I found highly
negative reviews of numerous reports from the period in
question. By tracing out footnotes, we dug up a few samples of
these reports.
Most of them, by nineteenth-century scientists,
described incised bones, stone tools, and anatomically modern
skeletal remains encountered in unexpectedly old geological
contexts. The reports were of high quality, answering many
possible objections. This encouraged me to make a more
systematic search. Digging up this buried literary evidence
required another three years. My researcher and I obtained rare
conference volumes and journals from around the world, and
together we translated the material into English. The results of
this labor provided the basis for Chapters 2-6 in Forbidden
Archeology.
After I reviewed the material Stephen gave me about the Peking
man discoveries, I decided we should also look at recent hominid
finds in China. While going through dozens of technical books
and papers, I noticed the phenomenon of morphological dating.
And when I reviewed our African material, I encountered hints of
the dissenting view regarding Australopithecus. My curiosity
about these two areas also led to a fruitful extension of our
original research program.
Writing the manuscript from the assembled material took another
couple of years. Throughout the entire period of research and
writing, I had almost daily discussions with Richard about the
significance of the material and how best to present it. Richard
himself contributed most of Appendix 1, the discussion of the
uranium series dating of the Hueyatlac tools in Chapter 5, and
the discussion of epistemological considerations in Chapter 1.
The remainder of the book was written by me, although I relied
heavily on research reports supplied by my researcher for Chapter 7 and the first part of
Chapter 9, as well as Appendix
2. He obtained much of the material in Appendix 2 from
Ron
Calais, who kindly sent us many Xeroxes of original reports from
his archives.
In this second printing of the first edition of Forbidden
Archeology, we have corrected several small errors in the
original text, mostly typographical. The account of a wildman
sighting by Anthony B. Wooldridge, originally included in
Chapter 10, has been deleted because we have since learned that
the author has retracted his statements.
Richard and I are grateful to our Bhaktivedanta Institute
colleagues and the other reviewers who read all or part of the
manuscript of Forbidden Archeology. We have incorporated many,
but not all, of their suggestions. Full responsibility for the
content and manner of presentation lies with us.
Virginia Steen-McIntyre was kind enough to supply us with her
correspondence on the dating of the Hueyatlaco, Mexico, site. We
also had useful discussions about stone tools with Ruth D.
Simpson of the San Bernardino County Museum and about shark
teeth marks on bone with Thomas A. Demere of the San Diego
Natural History Museum.
I am indebted to my friend Pierce Julius Flynn for the
continuing interest he has displayed in the writing and
publication of Forbidden Archeology. It is through him that I
have learned much of what I know about current developments in
the social sciences, particularly semiotics, the sociology of
knowledge, and postmodern anthropology.
This book could not have been completed without the varied
services of Christopher Beetle, a computer science graduate of
Brown University, who came to the Bhaktivedanta Institute in San
Diego in 1988. He typeset almost all of the book, going through
several revisions. He also made most of the tables, processed
most of the illustrations, and served as a proofreader. He made
many helpful suggestions on the text and illustrations, and he
also helped arranged the printing.
For overseeing the design and layout, Richard and I thank Robert
Wintermute. The illustrations opposite the first page of the
introduction and in Figure 11.11 are the much-appreciated work
of Miles Triplett. The cover painting is by Hans Olson. David
Smith, Sigalit Binyaminy, Susan Fritz, Barbara Cantatore, and
Michael Best also helped in the production of this book.
Richard and I would especially like to thank the international
trustees of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, past and present, for
their generous support for the research, writing, and
publication of this book. Michael Crabtree also contributed
toward the printing cost of this book.
Finally, we encourage readers to bring to our attention any
additional evidence that may be of interest, especially for
inclusion in future editions of this book. We are also available
for interviews and speaking engagements.
Michael A. Cremo
Alachua, Florida
April 24, 1995
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