Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

6.1.2.3 The Clichy Skeleton

In 1868, Eugene Bertrand reported to the Anthropological Society of Paris that on April 18 of that year he found parts of a human skull, along with a femur, tibia, and some foot bones, in a quarry on the Avenue de Clichy. According to Keith (1928, pp. 276–277), the bones were found 5.25 meters (17.3 feet) beneath the surface, in a grey loam. Bertrand (1868, pp. 329–330) reported a similar depth but said that the bones were found in a reddish clayey sand layer within the grey loam. MacCurdy (1924a, p. 413) said that the bones were found in “a band of reddish sand at the base of the gray diluvium.” A workman at the site reported that this reddish band was 10 or 20 centimeters (about 4 – 8 inches) in thickness (Bertrand 1868, p. 332). Keith believed that the age of the stratum in which the human bones were found was roughly the same age as the layer in which the Galley Hill skeleton was discovered. We recall from Section 6.1.2.1 that this layer is, according to current estimates, approximately 330,000 years old. The depth at which the Clichy human fossils were found (over 17 feet) argues against the recent intrusive burial hypothesis, and furthermore there was no mention of any disturbance in the overlying strata.

But Gabriel de Mortillet (Bertrand 1868, p. 332) said that a workman at the quarry on the Avenue de Clichy told him that he had stashed a skeleton in the pit. Skeptical about the reliability of testimony by workmen, de Mortillet asked him for proof. According to de Mortillet, the workman responded by telling him that he had taken the skeleton from a layer of reddish sediments in the upper part of the quarry. This explained why the bones found by Bertrand were reddish in color. The workman said that the layer of reddish material in the lower levels of the quarry was too thin to contain the bones.

According to de Mortillet, the workman further said that in the upper levels of the quarry, bones from the same animal were sometimes found together, whereas in the lower levels the fossil remains of mammals were always mixed and scattered. Thus the fact that the human bones were found “piled up in a little space” indicated they were not originally part of the layer in which they were found. On the basis of the workman’s statements, de Mortillet concluded that the skeleton said to have been stashed by the workman was the same as the one found by Bertrand.

There is, of course, no guarantee that the workman was speaking the truth—de Mortillet himself frankly admitted the unreliability of testimony from workmen. On the other hand, it is possible that the workman was being honest, and if this is the case then the Clichy skeleton could be only a few thousand or a few hundred years old.

De Mortillet was convinced by the workman’s report, but the facts the workman reported can be interpreted differently. The workman suggested that the layer in which Bertrand said he found the bones was too thin to have colored them. But according to the workman, the maximum depth of the layer in question was 8 inches, which seems enough to have accommodated the fragmentary skeletal remains reported by Bertrand.

The workman’s objection that it was unprecedented for several bones of the same creature to be found together in the lower layers of the quarry is of questionable significance. Eugene Bertrand (1868) said that he had evidence, which he planned to show to the Anthropological Society, that it was common for bones of the same animal to be found together in the lower layers as well as the upper layers.

Even after hearing de Mortillet relate the workman’s story about stashing the bones of the Clichy skeleton, a number of scientists remained convinced Bertrand’s discovery was genuine. For example, Professor Hamy (Bertrand 1868, p. 335) said: “Mr. Bertrand’s discovery seems to me to be so much less debatable in that it is not the first of this kind at Avenue de Clichy. Indeed, our esteemed colleague, Mr. Reboux, found in that same locality, and almost at the same depth (4.20 meters), human bones that he has given me to study.”

Hamy was not alone in accepting the Clichy find. Keith (1928, p. 276) reported that almost all authorities in France believed that the Clichy skeleton was as old as the layer in which Bertrand said it was found. Keith mentioned, however, that later on, after accepting the Neanderthals as the Pleistocene ancestors of modern humans, French anthropologists dropped the Clichy skeleton, which predated the Neanderthals, from the list of bona fide discoveries. A representative of the modern human type should not have been existing before his supposed ancestors. The Neanderthals are thought to have existed from 30,000 to 150,000 years ago. If the Clichy skeleton is about the same age as the Swanscombe skull, as suggested by Keith, it would be over 300,000 years old.

In his remarks to the Anthropological Society, Bertrand provided additional evidence for the great antiquity of the Clichy skeleton. He stated that he found a human cubitus, or ulna, in the stratum containing the other bones of the Clichy human skeleton. The ulna, the larger of the two long bones of the forearm, is located on the side opposite the thumb. When Bertrand tried to extract the ulna it crumbled into dust. He offered this as proof that the Clichy human skeleton must have been native to the layer in which it was found. Apparently, Bertrand reasoned that a bone as fragile as the decayed ulna could not possibly have been removed from an upper layer of the quarry and inserted into the lower layer in which he found it—it would certainly have been destroyed in the process. This indicated that the ulna belonged to the stratum in which Bertrand found it, as did the other human bones.

So in the case of the Clichy site, we have testimony indicating a recent age for the human skeleton found there, but at the same time there are good arguments that it was Middle Pleistocene.

6.1.2.4 La Denise, France

In the 1840s, pieces of human bone were discovered in the midst of volcanic strata at La Denise, France. Of particular interest was the frontal of a human skull. Keith (1928, p. 279) stated that the frontal “differs in no essential particular from the frontal bone of a modern skull.”

The frontal was reported to have been taken from a limonite bed of considerable age. De Mortillet (1883, p. 241) wrote: “That the human frontal bone, now in the collection of M. Pichot, was in fact from the bed of argillaceous [clayey] limonite is perfectly established by deep incrustations of limonite on the interior of the bone.”

In 1926, the French researcher C. Deperet reported to the French Academy of Science on the stratigraphy at La Denise. Deperet (1926, pp. 358–361) said the source of the human fossils was a layer of sediment deposited in a lake that formed after a Pliocene volcanic eruption and before the resumption of volcanic activity in the Pleistocene. According to Deperet, river deposits over the basalt from the last eruptions contained an Aurignacian fauna—horses, rhinoceroses, mammoths, hyenas, etc. This meant the last eruptions at La Denise occurred not later than the Late Pleistocene. Deperet’s report thus suggests the presence of humans of the modern type at La Denise at some time during the Pleistocene, between 30,000 years ago (the latest time for the last eruptions) and 2 million years ago (the earliest time for the first eruptions). We would like to obtain more detailed stratigraphic evidence for the age of the argillaceous limonite layer from which the La Denise jaw was taken. Over a century after the La Denise fossils were discovered, they were tested chemically by K. P. Oakley. We shall discuss these test results, said to confirm a recent age for the fossils, in Appendix 1.

6.1.3 The Ipswich Skeleton (Middle Middle Pleistocene)

In 1911, J. Reid Moir discovered an anatomically modern human skeleton beneath a layer of glacial boulder clay near the town of Ipswich, East Anglia, in England. Reading through various secondary accounts, we learned that J. Reid Moir later changed his mind about the skeleton, declaring it recent. We thus did not consider the Ipswich skeleton for inclusion in this book. But after further investigation, we determined that the Ipswich skeleton could be genuinely old.

The key fact reported by Moir was that the Ipswich skeleton was found below a layer of boulder clay. The boulder clay of East Anglia overlies the Middle Pleistocene Cromer Forest Bed formation, which in turn overlies the Late Pliocene Red Crag. According to modern opinion, the boulder clay (a glacial deposit) could be as much as .4 million years old (Table 2.1, p. 78).

The Ipswich skeleton was discovered in a pit located at a brick field overlooking the valley of the river Gipping. Sir Arthur Keith (1928, p. 293) stated: “Passing northwards through Ipswich the traveller soon leaves the town and valley and finds himself on a plateau, about 150 feet above the level of the sea, and covered everywhere by a thick stratum of chalky boulder clay, varying in depth from 15 to 25 feet. . . . At the brick-field the chalky boulder clay has become reduced to a stratum of about 4 feet in thickness. . . . That the stratum at the brickfield represents a direct extension of the great sheet of boulder clay, Mr. Moir proved by sinking a series of pits from the brick-field to the crown of the plateau. In the map prepared by the officers of the Geological Survey the chalky boulder clay is shown to extend to the pit.”

The skeleton was found at a depth of 1.38 meters (about 4.5 feet), between the boulder clay and some underlying glacial sands. Moir was aware of the possibility that the skeleton might represent a recent burial. Therefore, according to Keith (1928, pp. 294–295), Moir “took every means of verifying the unbroken and undisturbed nature of the stratum in and under which the skeleton lay.”

Keith supervised the removal of the skeleton from its matrix at the Royal College of Surgeons. Keith (1928, p. 295) stated that “a whole skeleton was represented, and that it was placed on the right side in the ultra-contracted posture.” To Keith the evidence suggested a burial from an ancient land surface. “At least it was not made from the present land surface,” he said, “for the overlying stratum was intact” (Keith 1928, p. 295).

As for the condition of the bones, Keith said it was similar to that of Pleistocene animal fossils found elsewhere in the glacial sands. He noted: “The substance of the bones is grey and chalky in appearance, crumbling to white dry dust on pressure. The bones, when dissolved in hydrochloric acid, leave no animal matrix behind” (Keith 1928, p. 296).

The Ipswich skeleton was that of a man about 5 feet 10 inches tall. The brain capacity was 1430 cc, about average for modern humans, and according to Keith (1928, p. 297) “all the characters of the skull are those we are familiar with in modern man.”

The discovery, however, inspired intense opposition. Keith (1928, p. 299) questioned: “if . . . the Ipswich skeleton had shown characters as distinctive as those of Neanderthal man . . . would anyone have doubted its age was older than the deposition of the boulder clay?” Keith (1928, p. 299) answered: “I do not think the age would then have been called into question. But under the presumption that the modern type of man is also modern in origin, a degree of high antiquity is denied to such specimens.”

Keith (1928, p. 299) suggested: “It is, therefore, all the more important that every discovery of human remains, made in circumstances which make their high antiquity a reasonable presumption, should be placed on record, with no fact kept back.” We fully agree with Keith on this point, and indeed, his suggestion has been one of the operating principles governing the compilation of the material in this book. The nature of paleoanthropological evidence is that it is never absolutely conclusive. There is always a chance that new evidence or new methods of analysis might result in a reevaluation of previous discoveries. It is therefore valuable to keep the details of controversial finds readily at hand for future generations of researchers.

Despite opposition, Moir initially stuck to his guns, holding that the Ipswich skeleton was genuinely old. What then happened to change his mind? His own report, published in Nature in 1916, tells the story. Moir (1916, p. 109) conducted further excavations in the area and reported: “These investigations have shown that at about the level at which the skeleton rested the scanty remains of a ‘floor’ are present, and that the few associated flint implements appear to be the same as others found on an old occupation-level in the adjacent valley. This occupation-level is in all probability referable to the early Aurignac period, and it appears that the person whose remains were discovered was buried in this old land surface. The material which has since covered the ancient ‘floor’ may be regarded as a sludge, formed largely of re-made boulder clay, and its deposition was probably associated with a period of low temperatures occurring in postchalky boulder clay times.” The Aurignacian stage in Europe occurred about

30,000 years ago (Gowlett 1984, p. 122) and is identified with Homo sapiens sapiens.

In Moir’s statements we find nothing that compels us to accept a recent age for the skeleton. We know from our discussion of stone tools (Section 3.3.1) that Moir believed in a temporal succession of tool types, the older being more primitive than the recent. In other words, Moir was operating under the influence of an evolutionary preconception. But our own review of stone tools led us to the conclusion that it is not possible to place such implements in a temporal sequence simply on the basis of their degree of sophistication. Modern human beings are known to make very crude stone tool implements, and we have evidence that very sophisticated tools, comparable to those of Aurignacian Europe, turn up all over the world, in very distant times. In the 1960s, such implements were discovered at Hueyatlaco, Mexico, in strata yielding a uranium series age of over 200,000 years (Section 5.4.4). During the nineteenth century, very advanced stone objects turned up in the California gold mines, in gravels that might be as old as the Eocene (Section 5.5). Therefore, we cannot agree with Moir that the discovery of tools of advanced type at the same level as the Ipswich skeleton was sufficient reason to reinterpret the site stratigraphy to bring the age of the skeleton into harmony with the supposed age of the tools.

Moir’s reinterpretation of the boulder clay over the skeleton was not, it appears, based on any compelling geological evidence. In fact, he gave no geological reasons whatsoever in support of his conclusion that the boulder clay was a recently deposited sludge. Therefore, the simplest hypothesis is that it really was a layer of intact glacial boulder clay, as originally reported by Moir and recorded by the British Geological Survey on its detailed map of the region.

The age of the skeleton thus depends on the age of the boulder clay. Over the years, the age of the boulder clay in East Anglia has, however, been a matter of controversy. During the 1920s, Moir proposed that there were two glacial boulder clays in East Anglia, one laid down during the Mindel glaciation, and the other during the subsequent Riss glaciation (Keith 1928, pp. 302–303). If this scheme is accepted, the boulder clay that covered the Ipswich skeleton would belong to the Riss glaciation. We note, however, that the Riss glacial period extended from about 125,000 to over 300,000 years ago, which would still give a considerable antiquity to the Ipswich skeleton.

But it appears that Moir was wrong about there being evidence for a Riss glaciation at Ipswich. The English glaciation equivalent to the European Mindel glaciation is the Anglian. The Anglian was followed by the Hoxnian interglacial. The next English glacial period, corresponding to the European Riss glaciation, used to be called the Gippingian, following Moir’s interpretation of the glacial deposits by the Gipping River near Ipswich. But according a modern English authority, D. Q. Bowen (1980, p. 420), geologists have “shown that the Gipping Till of Essex was Anglian in age.”

The “necessary replacement” (Bowen 1980, p. 420) for the Gippingian glaciation was the Wolstonian. The clearest evidence for the Riss-equivalent Wolstonian glaciation is in the region of Birmingham, quite far from Ipswich, but there are some rather unclear signs of the Wolstonian in Mildenhall, about

40 miles to the northwest of Ipswich (Bowen 1980, p. 420). There is no sign of the Wolstonian at Ipswich itself. The final English glaciation, corresponding to the Würm glaciation of continental Europe, was the Devensian, which did not come down as far as Ipswich (Bowen 1980, p. 421; Nilsson 1983, p. 113). A modern authority on the Pleistocene geology of England stated: “nowhere in East Anglia is it possible to demonstrate post-Hoxnian and pre-Devensian glaciation on stratigraphic grounds” (Bowen 1980, p. 420).

In other words, there was, in the opinion of modern authorities, no Rissequivalent glaciation (the Wolstonian) at Ipswich. Neither did the subsequent Devensian ice sheet reach Ipswich. What this means is that the boulder clay at Ipswich can only be referred to the Anglian glaciation. Therefore the glacial sands in which the Ipswich skeleton was found must have been laid down between the onset of the Anglian glaciation, about 400,000 years ago, and onset of the Hoxnian interglacial, about 330,000 years ago. It would thus appear that the Ipswich skeleton is between 330,000 and 400,000 years old. Some authorities (Gowlett 1984, p. 87) put the onset of the Mindel glaciation (equivalent to the Anglian) at about 600,000 years, which would give the Ipswich skeleton an age potentially that great. Yet human beings of modern type are not thought to have appeared in Western Europe before 30,000 years ago (Gowlett 1984, p. 118).

From the story of the Ipswich skeleton, we learn that discoverers of anomalies, such as Moir, can be the victims of prejudices as strong as those of their opponents. For mavericks and establishment figures alike, evolutionary preconceptions block proper evaluation of paleoanthropological evidence. On the one hand, we find ideas about the recent evolution of the modern human form prevented certain scientists from believing that the Ipswich skeleton might be truly ancient. And on the other hand, ideas about the progressive evolution of stone tools influenced Moir to revise downward the age of his own discovery.

6.1.4 Possible Early Man Sites With No Skeletal Remains

If anatomically modern humans were present during the Middle and Early Pleistocene in Europe and elsewhere, why, one might ask, are scientists no longer finding any evidence of this? Instead, today’s scientists are continually finding Homo erectus sites of Middle and Early Pleistocene age.

But here we run into a problem. There are many Middle and Early Pleistocene sites at which scientists have found stone tools but no hominid bones. The artifacts at these sites, mostly of a type called Acheulian, are nevertheless attributed to Homo erectus. But from a strictly objective point of view, in the absence of hominid fossils, the Acheulian artifacts could just as well be attributed to Homo sapiens sapiens. This is true regardless of the level of sophistication of the tools, since anatomically modern humans are known to make and use tools of the crudest sort.

Let us now review some cases demonstrating the difficulties one encounters in determining who made artifacts found at a site. In Section 5.4.3, we considered Acheulian tools from Timlin, New York. Mainstream authorities would surely attribute these to anatomically modern humans. The same is true the Acheuliantype tool from at Black’s Fork River, Wyoming, U.S.A. (Section 4.8). Likewise, it should be possible to attribute European Acheulian tools to Homo sapiens sapiens at sites with no hominid skeletal remains.

In Chapter 3, we discussed the Alabama pebble tools from the U.S.A., which are similar to the crude Oldowan tools of Africa (Section 3.8.5). The pebble tools at Olduvai Gorge are said to be the work of Homo habilis and are considered to be close to 2 million years old. Mainstream authorities, if they recognized the Alabama tools at all, would say they were not more than 12,000 years old and would attribute them to Homo sapiens sapiens.

We have also discussed the Late Pleistocene site at Monte Verde, Chile, where scientists found Oldowan-type tools hafted to wooden handles, along with other cultural remains typical of modern humans (Section 3.8.6). The preservation of wood in such circumstances is rare. It is therefore possible that the tools could have been found without the wooden handles and other perishable artifacts indicating a high level of culture. By analogy, we should be open to the possibility that at other sites where Oldowan tools are found, perishable artifacts typical of humans with a high degree of culture have been lost. This may be true even for Early Pleistocene sites. Normally, Oldowan tools, if found alone in an Early Pleistocene context, would not be attributed to anatomically modern humans. But the example of Monte Verde demonstrates that for sites where Oldowan tools alone are discovered it is possible that a variegated Homo sapiens sapiens culture was originally present but was not entirely preserved.

But even when signs of higher culture are present, scientists with strongly held preconceived ideas often fail to imagine that beings on the level of Homo sapiens sapiens might have been responsible for them. This is true for the Middle Pleistocene site of Terra Amata in southern France. Here, according to the discoverer, Henry de Lumley (1969, p. 42), campsites were established by bands of hominids 300,000 years ago. An account of the Terra Amata finds in a Time-Life book (The Emergence of Man) gave a date of 400,000 years.

At the ancient seashore site, de Lumley found oval patterns of post holes and stone circles indicating that the hominids erected temporary shelters and built fires. Also found were bone tools. Among them was one apparently used as an awl, perhaps to sew skins. Impressions found in the old land surface at the site were said to demonstrate that the hominids slept or sat on hides. Stone implements were also found, including an object described as a projectile point, made from volcanic rock obtained from the Esterel region, 30 miles away.

Significantly, no hominid fossils were found at the Terra Amata site in France. De Lumley (1969, p. 45) did, however, report “the imprint of a right foot, 9.5 inches long, preserved in the sand of a dune.” The print was described as “human” in the Time-Life book. It was also said that the foot of the Terra Amata hominid was “arched to support his whole weight” and “had lost all trace of the ability to grasp that ape feet possess” (Time-Life 1973, p. 12). In a welcome display of scientific reserve, de Lumley, in his 1969 article about the Terra Amata discoveries published in Scientific American, did not identify the type of hominid that occupied the temporary habitation site on the shores of the Mediterranean.

However, the authors of the Time-Life study were not so inhibited. They wrote: “What sort of man visited this cove on the coast of Europe 400,000 years ago? Who was he? Although he came each spring for many years, the fossils he left behind him included no human bones—only a single human footprint in the hard sand. . . . He was the first man. He is known, in the scheme of evolution, as Homo erectus, or upright man. He was the direct descendant of Australopithecus, a creature considered the missing link between the apes and man” (Time-Life

1973, pp. 11–12). Judging from the available reports, the footprint is not different from that of a modern human being. The Time-Life book’s assertion that Homo erectus was the inhabitant of Terra Amata is therefore unjustified.

At the Torralba, Spain, site, estimated to be about 300,000 years old, stone tools have been found in connection with fossil bones of elephants. Some scientists have interpreted Torralba as a Homo erectus kill-site. But as in the case of Terra Amata, no hominid fossils were found there. Only preconceived ideas about human evolution allowed scientists to attribute the Torralba tools and elephant bones to Homo erectus.

One skeptical researcher, Lewis Binford, even disagreed that Torralba was a kill-site. During the Middle Pleistocene, the area was a boggy marsh. Binford (1981, p. 16) pointed out that elephant fossils are generally found by water margins, because that is where they tend to die. Furthermore, the sediments at Torralba, according to F. Clark Howell, were deposited over many tens of thousands of years (Binford 1981, p. 16). Over this time, 115 elephants died. Assuming the sediments were deposited in just one 10,000-year period, Binford calculated that one elephant died every 87 years. Natural deaths, by disease, old age, or predators, he said, could very well account for the accumulation of elephant bodies at that rate. During the same 10,000 years, 611 stone tools accumulated at the site. This again, is not very many, considering the time involved

—about 6 tools per century. So the association of stone tools and elephant bones could be purely accidental.

Reacting to the standard view of what happened at Torralba, Binford (1981, pp. 17–18) stated: “Man killed the animals while executing game drives —possibly aided by fire—butchered them, and carried the meat away—truly extraordinary. . . . This is a truly remarkable set of conclusions to draw from the Torralba data. . . . Given an aggregation of stone tools—evidence of hominid behavior—it is assumed that all other remains associated with the stone tools are also a by-product of human behavior. The researchers of Torralba have certainly made this assumption. Pleistocene archaeologists need to abandon such an approach.”

Examples such as Torralba and Terra Amata could be multiplied, for at most paleoanthropological sites, no hominid bones are found. The artifacts at these sites are attributed to Homo habilis, Homo erectus, the Neanderthals, or Homo sapiens on the basis of their presumed age or their level of workmanship. But this practice, strictly speaking, is not justifiable. Therefore, many Early and Middle Pleistocene sites currently identified with Homo erectus, for example, could just as well be identified with anatomically modern Homo sapiens.

6.1.5 A Human Skull from The Early Pleistocene at Buenos Aires

In 1896, workers excavating a dry dock in Buenos Aires found a human skull (Figure 6.1). They took it from the rudder pit at the bottom of the excavation, after breaking through a layer of a hard, limestonelike substance called tosca. The level at which the skull was found was 11 meters (36 feet) below the bed of the river La Plata (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 318).

The workers who found the skull gave it to Mr. Junor, their supervisor, a senior member of the public works division of the Port of Buenos Aires (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 318). Information about the skull was furnished to the Argentine paleontologist Florentino Ameghino by Mr. Edward Marsh Simpson, an engineer for Charles H. Walker & Co. of London, the company contracted to excavate the port of Buenos Aires (Ameghino 1909, p. 108; Hrdlicka 1912, p. 319). In the opinion of Ameghino, the skull removed from the rudder pit belonged to a Pliocene precursor of Homo sapiens. He called this precursor Diprothomo platensis.

Figure 6.1. Human skull taken from an Early Pleistocene formation in Buenos Aires, Argentina (Hrdlicka 1912, plate 49).

A. Hrdlicka (1912, p. 319) wrote: “Professor Ameghino [1909, p. 121] concludes from the information obtained from Mr. Simpson alone that the fragments of the skull came from the lower portion of the rudder-pit in Dry Dock No. 1 and from beneath the tosca. He states further, however, that beneath the tosca was found a layer of quartzy sand followed by a stratum of grey clay, and that it was in this layer of grey clay, 50 cm. [about 20 inches] below the floor of the dry dock, that the skull-cap of the Diprothomo was discovered.” Hrdlicka (1912, p. 321)

said about Ameghino’s opinion on the age of the deposits below the tosca: “The gray clay he identifies as belonging to the upper-most portion of the Pre-Ensenadean stratum, which is the most inferior part of the Pampean formation, and belongs to the base of the Pliocene.” The base of the Pliocene is now dated at approximately 5 million years before the present. But modern authorities say that the Ensenadan began 1.5 million years ago (Anderson 1984, p. 41) or 1 million years ago (Marshall et al. 1982, p. 1352). The Pre-Ensenadan stratum in which the Buenos Aires skull was found would thus be at least 1.0 –1.5 million years old. Even at 1 million years, the presence of a fully modern human skull anywhere in the world—what to speak of South America—is highly anomalous.

In the course of his investigation, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 319) found Mr. Simpson and Mr. Junor, and through them located Mr. J. E. Clark of Bahia Blanca, the foreman of the laborers who found the skull. Simpson revealed that he had not been present at the dry dock at the time the discovery had been made. He had simply received a report, but noted that he had been told there was more than one skull (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 319).

Hrdlicka (1912, p. 320) then reported the substance of the discussion he had with Mr. Junor: “Mr. Junor states that he did not see the find, but was told of it the next day, or perhaps the second day after, by the foreman, Mr. Clark. . . . The foreman brought Mr. Junor two pieces of the skull, and the latter saved them because they were said to have come from beneath the tosca, giving them later to the Museo Nacional. . . . As to the place from which the bones came, he remembers having been informed that the workmen had gotten through the floor of the dock into a sort of quicksand when the bones were encountered. . .

. The bones must have been just beneath the tosca, for a small quantity of tosca was adhering to them. . . . He did not examine the site from which the skull fragments given him were supposed to have come. No inquiries were made of the laborers.”

Relating the testimony of Clark, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 320) stated: “Mr. Clark states in his letter that the skull ‘was found at the commencement of the Rudder Pit at dock bottom’; he ‘is quite sure the skull was found at the Rudder Pit and under tosca’; and ‘it was the only one found in that locality, but there was another skull found in the sand at the entrance to Dock No. 4.’”

Bailey Willis, the geologist who accompanied Hrdlicka on his expedition to Argentina, related this account of the interviews they had made: “Mr. Junor was found at his home in Flores, a suburb of Buenos Aires, on the evening of May 7, 1910, and we were most courteously received. He appeared to be about 70 years of age, of sanguine temperament, still enthusiastic as in youth, and an ardent believer of the antiquity of man in Argentina. He recited freely his recollection of the finding of the skull, stating in substance: The piece of skull was brought to him by the foreman of a gang of workmen who were digging out the rudder-pit. He (Mr. Junor) was very much occupied at the time by duties of supervision of construction and did not see the skull taken out, nor did he examine the place afterward to see where it came from; but he had no doubt that it came out of the well, ‘probably’ from between a layer of tosca and the underlying sand. The skull was said to have been found by a workman, who passed it to the foreman, who in turn gave it to Mr. Junor. The workman cannot now be identified. It does not appear that he was ever questioned as to how the bone was found. . . . On one point Mr. Junor was positive: The fragment of skull was taken out of the well. And although this statement rests on the say-so of the foreman who was told so by a workman, it appears to be the one item in the early history of the find that is not open to serious doubt” (Hrdlicka 1912, pp. 343–344).

Some will be critical of the fact that the skull was not found in place by a scientist. One should note, however, that the Heidelberg jaw, which is accepted by paleoanthropologists as genuine, was uncovered by a workman in a sand pit in Germany and turned over to a foreman, who in turn brought it to the attention of a local professor (Section 7.2). Many of the Homo erectus specimens from Java, reports of which have found their way into all authoritative textbooks, were collected by Javanese laborers while scientists were absent from the sites (Section 7.3). A more recent example is the Petralona skull, which Greek villagers found in a spot not clearly designated. Despite this, scientists, on stratigraphic grounds, assign the Petralona skull an age of 200,000 to 300,000 years (Gowlett 1984, p. 87), and use it as evidence for an evolutionary transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens.

Willis speculated that the Buenos Aires skull had somehow arrived quite recently in the position in which it was found. In discussing this possibility, Willis gave the known details of the construction of the dry dock. First an embankment was built to keep out the river, and to keep the excavation dry there was a pump operating from the sump or well in the lowest place. Then a concrete floor was laid, and concrete walls were built. Finally the rudder pit was dug. It was during the digging of the rudder pit that the skull was found. Willis suggested: “Any objects contained in the material excavated [in the course of building the dry dock] or in the standing earth exposed at the side might have found their way into the close vicinity of the rudder-pit, if not into the pit itself” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 344). But by the time the pit was dug, the concrete walls and floor of the dry dock were already completed, which would mean there should not have been much dirt piled around on the floor or exposed on the walls. Plus there is abundant testimony that the skull was in fact found under a hard layer of tosca and was not lying loose at the top of the pit before digging took place.

Willis added: “We were told by Dr. Francesco Moreno that he, when a boy, used to go swimming where the dry dock now is, in deep pools” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 345). Willis noted that a few kilometers away from the dry dock, there is a place where the river “has worked out deep irregular holes into which anything like the skull-cap called Diprothomo would readily sink and where it would become buried lower than the surface of the Pampaean, but beneath recent river mud” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 345). There is, however, no basis for saying this occurred at the dry dock, where the skull was found beneath a layer of tosca in an excavation fully 11 meters (36 feet) below the present bed of the river La Plata.

As previously mentioned, Ameghino thought his Diprothomo represented an ancestral form of human. According to Hrdlicka (1912, p. 323), he believed the skull’s capacity was only 1100 cc, compared to 1400 cc for an average Homo sapiens, and that it had a low vault. Hrdlicka (1912, p. 325) stated: “The writer reached Buenos Aires with the foregoing data before him and in consequence thereof with very eager expectations. But when the specimen itself was placed before him by Professor Ameghino there followed a rapid disenchantment.”

Hrdlicka (1912, p. 326) noted: “In a detailed study of the specimen it soon became plain that almost the entire original description by Ameghino had miscarried by reason of the fragment having been placed and considered in a wrong position. . . . The accidental and faulty position of the fragment . . . had caused the forehead to appear much lower than it is. . . . these results of faulty orientation combined have helped to make the specimen look extraordinary and primitive, even unhuman.” Hrdlicka’s views on the positioning of the skull fragment were supported in an independent report by G. Schwalbe of Germany (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 343).

Describing the skull in its new orientation, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 332) wrote: “It was fairly but not very high; its capacity was surely not below 1,350, more probably between 1,400 and 1,500 cc.” Hrdlicka (1912, p. 332) further stated: “Every feature shows it to be a portion of the skull of man himself; it bears no evidence of having belonged to an early or physically primitive man, but to a well-developed and physically modern-like human individual.”

A firm believer in evolution and the recent origin of the human species, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 2) stated: “no conclusion can be more firmly founded than that man is the product of an extraordinary progressive differentiation from some anthropogenic stock, which developed somewhere in the later Tertiary, among the primates.”

Hrdlicka therefore believed that fossils of human ancestors from the Tertiary and Quaternary should be to a greater or lesser degree apelike, as confirmed by the discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus in Java in 1891. Any fossils of anatomically modern human appearance from the Tertiary and Quaternary had to be explained away as intrusive burials or hoaxes. Hrdlicka’s prejudice is evident in the following statement (1912, p. 2): “to establish beyond doubt the geological antiquity of human remains, it should be shown conclusively that the specimen or specimens were found in geologically ancient deposits, whose age is confirmed by the presence of paleontologic remains; and the bones should present evidence of organic as well as inorganic alterations, and show also morphologic characteristics referable to an earlier type. In addition, it is necessary to prove in every case by unexceptional evidence that the human remains were not introduced, either purposely or accidentally, in later times into the formation in which discovered.”

Hrdlicka (1912, p. 2) amplified this view in another statement: “On the basis of what is positively known to-day in regard to early man, and with the present scientific views regarding man’s evolution, the anthropologist has a right to expect that human bones, particularly crania, exceeding a few thousand years in age, and more especially those of geologic antiquity, shall present marked morphological differences, and that these differences shall point in the direction of more primitive forms.”

Hrdlicka (1912, p. 3) further stated: “The antiquity, therefore, of any human skeletal remains which do not present marked differences from those of modern man may be regarded, on morphologic grounds, as only insignificant geologically, not reaching in time, in all probability, beyond the modern, still unfinished, geologic formations. Should other claims be made in any case, the burden of proof would rest heavily on those advancing them.” Here we have a very clear formulation of the dubious principle of dating by morphology. We also see the application of a double standard in the treatment of evidence, with finds contrary to evolutionary expectations being subjected to much more rigorous scrutiny than finds conforming to evolutionary expectations.

Hrdlicka’s views, which, in modified form, remain in force today among the vast majority of scientists concerned with human origins and antiquity, represent a perversion of the scientific method. Hrdlicka and those who shared his methodology were not prepared to impartially consider the facts and construct a theory upon the foundation of all the available evidence. Rather they allowed their theoretical biases to determine what evidence should be considered valid. Modern students of paleoanthropology may justifiably question whether their scientific predecessors have bequeathed to them a body of evidence that accurately reflects the truth, as far as it can be known by empiric methods, about human origins and antiquity. They should carefully consider the fact that the evidence that has come down to them has been selected from a larger body of evidence according to the criteria established by persons such as Hrdlicka. One purpose of this book is to acquaint modern students of paleoanthropology with that larger body of evidence and allow them to make their own decisions about the worth of the portion of it that was rejected.

It is abundantly clear that Hrdlicka harbored a strong prejudice that any reputedly ancient human remains must display primitive features. The Diprothomo skull from the dry dock excavation in the harbor of Buenos Aires did not display such features. Therefore, according to Hrdlicka, it could not possibly be as ancient as the Early Pleistocene stratum in which it was discovered. Willis, in his role as Hrdlicka’s geological assistant, offered some purely speculative alternative explanations about how the skull may have found its way into the formation.

Of course, Ameghino had his own prejudices. Like Hrdlicka, he was committed to evolutionary ideas, but whereas Hrdlicka believed that Homo sapiens had evolved in the Old World and only recently emigrated to the Americas, Ameghino believed man had evolved in South America. Therefore, Ameghino had wanted his Diprothomo to be appropriately primitive for its Early Pliocene age (Early Pleistocene by modern reckoning). Hrdlicka, however, showed the skull was actually not different from that of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Putting aside prejudice and preconception, it seems that the bare facts, as far as we can ascertain them, support the view that human beings physiologically indistinguishable from Homo sapiens sapiens were present in Argentina during the Early Pleistocene. This supposition, although in clear contradiction to presently accepted accounts of human evolution, fits in quite well with the overwhelming mass of evidence detailed in the preceding chapters.

Before moving on, let us consider another South American find with unsettling implications for current thinking about human evolution in general and the populating of the New World in particular.

6.1.6 The Lagoa Santa Calotte

In 1970, Canadian archeologist Alan Lyle Bryan found a highly mineralized calotte (skullcap) with “very thick walls and exceptionally heavy brow ridges” in a paleontological collection from caves in the Lagoa Santa region of Brazil. This skullcap could not be given a date, since the cave excavations had not been stratigraphically controlled, but the fossil’s morphology was reminiscent of Homo erectus. Bryan stated that he left the skullcap in a local museum, but unfortunately it was later lost. When Bryan (1978) showed photographs of the skullcap to several American physical anthropologists, they were unable to believe it could have come from the Americas, and proposed that it was either a fake, a cast, or possibly a skullcap from Europe that had somehow been introduced into the Brazilian collection examined by Bryan.

But Bryan countered that both he and his wife, who also saw the skullcap, had abundant experience with human fossil bones. And they were both quite sure that the skullcap could not have been a fake or a cast—it was a genuine, highly fossilized human skullcap.

That the Lagoa Santa calotte was not a European fossil, accidentally introduced into the Brazilian collection, was supported, said Bryan, by the fact that it differed in several important measurements from known European skulls.

Also, it was similar to other skulls found in the Sumidouro cave in the Lagoa Santa region during the 1930s. Bryan (1978) reported that pieces of similar skulls were found more recently in the same cave and were being studied by Marilia Carvalho de Mello e Alvim at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro.

What is the significance of the Lagoa Santa calotte? The presence of hominids with Homo erectus features in Brazil at any time in the past is highly anomalous. Paleoanthropologists holding standard views say that only anatomically modern humans ever came to the Americas. The methodology of science allows for views to change, but the kind of change inherent in accepting the presence of Homo erectus in the New World would be revolutionary.

Of course, there are now a few paleoanthropologists who propose that Homo erectus was responsible for the crude stone tools at sites such as Toca da Esperança in Brazil (Section 3.8.4) and Calico in California (Section 3.8.3). If the view that Homo erectus was responsible for tools at certain very ancient sites in the Americas were to be become more widely accepted, this might have the beneficial effect of encouraging the far more radical changes in view that would be required to accommodate the evidence for the presence of anatomically modern humans in the early Quaternary and Tertiary.

Finally, we wonder how such an important fossil as the Lagoa Santa skullcap could have been lost in the museum where it was being kept. A similar thing happened to the postcranial portion of the skeleton discovered by H. Reck at Olduvai Gorge (Section 11.1.5). In the case of Bryan’s and Reck’s discoveries, we at least had a chance to hear about them before they disappeared. But we suspect that other fossils have escaped our attention because they were misplaced in museums or were perhaps intentionally discarded—without report.

6.2 Fossil Human Remains from Tertiary Formations

Having reviewed human skeletal remains from the Middle and Early Pleistocene, we shall now consider discoveries from the Tertiary. Of course, modern authorities, almost without exception, are convinced there were no humans in the Tertiary. In Fossil Men, Boule and Vallois (1957, p. 108), in predicting what sort of fossils might turn up to fill the gaps in the record of human ancestry, said: “Even in the Pliocene, what we shall meet will no longer be— or rather, will not yet be—true Hominids. They will be the ancestors of the Prehominians, the ancestors of the Australopithecines— or even these Australopithecines themselves—all of them forms so apelike that to call them human would be to give this term an extension that would deprive it of all logical meaning.” Here we have yet another example of evolutionary preconceptions dictating what kind of evidence is safely discoverable.

6.2.1 The Foxhall Jaw (late Pliocene)

We have already discussed J. Reid Moir’s reports about stone implements and hearths discovered at Foxhall, England, in the Late Pliocene Red Crag formation (Section 3.3.4). Earlier, in 1855, a human jaw was discovered at Foxhall by workers digging for coprolites (phosphate-rich nodules) in a quarry on Mr. Law’s farm.

John Taylor, the town druggist, purchased the Foxhall jaw (Figure 6.2) from a workman who wanted a glass of beer, and Taylor called it to the attention of Robert H. Collyer, an American physician then residing in London. Collyer, having acquired the fossil, visited the quarry on Mr. Law’s farm and noted that the coprolite bed, from which the jaw was said to have been taken, was 16 feet below the surface. The condition of the jaw, thoroughly infiltrated with iron oxide, was consistent with incorporation in the coprolite bed. Collyer said that the Foxhall jaw was “the oldest relic of the human animal in existence” (Osborn 1921, p. 567). The 16-foot level at Foxhall is the same from which Moir (1924, p. 647) later recovered stone tools and signs of fire. Anything found at this level, considered an old land surface, would be at least 2.5 million years old.

Aware that he was in the possession of a fossil of great significance, Collyer brought the jaw to the curator of the Royal College of Surgeons, who suggested that he show it to Richard Owen. Collyer delivered the jaw to Owen, who kept it for two years without giving a report. In 1859, Collyer retrieved the jaw, and then took it, in turn, to Sir John Prestwich and Thomas Henry Huxley.

In April of 1863, Collyer displayed the fossil jaw at a meeting of the Ethnological Society of London, at which the prominent geologists Charles Lyell and Roderick Murchison were present. George Busk, a paleontologist, said at the meeting that the fossil bone from Foxhall was “the jaw of some old woman, perhaps from some Roman burial ground,” but he later withdrew this skeptical statement (Osborn 1921, p. 567).

Huxley, who was also present at the meeting, visited Collyer the next morning to further examine the jaw. At that time, Huxley said that it was “most extraordinary,” but in May of 1863 he wrote that the morphology of the bone did not indicate it belonged “to an extinct or aberrant race of mankind,” adding that “the condition of the bone is not such as I should expect a crag fossil to be” (Osborn 1921, p. 568).

Figure 6.2. Human jaw discovered in 1855 in the Late Pliocene Red Crag formation at Foxhall, England (Osborn 1921, p. 568).

The jaw then passed into the hands of Hugh Falconer and eventually wound up in the possession of George Busk, who showed it to de Quatrefages and other French scientists. In July of 1863, Busk stated the jaw was of “very great antiquity” (Osborn 1921, p. 568) but not necessarily from the coprolite bed at Foxhall.

American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, writing in the 1920s about Moir’s finds of flint tools in the same area where the Foxhall jaw was uncovered, wondered why the above-mentioned scientists did not take the trouble to visit the site. They disbelieved, said Osborn (1921, p. 568), “probably because the shape of the jaw was not primitive and the degree of mineralization was not such as positively to prove it a fossil. He [Collyer] had a chemical analysis made that showed that the jaw was largely mineralized, but retained 8 per cent of animal matter.” But Moir reported that chemical analysis of bones from the Red Crag demonstrated that many of them had up to 6.5 percent animal matter (Osborn 1921, p. 568).

After some time, the jaw mysteriously disappeared, as did Collyer himself. All that is now known of Collyer is that he was a graduate of the Berkshire School of Medicine, once located at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and that he was a friend of Dr. Morton, who was a craniologist and member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. All that remains of the jaw is a detailed drawing made in 1867 by Collyer and the scant published record of the controversy surrounding it (Osborn 1921, p. 569).

The fossil jaw from the Red Crag at Foxhall is almost never mentioned by modern authorities, and those who do mention it are invariably scornful. For example, we find in Fossil Men, by Boule and Vallois (1957, p. 107), this statement: “It requires a total lack of critical sense to pay any heed to such a piece of evidence as this.”

But, as we have often pointed out, many conventionally accepted bones and artifacts have been found by uneducated workers or in other dubious ways. For example, most of the Homo erectus finds from Java were made by unsupervised, paid native collectors (Section 7.3). And the Heidelberg Homo erectus jaw was found by German workmen, whose foreman later turned it over to scientists (Section 7.2).

If scientists can seriously consider these discoveries, then why can they not seriously consider the Foxhall jaw as well? One might object that the Java Homo erectus fossils and the Heidelberg Homo erectus jaw are still available for inspection, while the Foxhall jaw has vanished. But the original Peking Homo erectus fossils disappeared from China during World War II (Section 9.1.12); yet they are still accepted as evidence for human evolution.

6.2.2 Human Skeletons from Castenedolo, Italy ( Middle Pliocene)

One of the more significant Tertiary finds turned up in Italy. Millions of years ago, during the Pliocene period, a warm sea washed the southern slopes of the Alps, depositing layers of coral and molluscs. Late in the summer of 1860, Professor Giuseppe Ragazzoni, a geologist and teacher at the Technical Institute of Brescia, traveled to the nearby locale of Castenedolo, about 10 kilometers (roughly 6 miles) southeast of Brescia, to gather fossil shells in the Pliocene strata exposed in a pit at the base of a low hill, the Colle de Vento (Figure 6.3).

Figure 6.3. This section of the Colle de Vento, near Castenedolo, Italy (after Sergi 1884, p. 313), shows the general stratigraphic position of human skeletal remains found there. (1) The human fossils found by geologist G. Ragazzoni in 1860 lay on the bank of coral and shells, at a place where it was surmounted by Middle Pliocene blue clay, which was itself covered by red clay ( ferretto) washed from the top of the hill. (2) On January 2 and January 25, 1880, more human fossils, representing three individuals (a man and two children), were found about 15 meters (49 feet) from the 1860 site. The bones lay on the bank of coral, and were covered by about 2 meters (7 feet) of Pliocene blue clay, surmounted by a red layer of ferretto. (3) On February 16, 1880, the bones of a woman were found at a depth of 1 meter (3 feet) in the blue clay, which was overlain by a layer of yellow sand and a layer of bright red ferretto. In all three cases, Ragazzoni looked for signs of burial and found none.

Ragazzoni (1880, p. 120) reported: “Searching along a bank of coral for shells, there came into my hand the top portion of a cranium, completely filled with pieces of coral cemented with the blue-green clay characteristic of that formation. Astonished, I continued the search, and in addition to the top portion of the cranium I found other bones of the thorax and limbs, which quite apparently belonged to an individual of the human species.”

Ragazzoni took the bones to the geologists A. Stoppani and G. Curioni. According to Ragazzoni (1880, p. 121), their reaction was negative: “Not giving much credence to the circumstances of discovery, they expressed the opinion that the bones, instead of being those of a very ancient individual, were from a very recent burial in that terrain.”

“I then threw the bones away,” stated Ragazzoni (1880, p. 121), “not without regret, because I found them lying among the coral and marine shells, appearing, despite the views of the two able scientists, as if transported by the ocean waves and covered with coral, shells, and clay.”

But that was not the end of the story. Ragazzoni could not get out of his mind the idea that the bones he had found belonged to a human being who lived during the Pliocene. “Therefore,” he wrote, “I returned a little later to the same site, and was able to find some more fragments of bone in the same condition as those first discovered” ( Ragazzoni 1880, p. 121).

In 1875, Carlo Germani, on the advice of Ragazzoni, purchased land at Castenedolo for the purpose of selling the phosphate-rich shelly clay to local farmers for use as fertilizer. Ragazzoni stated (1880, p. 121): “I explained to Germani about the bones I had found, and strongly advised him to be vigilant while making his excavations and to show me any new human remains.”

A few years later, Germani noticed some bones. Ragazzoni recalled (1880, p. 121): “In December of 1879, Germani made an excavation, about 15 meters [49 feet] from the first place, to the northwest, and on January 2, 1880 announced to me the discovery of human bones between the bank of coral and the overlying shelly clay. The next day, I went there with my assistant Vincenzo Fracassi, in order to remove the bones with my own hands. These were: pieces of the left parietal, fragments of the occipital, the left temporal, the front part of the lower jaw with a canine, two loose molars, a cervical vertebra, fragments of vertebrae and ribs, part of the ilium, pieces of humerus, ulna, radius, femur, tibia, fibula; and a tarsal and two phalanges.” More discoveries were to follow: “On the 25th of the same month, Carlo Germani brought me two fragments of lower jaw, and some teeth of smaller size and different shape than the first, found at a distance of 2 meters [7 feet] from them, but at the same depth. Uncertain whether they belonged to a young individual or to an anthropomorphic ape, I returned once more to Castenedolo with Signor Germani, and was able to collect: a great quantity of upper cranial fragments (which I suspected belonged to two individuals), the left orbital of the frontal, two parietals, a fragment of the upper jaw with two molars, other free teeth, and fragments of ribs and limbs. All of them were completely covered with and penetrated by the clay and small fragments of coral and shells, which removed any suspicion that the bones were those of persons buried in graves, and on the contrary confirmed the fact of their transport by the waves of the sea” (Ragazzoni 1880, p. 122).

Figure 6.4. This anatomically modern human skull (Sergi 1884, plate 1) was found in 1880, at Castenedolo, Italy. The stratum from which it was taken is assigned to the Astian stage of the Pliocene (Oakley 1980, p. 46). According to modern authorities (Harland et al. 1982, p. 110), the Astian belongs to the Middle Pliocene, which would give the skull an age of 3– 4 million years.

On February 16, Germani advised Ragazzoni that a complete skeleton was discovered. Ragazzoni (1880, p. 122) journeyed to the site and supervised the excavation, instructing the workmen to “use the greatest diligence so as to be able to ascertain as clearly and exactly as possible the reality of the facts.” According to Ragazzoni (1880, p. 122), they “removed the strata successively from higher to lower, with the intent of exposing the entire skeleton.” This was accomplished. About the remains, Ragazzoni (1880, pp. 122 –123) wrote: “The skeleton, slightly inclined to the southeast, appeared to have been subjected to a kind of pressure in an oblique direction from south to north by movement of the strata in which it was found; consequently, it was from the region of the pelvis that we recovered the majority of the ribs, which appeared to have been crushed from above. The cranium was bent somewhat to the right. The lower jaw was detached and the separated facial bones were encased in a mass of blue-green clay penetrating the cavity of the cranium, which presented a variety of fractures.” The cranium, as restored by G. Sergi ( Figure 6.4), was indistinguishable from that of a modern woman.

Ragazzoni (1880, p. 121) then stated: “I desired to make photographs, but the perverse winter weather prevented it. In spite of the bad weather, the next morning I returned to the site with my son Pietro, and resolved to remove the entire skeleton despite the icy rain, which did, however, by penetrating the clay, make it easier to take out the bones.” Ragazzoni (1880, p. 123) wrote: “Differing from the set of remains found in 1860, and the other two found earlier this year [1880 ], the complete skeleton was found in the middle of the layer of blue clay . . . over which passes a layer of medium yellow sand.” The other skeletons were found lower in the blue clay, at the point where it meets the underlying bank of coral and shells (Figure 6.3). Ragazzoni (1880, p. 123) added: “The stratum of blue clay, which is over 1 meter [3 feet] thick, has preserved its uniform stratification, and does not show any sign of disturbance. In accordance with the judgement of the excavator himself, who is not preoccupied with any preconceived ideas, the skeleton was very likely deposited in a kind of marine mud and not buried at a later time, for in this case one would have been able to detect traces of the overlying yellow sand and the iron-red clay called ferretto, which forms the top part of the hill, and which by successive flooding has washed down and covered the lower formations of conglomerate and sand that cover the shelly Subappenine blue clays.”

From the above statements by Ragazzoni, it appears that the finds of 1860 and 1880 (except the complete female skeleton) were made in places on the slope of the hill where the layer of yellow sand covering the blue clay had been stripped away by erosion (Sergi 1884, p. 314). The hill at Castenedolo (Figure 6.3) was approximately 25 meters (82 feet) high. The top layer was recent soil. Below that, on the summit of the hill, was the red ferretto. Next in sequence came layers of glacial deposits and conglomerate. Below these came several layers of sand and clay. Then came the above-mentioned yellow sand, followed by the blue Pliocene clay in which the skeletal remains were discovered. Ragazzoni (1880, p. 126) indicated that even in the places where the blue clay had been exposed, the rain had washed down a surface layer of red ferretto deposits. Thus, for all the fossil discoveries, a layer of bright red clay was apparently lying above the blue clay. Any burial would have certainly produced a noticeable mixing of different colored materials in the otherwise undisturbed blue clay layer, and Ragazzoni, a geologist, testified that there was no sign of such mixing.

Of course, one could always propose that the skeletons (other than the adult female skeleton) were buried in the blue clay at a time when the red hillwash was not present. But this is unlikely. The red ferretto at the top of the hill would, it seems, have been continually carried down the hillside by rain or melting snow. Only under some unusual circumstance would it not have been present over the blue clay. Also, the blue clay had its own stratification, any disturbance of which would have been noticed.

Ragazzoni (1880, p. 126) then dealt with another possible objection to his conclusion that the human bones from Castenedolo were as old as the Pliocene layer in which they were found. Perhaps streams had stripped away the layers covering the blue clay and penetrated part way into the blue clay itself. The human bones could then have been washed into hollows, and new material could have been deposited over them. This could explain why there were no signs of burial. But Ragazzoni (1880, p. 126) said that it was highly unlikely that the human fossils had been washed recently into the positions in which they were found: “The fossil remains discovered on January 2 and January 25 lay at a depth of approximately 2 meters. The bones were situated at the boundary between the bank of shells and coral and the overlying blue clay. They were dispersed, as if scattered by the waves of the sea among the shells. The way they were situated allows one to entirely exclude any later mixing or disturbance of the strata.” Ragazzoni (1880, p. 126) further stated: “The skeleton found on the 16th of February occurred at a depth of over 1 meter in the blue clay, which appeared to have covered it in a state of slow deposition.” Slow deposition of the clay, which Ragazzoni (1880, p. 123) said was stratified, ruled out the hypothesis that the skeleton had recently been washed into the blue clay by a torrential stream. Ragazzoni (1880, p. 126) added that the blue clay “was also in such a condition as to exclude any rearrangement by human agency.” At the place where this complete human skeleton was discovered, the blue clay was still covered by a layer of yellow sand and a layer of red ferretto. The absence of any mixture of yellow and red materials in the blue clay eliminated the idea of recent intrusive burial.

Ragazzoni (1880, p. 126) concluded: “These facts demonstrate the existence of man in Lombardy during the Early Pliocene.” He stated elsewhere in his report: “To render it perfectly clear to anyone that the terrain in which the bones and skeleton were found belongs to the Early Pliocene, I thought it convenient to offer a sample of the fossils that exist there in abundance” (Ragazzoni 1880, p. 124). He then referred his readers to an accompanying illustration of fossil Pliocene shells. Geologists who examined the blue clay layer of the Colle de Vento at Castenedolo, including Professor G. B. Cacciamali, agreed that it belonged to the Astian stage of the Pliocene (Oakley 1980, p. 46). Modern opinion places the Astian in the Middle Pliocene (Harland et al. 1982, p. 110), which would give the discoveries from Castenedolo an age of about 3–4 million years.

In 1883, Professor Giuseppe Sergi, an anatomist from the University of Rome, visited Ragazzoni and personally examined the human remains at the Technical Institute of Brescia. After studying the bones, he determined they represented four individuals—an adult male, an adult female, and two children.

Sergi also visited the site at Castenedolo. He wrote (1884, p. 315): “I went there accompanied by Ragazzoni, on the 14th of April. The trench that had been excavated in 1880 was still there, and the strata were clearly visible in their geological succession. In order to see still better, we cut a fresh vertical section down to the bank of coral. . . . The terrain was undisturbed, and Professor Ragazzoni said to me that I was seeing the undisturbed clay just as he had found it when he extracted the skeletons. And what was true of the clay, was also true of the underlying strata, which were also found intact, with no sign of resorting.” In his report, Sergi (1884, p. 315) also wrote: “What is, one might demand, the guarantee of the authenticity of a discovery of this type? I believe that any doubt can be removed if the person who made the discovery adopted the necessary methods and noted all the circumstances with due care and conscientiousness. Professor Ragazzoni is a geologist and was quite familiar with the stratigraphic conditions of that region, and all of Lombardy, and would have been able to immediately recognize any movement of the terrain or signs that the blue clay had been mixed with materials from the overlying strata.”

Sergi (1884, pp. 315–316) added: “It is especially noteworthy that the color and structure of the strata in question are quite different. If a hole had been excavated for a burial, then it would not have been refilled exactly as before. The clay from the upper surface layers, recognizable by its intense red color, would have been mixed in. Such discoloration and disturbance of the strata would not have escaped the notice of even an ordinary person what to speak of a trained geologist. One may also note that we are not talking about just one small area from which the bones of a single individual were taken, but also of a larger area, many square meters in size, from which the remains of three other individuals, lying close together, were taken. If these latter three were burials why was there not observed any artificial displacement of the overlying strata? Were such signs of burial overlooked? That might have happened in the case of a single unexpected discovery, made too suddenly to properly observe the circumstances; but as we have seen, the excavations were planned in advance and carried out with all due caution at different times and in various conditions, allowing sufficient time for observation and examination. Signs of mixing of the strata may have been missed the first time, but certainly not the second, third, and fourth times.”

Gabriel de Mortillet (1883, pp. 71–72) did not believe that the Castenedolo skeletons were truly of Pliocene antiquity. Responding to de Mortillet’s negative opinion, Sergi (1884, p. 316) wrote: “De Mortillet, in connection with this discovery, did not attempt to dispute the fact that there was no sign of disturbance in the strata. He said, however, that this observation was not sufficient to rule out burial, because ‘the action of the sea would have dispersed the bones of the skeletons.’ We note, however, the presence of four individuals—two adults (a male and female) and two children, indicating a family shipwrecked on a Pliocene coastline. The bones of all of the skeletons—except for one—were in fact dispersed, which accounts for the fact that they were discovered at successive times, with the fragments found in diverse parts of an extensive area. These bones were found as if disseminated across a single flat surface. Not all of the bones were found for each individual, but some only, which doubtlessly means that the others were dispersed elsewhere. By some circumstance, the last skeleton happened to come to rest at one spot, where, as could be seen when it was excavated, it was covered by layers of sedimentary deposits. Professor Ragazzoni told me that he found the bones in a uniform, compact mass of clay, like a fly that happened to fall into soft soap, where it remained caught.”

Sergi (1884, pp. 314–315) noted: “the almost entirely preserved female skeleton was not found in a posture indicating ordinary burial, but overturned; I saw the front part of the skull with the face inside the posterior cavity, and all the head entangled in the greenish clay, from which I patiently separated it. The other parts of the skeleton were also like this, and I still have the vertebral column with the ribs in a mass of clay, and the bones of one hand in the same clay.”

Sergi (1884, p. 316) concluded: “From all that I heard and saw, I came to the conclusion that the skeletons of Castenedolo are from the geological era to which the strata of blue clay and the marine shell bed may be referred, and they are an irrefutable document for the existence of man in the Tertiary epoch, man of a character fully human, and not a precursor.” To Sergi, the Castenedolo skeletons suggested that the creatures responsible for the Tertiary flints and cut bones found by other researchers (Chapters 2–5) might have been fully human rather than apelike ancestors, as scientists such as de Mortillet had proposed.

Sergi pointed out that the scientific community had recognized the existence of human beings in the Pleistocene only after great controversy. “But no sooner than that fact was accepted,” wrote Sergi (1884, p. 303), “human artifacts from the Tertiary began to appear. This development was, however, confronted with obstacles and opposition arising not only from the prejudice expected of common men, but also from prejudice within the scientific community. Science has no problem finding existing species of shells in strata millions of years old, and some living mammals are also represented in the Tertiary, but man himself, it is thought, must be quite recent.”

Sergi (1884, pp. 303–304) stated: “There were presented at various academies and congresses the artifacts of Tertiary man, consisting of impressions, incisions, cuts, and scraping on bone and stone, including flints chipped by the hand of man, and there followed only negativity. And when there was no other reason to negate, it was simply said: ‘I don’t believe it.’ The reporting of actual human remains—crania and other bones—was received with irony and rejected with dogmatic incredulity.”

Sergi (1884, p. 304) then recounted how the artifacts of Tertiary man gradually won a degree of positive recognition: “One set of facts was not able to be rejected, although it took much time to be accepted, and that was the chipped flints discovered in Tertiary deposits at Thenay (Loire-et-Cher) by Bourgeois. At the congress at Paris in 1867, Bourgeois was not believed; but Worsae soon declared his support, and shortly thereafter de Mortillet and others did the same. At the congress in Brussels in 1872, the question was discussed, and the adherents increased. This prepared the way for Rames, who discovered worked flint and quartzite in the conglomerates of Cantal at Aurillac.”

Continuing his review, Sergi (1884, p. 304) said: “The Tertiary flints of Portugal also encountered great resistance. But C. Ribeiro did research of unequaled value and effect. Yet only at the congress of 1880 at Lisbon did his discoveries achieve complete recognition, especially after a commission of scientists, in the course of a visit to Monte Redondo at Otta, found a flint implement in place, still embedded in the conglomerate. Professor Bellucci had the fortune to make this discovery and report it.” It is quite remarkable that most modern students of paleoanthropology are unaware of the sequence of discoveries discussed by Sergi.

Sergi (1884, p. 304) then stated: “Taking all this into consideration, it is possible to conclude and affirm without hesitation that man appeared not only in the Quaternary epoch, but that the signs of his existence certainly extend back into the Tertiary epoch.”

After pointing out that some scientists wanted to attribute the Tertiary flint implements and other artifacts to a hypothetical apelike human precursor, Sergi (1884, p. 305) wrote: “Therefore it became important to consider human skeletal remains, but no acceptable ones had been found. This is the reason for the negative opinions of de Mortillet and Hovelacque. But neither was there much fossil evidence to back up the proposed precursor of man.” Java man, the first scientifically accepted ape-man, was not uncovered until 1891, seven years after Sergi presented the report we have been reviewing.

De Mortillet, it may be recalled, believed the fossil record showed that mammals displayed extensive and progressive evolutionary development from primitive forms in the Tertiary up to more advanced forms in the present. Accepting this sequence as a paleontological law, de Mortillet anticipated that any fossils of Tertiary human ancestors would be very primitive and apelike. It could not be otherwise.

But Sergi pointed out that some Tertiary mammals (such as the mastodon) had survived without much change well into the Quaternary (Pleistocene) in Italy and Spain. Also, Sergi (1884, p. 306) reported that in the United States geologists had discovered in Late Miocene formations some fossil wolf jaws that were indistinguishable from those of living wolves.

Sergi (1884, p. 309) therefore stated: “the tendency to reject, by reason of theoretical preconceptions, any discoveries that can demonstrate a human presence in the Tertiary is, I believe, a kind of scientific prejudice. Natural science should be stripped of this prejudice.” This prejudice was, however, not overcome, and it persists today. Sergi (1884, p. 310) wrote: “By means of a despotic scientific prejudice, call it what you will, every discovery of human remains in the Pliocene has been discredited.”

But Sergi was not alone in his acceptance of Ragazzoni’s discoveries at Castenedolo. De Quatrefages, familiar to us from our review of stone implements, also accepted them. Concerning the female skeleton uncovered at Castenedolo, he said in his book Races Humaines: “The deposit was removed in successive horizontal layers, and not the least trace was found of the beds having been mixed or disturbed” (Laing 1894, p. 371). De Quatrefages further stated: “there exists no serious reason for doubting the discovery of M. Ragazzoni, and . . . if made in a Quaternary deposit no one would have thought of contesting its accuracy. Nothing, therefore, can be opposed to it but theoretical a priori objections, similar to those which so long repelled the existence of Quaternary man” (Laing 1893, p. 119).

In 1889, an additional human skeleton was discovered at Castenedolo. This find introduced an element of confusion about the discoveries of 1880.

Ragazzoni invited G. Sergi and A. Issel to examine the new skeleton, which had been found in an ancient oyster bed. Sergi (1912) reported that both he and Issel believed this new 1889 skeleton to be a recent intrusion into the Pliocene layers “because the almost intact skeleton lay on its back in a fissure of the oyster bed and showed signs of having been buried” (Cousins 1971, p. 53).

Issel (1889) therefore reported that this new skeleton was not of Pliocene age, but was much younger. Issel (1889, p. 109) concluded that the 1880 discoveries were also recent burials. Concerning the dispersal of the bones of some of the skeletons found in 1880, he suggested this might have been caused by agricultural work (Issel 1889, p. 109). In a footnote, Issel (1889, p. 109) claimed that Sergi agreed with him that none of the skeletons found at Castenedolo were of Pliocene age. For the scientific community, this apparently resolved the ongoing controversy.

But Sergi (1912) later wrote that Issel was mistaken. Despite his views on the 1889 skeleton, Sergi said he had never given up his conviction that the 1880 bones were Pliocene. “Today I declare that the one thing does not invalidate the other” (Cousins 1971, p. 54). Sergi (1912) then added: “In any case this new pseudo-discovery [of 1889] gave a decisive blow to the first, and from this a deeper silence, like that of a grave, fell on the Castenedolo man; I had neither heart nor reason to exhume him. . . . Since then no one has spoken any more of the Castenedolo man [except to cast doubt upon him]” (Cousins 1971, p. 54).

A good example of the unfair treatment given to the Castenedolo finds may be found in Professor R. A. S. Macalister’s Textbook of European Archaeology, written in 1921. Macalister (1921, p. 183) admitted that the Castenedolo finds “whatever we may think of them, have to be treated seriously.” He noted that they were “unearthed by a competent geologist, Ragazzoni . . . and examined by a competent anatomist, Sergi.” Still he could not accept their Pliocene age. Faced with the uncomfortable facts, Macalister (1921, p. 183) claimed “there must be something wrong somewhere.” First of all the bones were anatomically modern. “Now, if they really belonged to the stratum in which they were found,” wrote Macalister (1921, p. 184), “this would imply an extraordinarily long standstill for evolution. It is much more likely that there is something amiss with the observations.” Macalister (1921, p. 185) also said: “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.” Here once more we find a scientist’s preconceived ideas about evolution influencing him to reject skeletal evidence that would otherwise be considered of good quality.

Equally unfriendly to Tertiary stone tools, Macalister (1921, p. 185) protested: “On the one hand, we are asked to believe in eoliths; on the other hand we are introduced to highly advanced and intellectual people like those of Castenedolo. The two are incompatible. The quest for Tertiary Man is a game at which the player must be fair; he cannot win both ways. Let him become an Eolithist if he see fit, but let him then give up all expectation of finding a Tertiary man with a fully-developed mental equipment. Or let him seek a Tertiary Man, but he must then throw his eoliths and all the rest of his ballast overboard.”

There is, however, no fundamental incompatibility between advanced intellectual capabilities and the manufacture of crude stone tools—even today tribal people in various parts of the world, with the same brain capacity as modern city dwellers, make such implements.Also, there is no reason why anatomically modern humans could not have coexisted with more apelike creatures in the Tertiary, just as humans today coexist with gorillas, chimpanzees, and gibbons.

Macalister cited Issel (1889) in support of his attempt to discredit the Castenedolo finds, apparently not aware that according to Sergi (1912) Issel’s 1889 report discredited only the 1889 skeleton. For example, Macalister (1921, p. 184), referring to all of the Castenedolo finds, wrote: “examination of the bones and their setting, by Issel of Geneva, revealed the fact that the strata were full of marine deposits, and that everything solid within them, except the human bones, shewed marine incrustations.” While it is true that Issel (1889, p. 108) reported that the bones of the skeleton uncovered in 1889 were smooth and free of incrustations, the same cannot be said of the earlier discoveries, which both Ragazzoni (1880, pp. 120, 122) and Sergi (1884, pp. 311, 312) said were incrusted with blue Pliocene clay and pieces of shells and coral.

Another example of the unfair treatment given the Castenedolo discoveries is found in Fossil Men. In this book, Boule and Vallois (1957, p. 107) stated that “it seems certain that at Castenedolo, as at Savona [Section 6.2.3], we are dealing with more or less recent burials.” But in Fossil Men, Boule and Vallois devoted only one paragraph to Castenedolo, and did not mention the undisturbed layers lying over the skeletons or the scattered and incomplete state of some of the skeletons—information that tends to rule out intrusive burial.

Boule and Vallois (1957, p. 107) noted: “In 1889, the discovery of a new skeleton was the subject of an official report by Professor Issel, who then observed that the various fossils from this deposit were all impregnated with salt, with the sole exception of the human bones.” Here Boule and Vallois implied that what was true of the bones found in 1889 was also true of the bones found previously. But in his 1889 report, Issel described in this connection only the bones found in 1889. In fact, Issel did not even mention the word salt, referring instead to marine incrustations—which were, as above mentioned, present on the bones found in 1860 and 1880.

Scientists have employed chemical and radiometric tests to deny a Pliocene age to the Castenedolo bones. K. P. Oakley (1980, p. 40) found the Castenedolo bones had a nitrogen content similar to that of bones from Late Pleistocene and Holocene Italian sites and thus concluded the Castenedolo bones were recent. But as previously mentioned, in connection with Galley Hill, the degree of nitrogen preservation in bone can vary widely from site to site, making such comparisons unreliable as age indicators. The Castenedolo bones were found in clay, a substance known to preserve nitrogen-containing bone proteins.

The Castenedolo bones had a fluorine content that Oakley (1980, p. 42) considered relatively high for bones he thought were recent. Oakley explained this discrepancy by positing higher past levels of fluorine in the Castenedolo groundwater. But this was simply guesswork. The Castenedolo bones also had an unexpected high concentration of uranium, consistent with great age.

A carbon 14 test yielded an age of 958 years for some of the Castenedolo bones. But, as in the case of Galley Hill, the methods employed are now considered unreliable and the bones themselves were very likely contaminated with recent carbon, causing the test to yield a falsely young age. For a more detailed discussion of the chemical and radiometric testing of the Castenedolo bones, see Appendix 1.

The case of Castenedolo demonstrates the shortcomings of the methodology employed by paleoanthropologists. The initial attribution of a Pliocene age to the discoveries of 1860 and 1880 appears to have been amply justified. The finds were made by a trained geologist, G. Ragazzoni, who carefully observed the stratigraphy at the site. He especially searched for signs of intrusive burial, and observed none. Ragazzoni duly reported his findings to his fellow scientists in scientific journals. But because the remains were modern in morphology they came under intense negative scrutiny. As Macalister put it, there had to be something wrong.

The account of human origins now dominant in the scientific community is the product of attitudes such as Macalister’s. For the last century, the idea of progressive evolution of the human type from more apelike ancestors has guided the acceptance and rejection of evidence. Evidence that contradicts the idea of human evolution is carefully screened out. Therefore, when one reads textbooks about human evolution, one may think, “Well, the idea of human evolution must be true because all the evidence supports it.” But such textbook presentations are misleading, for it is the unquestioned belief that humans did in fact evolve from apelike ancestors that has determined what evidence should be included and how it should be arranged and interpreted.

6.2.3 A Skeleton from Savona, Italy (Middle Pliocene)

We now turn our attention to another Pliocene find, made at Savona, a town on the Italian Riviera, about 30 miles west of Genoa. In the 1850s, a church was being built on a hill bearing the same name as the one at Castenedolo (Colle de Vento). During the construction, workmen discovered a human skeleton at the bottom of a trench 3 meters (10 feet) deep. De Mortillet (1883, p. 70) reported: “Its bones were found in their natural connection, encased in a very compact and characteristic Pliocene marl, which also contained many other fossils typical of the Astian stage of the Pliocene.” This would make the Savona skeleton the same age as the Castenedolo skeletons—Middle Pliocene.

Arthur Issel communicated details of the Savona find to the members of the International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archeology at Paris in 1867. In favor of the authenticity of the discovery, Issel (1868) declared that “the man of Colle de Vento was contemporary with the strata in which he was found” (de Mortillet 1883, p. 70). Issel said it was unfortunate that a trained geologist was not present to confirm that the strata were undisturbed and that the human bones had been buried at the same time as the animals bones found at the same level.

De Mortillet (1883, pp. 70 –71), after mentioning that most of the skeleton was later lost, stated: “The bones that remain show that the individual was of small stature, much smaller than the present Ligurians. At first glance, the lower jaw appears to have a special primitive character, but the more one examines it the more one sees that the effects are those of breaking or wear rather than actual features. One sees that its features are analogous to those of modern jaws. The Pliocene strata are characterized by many marine shells, but they also contain terrestrial fossils including bones of rhinoceros as well as remains of plants. But the mammalian bones are scattered and separated, while the human bones preserve their natural connections. Does this not prove that instead of the remains of a human cadaver tossing in the waves of a Pliocene sea, we are simply in the presence of a later burial of undetermined date? Much desiring to clarify this question, Issel in 1874 began an excavation 1 meter [3 feet] distant from the foundation of the church, almost at the spot where the human bones were uncovered. He observed that at this point the Tertiary beds were completely intact, without a trace of disturbance. Unfortunately, those members of the religious order owning the land stopped him from continuing the excavation, which had then reached the 2-meter [7-foot] level.”

In his report, Issel catalogued the remaining bones of the Savona skeleton: a fragment of the right parietal, some pieces of the jaw, a fragment of humerus, a clavicle, the head of a femur, and some finger bones. Issel (1868, p. 77) pointed out that “the material embedded in the fractures of the bones is the same as that in the Pliocene strata.” To Issel (1868, p. 78) the bones seemed “slightly different and smaller than those of modern man.”

At the International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archeology at Bologna in 1871, Father Deo Gratias (D. Perrando), a priest who had been present at the time of the discovery of the human skeleton at Savona, gave a report indicating that it was not an intrusive burial. Deo Gratias, a student of paleontology, explained that in 1851 the sisters of the Misericorde of Savona had wanted to build a church next to their convent. G. B. Mogliolo undertook the work, under the direction of Giuseppe Cortese. Antonio Brilla, a sculptor and artist, assisted in the excavations. So, in addition to the workers, these three educated gentlemen regularly monitored the excavations. Brilla, in particular, was specifically looking for fossils.

At a depth of 3 meters (10 feet), the excavators discovered an object that Brilla thought might be a piece of ancient pottery, but it turned out to be part of a skull. Despite their astonishment, the gentlemen present did not report the find to professional scientists and allowed the workers to continue. They later uncovered a skeleton. The fragmentary remains were taken to Brilla’s studio. Deo Gratias wanted them, but Brilla kept them to use as models for some of his works. Brilla did, however, eventually give Deo Gratias some pieces of bone. These would appear to be the bones listed by Issel. The rest of the bones were then lost.

Deo Gratias (1873, pp. 419–420) stated: “It is unfortunate an experienced naturalist was not there, but on the basis of testimony by Brilla and the workers who excavated the skeleton here is what is known. The body was discovered in an outstretched position, with the arms extending forward, the head slightly bent forward and down, the body very much elevated relative to the legs, like a man in the water. Can we suppose a body was buried in such a position? Is it not, on the contrary, the position of a body abandoned to the mercy of the water? The fact that the skeleton was found on the side of a rock in the bed of clay makes it probable that it was washed against this obstacle.”

Deo Gratias (1873, p. 419) further stated: “Had it been a burial we would expect to find the upper layers mixed with the lower. The upper layers contain white quartzite sands. The result of mixing would have been the definite lightening of a closely circumscribed region of the Pliocene clay sufficient to cause some doubts in the spectators that it was genuinely ancient, as they affirmed. The biggest and smallest cavities of the human bones are filled with compacted Pliocene clay. This could only have happened when the clay was in a muddy consistency, during Pliocene times.” Deo Gratias pointed out that the layers of Pliocene clay, now hard and dry, were situated on a hill, which meant they would be well drained.

De Mortillet, and later Boule and Vallois (1957, p. 106), argued that since the mammal bones in the stratum were scattered, whereas the human bones were found in natural connection, this indicated that the latter must be a recent intrusive burial. But the following points all argue strongly against the intrusive burial hypothesis: (1) the lack of material from the higher stratum mixed in with that of the lower stratum; (2) the depth of 3 meters (10 feet)—rather deep for a burial, at least from the present land surface; (3) the position of the skeleton, face down when discovered.

How then do we explain the scattered mammal bones? The site was once covered by the shallow shoreline waters of a Pliocene sea, as shown by the presence of characteristic shells. Animals could have died on the land, and their isolated bones could have been washed into the sea and incorporated into the formation. The human bones, found in natural connection, could have come to rest in the same marine formation as a result of someone drowning there during the Pliocene. This combination of events accounts for the presence of a relatively complete human skeleton amid scattered animal bones, without recourse to the hypothesis of recent intrusive burial. Keep in mind that the posture of the skeleton, face down and with limbs outstretched, was like that of a drowned corpse rather than one deliberately buried.

The very infrequent references to the Savona skeleton in current textbooks are predictably negative, and just as predictably flawed in their presentation of the facts. For example, Boule and Vallois (1957, p. 106) claimed: “No stratigraphic study of the formation was made.” This statement of theirs is, however, inaccurate, as can be seen from the above-mentioned reports, which established the Pliocene age and undisturbed condition of the layer containing the skeleton.

6.2.4 A Human Vertebra from Monte Hermoso (Early Pliocene)

Having discussed the discovery of flint tools and signs of intentional use of fire at Monte Hermoso in Argentina (Section 5.1.1), we will now consider a human bone found there. Dr. F. Ameghino (1908, pp. 106 –107) reported: “The precursor of man who burned the pampas grass, who made fire in hearths, chipped flint implements, and burned and split the bones of animals he hunted, has also left some of his own fossil bones.” He was speaking of a human atlas (the first, or topmost, vertebra of the spinal column) collected by Santiago Pozzi, an employee of the Museo de La Plata (F. Ameghino 1908, p. 174). According to Ameghino (1908, p. 107), the atlas was from the Pliocene Montehermosan formation at Monte Hermoso.

A. Hrdlicka wrote (1912, p. 346): “some time in the [eighteen] eighties (the exact date is not known), an employee of the Museo de La Plata made for that institution at Monte Hermoso a collection of fossils. Among these bones was found at the museum a humanlike atlas of subaverage size.”

“When this atlas was seen by Señor Moreno, at that time the director of the La Plata Museum,” wrote Hrdlicka (1912, p. 346), “it was still partially enveloped in yellowish or yellowish-brown earth.” The Montehermosan is a yellow-brown loess. There are no other beds of that color at Monte Hermoso, according to a detailed description of the site stratigraphy compiled by geologist Bailey Willis (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 362). As previously mentioned (Section 5.1.1), the Montehermosan dates back about 3–5 million years before the present, and belongs to the Early Pliocene (Marshall et al. 1982).

In a footnote, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 346) added: “Ameghino (Tetraprothomo, etc., p. 174) says that the specimen was ‘still in a portion of the rock’ but Señor Moreno expressly stated to the writer that it was in ‘earth’ which held together but was not solidified. Whether or not this earth was sandy can not now be definitely determined. The fact that later the bone was cleanly disengaged from the mass shows further that it could not have been in ‘rock.’ Roth speaks of the bone as having been enveloped in ‘loess’ (in Lehmann-Nitsche, Nouvelles recherches, etc., p. 386).” The Montehermosan is the only loess formation at Monte Hermoso (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 362).

Hrdlicka (1912, pp. 346–347) then traced the further history of the atlas: “Soon after its discovery the specimen was forgotten and lay unnoticed in the collections of the museum for many years, until finally it was observed accidentally by Santiago Roth, who freed it from the ‘loess,’ and seeing that the specimen appeared to be a human atlas of small size transferred it to the anthropologic collections of the institution. There again it lay for several years longer without receiving any special consideration, until a new discovery at Monte Hermoso attracted to it the attention of Ameghino. Through Lehmann-Nitsche Ameghino borrowed the specimen, studied it in detail, and published a description of it in his memoir on the Tetraprothomo, identifying the bone with that particular hypothetic genus of man’s precursors. At the same time a study of the atlas was undertaken and published by Lehmann-Nitsche, who in turn attributed it to ‘a Tertiary primate of Monte Hermoso, the Homo neogaeus.’” It may be noted that the Gibraltar skull lay for many years in the garrison museum before it was recognized as a Neanderthal specimen. Also, several Homo erectus femurs from Java were shipped to Holland in boxes of bones. They went unrecognized and uncataloged for several decades after they were unearthed, but are now listed in textbooks with other accepted finds. The number of similar cases could be expanded, the point being that scientists have become aware of many fully accepted fossil finds in the same way as the Monte Hermoso atlas.

At a later date, another bone turned up. Hrdlicka (1912, p. 347) wrote: “Sometime during the early years of the present century Carlos Ameghino discovered in the same barranca of Monte Hermoso a peculiar bone, which eventually was referred to a supposed ancient parental form of man. It was a portion of the fossil femur of a being which F. Ameghino identified as a very ancient forerunner of man, the Tetraprothomo argentinus.”

Hrdlicka felt the femur belonged to something other than a human being. Hrdlicka (1912, p. 376) wrote: “The femur of the Tetraprothomo bears only a slight resemblance to that of man or the anthropoid apes, and but little greater to that of the lower monkeys. It presents no feature which would make obligatory or even possible its inclusion in the Primate class, but on the other hand it shows many features which approximate it to a distant family of mammals. The class of mammals with which the characteristics of the femur connect it most closely are the carnivores, and among these especially the cats.”

As far as the atlas was concerned, Ameghino and others thought it displayed some primitive features, but extensive analysis by Hrdlicka (1912, p. 364) led him to conclude: “The bone is submedium in size and rather massive, but is in every respect human. An extensive comparison with human and other mammalian atlases settles its human provenience beyond question. It is more or less distant morphologically from the atlases of all the anthropoid apes and still more so from those of the monkeys, while the atlases of the Carnivora and other mammals present such differences that a comparison becomes entirely super-fluous.” It is fairly obvious what Hrdlicka was trying to do. Ameghino had pointed to primitive features in the atlas, with a view toward attributing it to a precursor of the modern human race, a species that lived in Argentina during the Early Miocene (the Early Pliocene according to modern estimates). For Hrdlicka, it was sufficient to show that the bone was completely modern in character. Hrdlicka was an evolutionist and believed the laws of biological development required that the human form should, as we proceed back in time, become more and more primitive. If the bone was of the fully modern human type, then no matter what layer it was found in, it had to be of recent origin. There was no doubt about it. Such a bone’s presence in an ancient stratum always could be, indeed had to be, explained as some kind of intrusion.

Along these lines, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 384) wrote about the atlas: “Its extraction is problematical, but even if found in quite intimate relation with the real Monte Hermosean loess, it is not necessarily old. It may well have been derived from the dune above the Monte Hermoso barrancas, which, as shown before, contain numerous traces of the modern native of the coast, and which fall from the crumbling edge above the ledges into pockets of the lower ancient formation.” But there is another possible explanation: human beings of the modern physiological type were living over 3 million years ago in Argentina. This is supported by the fact that the atlas showed signs of having been thoroughly embedded in sediments from the Montehermosan formation.

All in all, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 384) felt that the Monte Hermoso atlas was worthy of being “dropped of necessity into obscurity.” That is exactly what happened. The atlas was dropped into obscurity. It had to be done. Otherwise, Hrdlicka’s claim that humans only recently entered the Americas would have been placed on very shaky ground. Certainly there are many who will insist that the Monte Hermoso atlas remain in the obscurity into which it was of necessity dropped. Evidence for a fully human presence 3 million or more years ago, in Argentina of all places, is still not welcome in mainstream paleoanthropology.

6.2.5 A Jaw Fragment from Miramar, argentina (late Pliocene)

Early in the twentieth century, fossil human skeletal remains were found in the Late Pliocene Chapadmalalan formation at Miramar, Argentina. Previously, stone tools and a mammalian bone with an arrow head embedded in it had been discovered at this site (Section 5.2). Hugo Obermaier (1924, p. 306) wrote: “in 1921 M. A. Vignati discovered further human remains at Miramar, not far from Buenos Aires, consisting of a fragment of lower jaw with two molars still in it. According to Vignati it came from the geologic formation of Chapalmalal.” We have not been able to locate Vignati’s original report on this find, potentially an important paleoanthropological discovery. But we have found a report about the jaw fragment by another South American scientist, E. Boman.

Boman (1921, pp. 341-342) stated: “From the publication of my article in the Journal de la Société des Americanistes de Paris up to the time of my visit to Miramar last year, some other objects have been discovered there. Those that have attracted the most attention are two human lower molars (2nd and 3rd right), which were adhering to a small fragment of mandible. Parodi found them, according to the report, embedded in the barranca, at great depth in the Chapadmalalan strata, at about the level of the sea. Parodi extracted the object from its position and took it to town, where he showed it to Dr. F. Kühn, who at the time he saw it concluded it was of some importance. Kühn advised him to inform Carlos Ameghino, who came to Miramar to take possession of the teeth.”

The discovery appears quite significant—human fossil remains found in the Chapadmalalan—a formation which Anderson (1984, p. 41) gave an age of 2.5–3.0 million years and which Marshall et al. (1982, p. 1352) gave an age of 2.0–3.0 million years.

Boman, however, treated this evidence in a manner typical of those sharing his views. He stated: “The newspapers published bombastic articles about ‘the most ancient human remains in the world.’ But all who examined the molars found them to be identical to the corresponding molars of modern human beings. Human beings existing at that time would have been contemporary with their ‘precursor,’ the mysterious Tetraprothomo” (Boman 1921, pp. 341–342). In the opinion of Florentino Ameghino, Tetraprothomo was a primitive apelike ancestor of anatomically modern humans, which he thought evolved in South America.

Boman took it for granted that the fully human nature of the Miramar jaw fragment unequivocally insured its recent date. But nothing Boman said excludes the possibility that the Miramar fossil demonstrates a fully human presence in the Pliocene of Argentina.

Boman mockingly suggested that the Miramar jaw fragment, if one could imagine it was genuinely old, would contradict Florentino Ameghino’s theory that human beings evolved from apelike ancestors in Argentina, a theory Boman regarded as fanciful. But Boman neglected the possibility that the discovery of a fully human jaw in the Chapadmalalan formation might contradict his own views, and those of others, who believed that Homo sapiens evolved quite recently. The presence of Homo sapiens 2–3 million years ago in Argentina would have invalidated the entire story of human evolution then, and now, accepted as fact.

6.2.6 Human skeletal remains from the California Gold country (Pliocene to Eocene)

In the preceding chapter (Section 5.5), we discussed the numerous stone implements discovered in the auriferous gravels of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Some of these implements were found beneath the latite cap of Table Mountain in Tuolumne County. We noted that this latite cap has yielded radiometric dates of 9 million years, while the prevolcanic auriferous gravels lying just above the bedrock have yielded dates of 33–55 million years. Now we will describe human skeletal remains that have been discovered beneath the latite cap of Tuolumne Table Mountain, and elsewhere in California. We will begin our review with the Calaveras skull, the history of which is colorful but inconclusive. The accounts of the remaining discoveries, although less entertaining, provide better evidence for a human presence in the Tertiary.

6.2.6.1 The Calaveras Skull

The most notorious fossil discovered in the Gold Rush mines of California was the Calaveras skull. The State Geologist of California, J. D. Whitney (1880, pp. 267–273), described the circumstances surrounding this find.

In February 1866, Mr. Mattison, the principal owner of the mine on Bald Hill, near Angels Creek, removed this skull from a layer of gravel 130 feet below the surface. The gravel was near the bedrock, underneath several distinct layers of volcanic material. Volcanic eruptions began in this region during the Oligocene, continued through the Miocene, and ended in the Pliocene (Clark 1979, p. 147).

Since the skull occurred near the bottom of the sequence of interspersed gravel and lava layers at Bald Hill, it would seem likely that the gravel in which the skull was found was older than the Pliocene, perhaps much older.

After finding the skull, Mattison later carried it to Mr. Scribner, an agent of Wells, Fargo and Co.’s Express at Angels. Mr. Scribner’s clerk, Mr. Matthews, cleaned off part of the incrustations covering most of the fossil. Upon recognizing that it was part of a human skull, he sent it to Dr. Jones, who lived in the nearby village of Murphy’s and was an enthusiastic collector of such items. Then Dr. Jones wrote to the office of the Geological Survey in San Francisco, and after receiving a reply, he forwarded the skull to this office, where it was examined by Whitney. Whitney at once made the journey to Murphy’s and Angels, where he personally questioned Mr. Mattison, who confirmed the report that was given by Dr. Jones. Both Scribner and Jones were personally known to Whitney and were regarded by him as trustworthy.

On July 16, 1866, Whitney presented to the California Academy of Sciences a report on the Calaveras skull, affirming that it was found in Pliocene strata. The skull caused a great sensation in America.

According to Whitney (1880, p. 270), “The religious press in this country took the matter up . . . and were quite unanimous in declaring the Calaveras skull to be a ‘hoax.’” One paper reported: “We believe the whole story worthy of no scientific credence, and are also more fully established in this belief by the declaration of an able Congregationalist minister, who has preached some time in the region, and who told us that the miners freely told him that they purposely got up the whole affair as a joke on Professor Whitney.” Another religious paper (the Congregationalist, Sept. 27, 1867) reported that the skull “had been placed [in the mine] by some mischievous miners as a hoax upon one of their own number, who was of an anti-Scriptural and geologic turn of mind. He swallowed the hoax and carried the news to Professor Whitney, who thereupon secured the skull for the State Museum” (Whitney 1880, p. 270).

The image of the rough and ready humorists of the rip roaring Gold Rush mining camps having a good joke at the expense of a stuffy geologist is reflected in the following verses excerpted from Bret Harte’s poem “The Pliocene Skull” (Harte 1912, pp. 280–281):

“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 Paleotherium; Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami; 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!

“Speak, thou awful vestige of the earth’s creation, Solitary fragment of remains organic!

Tell the wondrous secret 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 express juices of the weed nicotine,

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!”

Whitney noted that the hoax stories did not arise until after his discovery was publicized widely in newspapers. Some of the hoax stories were propagated not by Western poets and preachers but by scientists such as William H. Holmes.

Holmes, an anthropologist, worked for the Smithsonian Institution, founded in 1846 with a half-million dollar bequest from James Smithson, an English scientist and inventor. As late as the 1890s, the Calaveras skull was still a matter of great interest and debate within the scientific community. Holmes, who tended to doubt the skull’s Tertiary age, wanted to put the matter to rest, once and for all. During a visit to Calaveras County, he gathered testimony from some people who were acquainted with Mr. Scribner and Dr. Jones, and this testimony raised the possibility that the skull examined by Whitney was not a genuine Tertiary fossil (Holmes 1899, pp. 459– 464).

Mr. J. L. Sperry, the keeper of the lone hotel in Murphy’s, recalled that one day he had seen Dr. Jones, whose office faced the hotel, come out shouting and hurl a broken skull into the street. Sperry asked Jones what the fuss was about. Jones explained that he felt he had been the victim of a practical joke by Scribner, who had sent him a supposedly ancient skull that now appeared to be a fake. But then Jones reconsidered the matter, picked up the skull, and later sent it to Whitney (Holmes 1899, p. 459).

Furthermore, in 1908, William J. Sinclair, a California archeologist, reported receiving an article by Rev. W. H. Dyer from the Tuolumne Independent of September 14, 1901. In this article (Sinclair 1908, p. 128), Dyer stated that he had been present when Mr. Scribner and two friends retold “the story of the skull, which they had planted deep in the bottom of the shaft where it astonished the miner, the curious public and the wondering scientists.” Dyer later told Sinclair he had learned from Scribner’s sister that his relatives “have long known as a joke of his, the planting of a skull in a mine” (Sinclair 1908, p. 129).

But there are many different sides to the story. Holmes reported the efforts of Dr. A. S. Hudson to solve the Calaveras mystery. In 1883, Dr. Hudson received a letter from Dr. John Walker of Sonora. In this letter, Walker related how he had tried to convince J. D. Whitney that the Calaveras skull had originally been found in an Indian grave at Salt Spring Valley and not in Mattison’s mine on Bald Mountain. Walker subscribed to the view that the whole incident was “a fabrication and a joke” (Holmes 1899, p. 460). Hudson visited Walker, but found he had little evidence to back up his claims.

Hudson then went to Angels to talk to Scribner, the alleged prankster, who, according to Holmes, “assured him that Dr. Walker was wrong, and that no deception whatever had been practiced” (Holmes 1899, p. 460). Dr. Hudson then interviewed Mattison and his wife, and they confirmed that he had brought the incrusted skull home from his mine, where he had found it at a depth of 128 feet. It had remained in the Mattison household for a year. When shown a picture of the skull from Whitney’s book, Mrs. Mattison recognized the skull as the same one she had kept for a year (Holmes 1899, p. 461). Feeling “perplexed and discouraged” by the seemingly “incomplete and incoherent” stories, Dr. Hudson returned to his office (Holmes 1899, p. 461).

Two weeks later, Scribner appeared and gave more information. Hudson wrote: “It seems, as time went on, Mrs. Mattison, an orderly housekeeper, began to take a dislike to the untidy thing—an unwashed dead head in her house—and made a complaint. It was more in the way than of use or ornament, and she decided to get rid of it. Thereupon her husband, like a proper acquiescing partner in life, carried it to Mr. Scribner’s store” (Holmes 1899, p. 461).

Scribner related to Hudson that his partner, Mr. Henry Matthews, was angry at Dr. Jones for giving him some unpleasant medicine. Therefore, as a kind of a joke, Matthews sent the skull in a sack with some lumps of rock and petrified wood to the office of Dr. Jones, who was known to be a collector of geological curiosities. Dr. Jones, apparently thinking the skull to be recent and of little value, is then said to have tossed the skull out into his back yard, where it remained for several months. Then, while visiting Dr. Jones, Mr. Mattison saw the object, and upon recognizing it stated it was the same skull he had removed from his mine. Appreciating the relic in a new light, Dr. Jones then forwarded it to Whitney. So according to Dr. Hudson, there was some joking involved, but the motive was “not to play upon the spirit of scientific inquiry” but rather an attempt by Mr. Matthews to get even with Dr. Jones (Holmes 1899, p. 463).

Additional stories open up the possibility that the skull was exchanged with another one while it was at Mr. Scribner’s store. Holmes spoke with George Stickle, the postmaster at Angels Camp, who told him that the Calaveras skull had actually been brought to him by Mr. J. L. Boone, from an Indian burial place in Salt Spring Valley, 12 miles from Angels Camp. The likelihood of such a thing happening cannot be easily dismissed. As Holmes (1899, p. 463) noted: “There were ancient skulls in plenty in this region in early times, and the valley and the county received their name Calaveras—which in Spanish signifies skulls—from this circumstance. The Indians of the high sierra do not bury their dead, but cast them into pits, caverns, holes in the rock, and deep gorges. . . . Skulls were plentiful at Angels in those days.”

After remaining in his store for a few weeks, said Stickle, the skull fell into the hands of Scribner and his fun-loving friends, who were always pulling practical jokes on each other (Holmes 1899, p. 463). Stickle also testified that the skull taken from Mattison’s mine was whole and white in color, and did not at all resemble the skull sent by Dr. Jones to Whitney. Yet Dr. Hudson reported that when Mrs. Mattison was shown a photograph of the Calaveras skull she identified it as the same one she had kept in her home. These stories are rather sketchy and incomplete, but at any rate there appears to be some doubt about the real age of the skull examined by Whitney.

After visiting Calaveras county, Holmes (1899, p. 469) examined the actual Calaveras skull at the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and concluded that “the skull was never carried and broken in a Tertiary torrent, that it never came from the old gravels in the Mattison mine, and that it does not in any way represent a Tertiary race of men.” Some testimony supporting this conclusion comes from persons who examined the matrix of pebbles and earth in which the Calaveras skull had been discovered. Dr. F. W. Putnam of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History testified: “Had it been taken from the shaft there probably would have been some trace of gravel, such as is found in the beds through which the shaft was sunk, mixed with the materials taken from the skull by Professors Whitney and Wyman, but no such gravel has been found in the several examinations which have been made of the matrix” (Sinclair 1908, p. 129). Professor William J. Sinclair of the University of California also personally examined the matrix and concluded that it “is not strictly a gravel” and that “the material is dissimilar in every respect to either of the gravels exposed on Bald Hill. In every respect it is comparable to a cave breccia” (1908, p. 126). A breccia is a deposit of various kinds of stone fragments mixed in a matrix of sand or clay. Sinclair believed that tiny fragments of bone, belonging to humans and small mammals, found adhering to the skull, along with a decorative bead found inside it, all reported by Whitney, were evidence of a recent cave origin.

On the other hand, Holmes (1899, p. 467) reported: “Dr. D. H. Dall states that while in San Francisco in 1866, he compared the material attached to the skull with portions of the gravel from the mine and that they were alike in all essentials.” And W. O. Ayres (1882, p. 853), writing in the American Naturalist, stated: “I saw it and examined it carefully at the time when it first reached Professor Whitney’s hands. It was not only incrusted with sand and gravel, but its cavities were crowded with the same material; and that material was of a peculiar sort, a sort which I had occasion to know thoroughly. It was the common

‘cement’ or ‘dirt’ of the miners; that known in books as the auriferous gravel.” Ayres, a competent observer, intimately familiar with the region, should have been able to distinguish a recent cave breccia from Pliocene or Eocene auriferous gravels.

But even if it were true that some auriferous gravel was adhering to the skull, that would not have satisfied Holmes (1899, p. 467), who stated that “the peculiar agglomeration of earth, pebbles, and bones is readily explained by referring to the conditions existing in the limestone caverns and crevices of the region where the calcareous accretions bind together bones, gravel (very generally present), cave earth, and whatever happens to be properly associated, in just such a manner as that illustrated in the specimen under discussion.” Yet if we prefer to listen to Ayres (1882, p. 853), we learn: “It has been said that it is a modern skull which has been incrusted after a few years of interment. This assertion, however, is never made by anyone knowing the region. The gravel has not the slightest tendency toward an action of that sort. . . . the hollows of the skull were crowded with the solidified and cemented sand, in such a way as they could have been only by its being driven into them in a semi-fluid mass, a condition the gravels have never had since they were first laid down.”

Whitney (1880, p. 271), in his original description of the fossil, observed that the Calaveras skull was highly fossilized. This is certainly consistent with great age, however, as Holmes pointed out, it is also true that bones can become fossilized over the course of a few hundred or thousand years. Yet geologist George Becker (1891, p. 195) reported: “I find that many good judges are fully persuaded of the authenticity of the Calaveras skull, and Messrs. Clarence King, O. C. Marsh, F. W. Putnam, and W.H. Dall have each assured me that this bone was found in place in the gravel beneath the lava.” Becker added that this statement was made with the permission of the authorities named. Clarence King, as mentioned previously, was a famous geologist attached to the U.S. Geological Survey. O. C. Marsh, a paleontologist, was one of the pioneer dinosaur fossil hunters, and served as president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1883 to 1895. But F. W. Putnam of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, as we have seen, later changed his mind, saying that the matrix of the skull appeared to be a cave deposit.

Can it really be said with certainty that the Calaveras skull was either genuine or a hoax? The evidence is so contradictory and confusing that although the skull could have come from an Indian burial cave we might regard with suspicion anyone who comes forward with any kind of definite conclusion. The reader may pause to contemplate what steps one would take to make one’s own determination of the true age of the Calaveras skull.

It should, however, be kept in mind that the Calaveras skull was not an isolated discovery. Great numbers of stone implements were found in nearby deposits of similar age. And, as we shall see in the next sections of this chapter, additional human skeletal remains were also uncovered in the same region. The reports of these discoveries, although brief, are more satisfactory than the reports concerning the Calaveras skull. The reports are simpler, providing no basis for charges of fraud—unless one wants to argue that California gold miners suffered from a massive paleoanthropological hoax obsession.

Similar discoveries, although not quite as old as those from California, were made elsewhere in the world, as at Castenedolo. In light of this, the Calaveras skull cannot be dismissed without the most careful consideration. As Sir Arthur Keith (1928, p. 471) put it: “The story of the Calaveras skull . . . cannot be passed over. It is the ‘bogey’ which haunts the student of early man . . . taxing the powers of belief of every expert almost to the breaking point.”

Furthermore, it seems the evolutionary preconceptions of Holmes, Hrdlicka, and others were partly responsible for the scientific community’s rejection of the Calaveras skull, as well as other anomalously old human fossils. We have documented the opinions of Holmes and Hrdlicka in our discussion of the stone implements discovered in the California auriferous gravels (Section 5.5.13) and in our discussion of the Buenos Aires skull (6.1.5). Concerning the Calaveras skull, James Southall (1882, p. 199) said, in a paper delivered at the Victoria Institute in London, England: “If the human skull was exactly the same at the beginning of the Pliocene, or the close of the Miocene, that it is now; on the theory of evolution, how shall we explain the absence of all progress or change? and what margin of time is there for man’s development from the generalised lemurs of the Eocene? There is no doubt whatever that the confirmation of Professor Whitney’s opinion as to the age of this skull would be fatal to the evolution theory.”

In this regard, Laing (1894, p. 389) wrote: “if we accept . . . the skulls of Castelnedolo [sic] and Calaveras, which are supported by such extremely strong evidence, it would seem that as we recede in time, instead of getting nearer to the ‘missing link,’ we get further from it. This, and this alone, throws doubt on evidence which would otherwise seem to be irresistible.” In other words, the fact that the discoveries violated evolutionary expectations was sufficient to overrule all other testimony.

It is indeed true that J. D. Whitney’s reports of skeletal remains and artifacts, which imply that anatomically modern human beings existed in California over 9 million years ago, do call into question the theory of human evolution, as presently understood. How can humans not have changed over that vast period of time? Whitney was certainly aware of the implications of his findings. Writing 11 years before the discovery of the Java ape-man, Pithecanthropus erectus, he stated: “All the investigations of geologists and ethnologists thus far have failed to obtain satisfactory evidence of the existence at a previous epoch of any type of being connecting man with the inferior animals, or decidedly lower in grade than races now inhabiting portions of the earth, or anything that we fail to recognize instantly as man” ( Whitney 1880, p. 286). More explicitly, Whitney concluded: “Man, thus far, is nothing but man, whether found in Pliocene, Post-pliocene, or recent formations” (1880, p. 288). He did admit the chance that some precursor of modern humanity might someday be found in strata older than Pliocene, but his tone in presenting this possibility suggested a challenge to his opponents rather than a fervent and soon-to-be-fulfilled hope of his own.

In the decades following Whitney’s statements, fossils displaying varying degrees of apelike and humanlike features did in fact come to light in Pliocene and post-Pliocene formations. But their discovery does not, however, automatically eliminate the many remains of anatomically modern humans discovered in the same, and earlier, formations. Nevertheless, the anomalously old human discoveries were eliminated by advocates of the recent evolution of the modern human type. If this elimination had not occurred, it would not have been possible to speak of the newly discovered ape-man-like creatures as precursors of Homo sapiens sapiens, human beings of the modern type.

6.2.6.2 Captain Akey’s Report

On January 1, 1873, the president of the Boston Society of Natural History read extracts from a letter by Dr. C. F. Winslow about a discovery of human bones at Table Mountain in Tuolumne County. The find was made in 1855 or 1856, and the details of it were communicated to Winslow by Capt. Akey, who had witnessed it. The discovery took place about 10 years before J. D. Whitney first reported on the famous Calaveras skull. Regarding the finds Whitney described, Winslow (1873, p. 257) wrote: “some distrust as to their identity has been entertained in certain scientific circles. The verification of such discoveries is all important to the interests of science, and I take great pleasure in communicating another fact to the Society of the same character; and in order that the record may in this instance be placed beyond dispute, I have requested my informant to substantiate his statement made to me in due legal form before a notary public.”

Winslow (1873, pp. 257–258) then went on to relate: “During my visit to this mining camp I have become acquainted with Capt. David B. Akey, formerly commanding officer of a California volunteer company, and well known to many persons of note in that State, and in the course of my conversation with him I learned that in 1855 and 1856 he was engaged with other miners in running drifts into Table Mountain in Tuolumne County at the depth of about two hundred feet from its brow, in search of placer gold. He states that in a tunnel run into the mountain at the distance of about fifty feet from that upon which he was employed, and at the same level, a complete human skeleton was found and taken out by miners personally known to him, but whose names he does not now recollect. He did not see the bones in place, but he saw them after they were brought down from the tunnel to a neighboring cabin. All the bones of the skeleton apparently were brought down in the arms of miners and placed in a box, and it was the opinion of those present that the skeleton must have been perfect as it laid in the drift. He does not know what became of the bones, but can affirm to the truth of this discovery, and that the bones were those of a human skeleton, in an excellent state of preservation. The skull was broken in on the right temple, where there was a small hole, as if a part of the skull was gone, but he cannot tell whether this fracture occurred before the excavation or was made by the miners. . . . He thinks that the depth from the surface at which this skeleton was found was two hundred feet, and from one hundred and eighty to two hundred feet from the opening cut or face of the tunnel. The bones were in a moist condition, found among the gravel and very near the bed rock, and water was running out of the tunnel. There was a petrified pine tree, from sixty to eighty feet in length and between two and three feet in diameter at the butt, lying near this skeleton. Mr. Akey went into the tunnel with the miners, and they pointed out to him the place where the skeleton was found. He saw the tree in place and broke specimens from it. He cannot remember the name of this tunnel, but it was about a quarter of a mile east of the Rough and Ready tunnel and opposite Turner’s Flat, another well known point. He cannot tell the sex of the skeleton, but it was of medium size. The bones were altogether, and not separated, when found.”

Winslow (1873, p. 258) added: “On the same level at which this skeleton was found, but from other tunnels, Mr. Akey saw many bones of animals taken, but no other human remains. Among those remains were mastodon’s teeth and bones of animals smaller than mastodons, the names of which he does not know. . . . Overlying these placer deposits and organic remains was volcanic matter consisting of lava or of ‘honey-combed’ material.” Akey swore to the truth of these statements before a notary at Bear Gulch (Winslow 1873, p. 259).

The gravel just above the bedrock at Tuolumne Table Mountain, where thesk seleton was found, is said to be between 33 and 55 million years old (Slemmons 1966, p. 200). This must be the age of the skeleton unless it was introduced into the gravels at a later time, and we are not aware of any evidence indicating such an intrusion. The reported presence of mastodon teeth “on the same level . . . but from other tunnels” is interesting. Mastodons are generally thought to have appeared in North America during the Miocene, but if mastodon teeth were in fact found near the bedrock at Tuolumne Table Mountain, they would be considerably older — Early Oligocene or Eocene.

6.2.6.3 The Hubbs Skull Fragment

In 1868, J. D. Whitney reported on the Calaveras skull to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Soon thereafter, Dr. J. Wyman informed him that in the collection of the Museum of the Natural History Society of Boston there was a skull fragment that Wyman, one of America’s leading craniologists (Holmes 1899, p. 456), said was human. The fossil was labeled as follows: “From a shaft in Table Mountain, 180 feet below the surface, in gold drift, among rolled stones and near mastodon debris. Overlying strata of basaltic compactness and hardness. Found July, 1857. Given to Rev. C. F. Winslow by Hon. Paul K. Hubbs, August, 1857.” Another fragment, from the same skull, and similarly labeled, was to be found at the Museum of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.

The proceedings of the Boston Natural History Society (Volume VI, p. 278, October 7, 1857) contain a message that Winslow sent to Boston along with the first skull fragment. Winslow stated: “I sent by a friend, who was going to Boston this morning, a precious relic of the human race of earlier times, found recently in California, 180 feet below the surface of Table Mountain. . . . My friend Colonel Hubbs, whose gold claims in the mountains seem to have given him much knowledge of this singular locality, writes that the fragment was brought up in the pay dirt (the miner’s name for the placer gold-drift) of the Columbia Claim, and that the various strata passed through in sinking the shaft consisted of volcanic formations exclusively” ( Whitney 1880, p. 264).

Whitney, in California, then began his own investigation. He learned that Hubbs was “a well-known citizen of Vallejo, California, and a former State Superintendent of Education” (Whitney 1880, p. 264). Whitney got from Hubbs a detailed written account of the discovery, which occurred in the Valentine Shaft, south of Shaw’s Flat. Whitney (1880, p. 265) stated: “The essential facts are, that the Valentine Shaft was vertical, that it was boarded up to the top, so that nothing could have fallen in from the surface during the working under ground, which was carried on in the gravel channel exclusively, after the shaft had been sunk. There can be no doubt that the specimen came from the drift in the channel under Table Mountain, as affirmed by Mr. Hubbs.” The skull fragment was found in a horizontal mine shaft (or drift) leading from the main vertical shaft, at a depth of 180 feet from the surface (Whitney 1880, p. 265). Hubbs stated that he “saw the portion of skull immediately after its being taken out of the sluice into which it had been shoveled” (Whitney 1880, p. 265). Adhering to the bone was the characteristic gold-bearing gravel. Whitney (1880, p. 265) commented: “It is clear from Mr. Hubbs’s statements that the fragment was raised from the stratum of pay gravel, and that it was noticed when the contents of the bucket were dumped into the head of the sluice, and either picked up by Mr. Hubbs, or by some one else, who happened to be standing by, and who handed it to him on the spot.”

Independent corroborating evidence came from Mr. Albert G. Walton, one of the owners of the Valentine claim, at which the skull fragment was discovered. Mr. Walton reported that a stone mortar 15 inches in diameter was found in the Valentine mine, in gold-bearing gravels 180 feet below the surface and also below the latite cap of Tuolumne Table Mountain (Whitney 1880, p. 265).

When Sinclair (1908, p. 115) visited Table Mountain in 1902, he found that many of the drift mines south of Shaw’s Flat were connected. Thus, according to Sinclair, Whitney’s statement that the Valentine shaft was securely boarded up to the top so that nothing could fall in from the surface did not rule out the possibility that objects could have found their way into the Valentine underground tunnel from some other tunnels.

But Sinclair did not prove that there were in fact such interconnections between the tunnels at the time the discoveries were made in 1857. Perhaps the interconnections between the tunnels he observed in 1902 were made after the discoveries. Furthermore, Sinclair (1908, p. 115) admitted that during his 1902 visit he was not even able to find the old Valentine shaft. This means he had no direct evidence that the Valentine mine shafts were connected to any others. Finally, even if there were tunnels that connected with the drift tunnel running from the main Valentine shaft, this does not invalidate Hubbs’s report. Whitney (1880, p. 265) observed that all the mines near the Valentine mine were “working through vertical shafts.” One would have to imagine that somehow or other a fragment of skull was dropped into one of these vertical shafts and that it was transported some distance along a horizontal tunnel. It is hard to see how this could happen, because material from the horizontal tunnel, as it was being excavated, would have been taken back toward the vertical shaft.

So Sinclair was not able to confirm, by direct inspection or testimony, his claim that the horizontal drift tunnels running from the Valentine vertical shaft were in fact connected to other tunnels. His objection thus appears to be simply a weak and highly speculative attempt to discredit a discovery he opposed on theoretical grounds. The gravels in which the skull fragment was embedded lay 180 feet below the surface and beneath the latite cap of Table Mountain. The skull fragment could thus be from 9 million to 55 million years old.

Whitney (1880, p. 265), in his discussion of this find, noted: “It is clear that, had it not been for the accidental presence of Mr. Hubbs on the spot, at the time the piece of skull was found, we should never have heard anything of it. And if Mr. Hubbs had not given it to an enthusiastic observer, like Dr. Winslow, it would probably never have come to the notice of scientific men. One should bear in mind how few of the discoveries of human relics or remains which are made are likely ever to be heard of beyond a very limited area, even under the most favorable circumstances, as is well illustrated by the facts in this case.”

6.2.6.4 A Human Jaw from Below Table Mountain

J. D. Whitney (1880, p. 264) personally examined a collection belonging to Dr. Snell, consisting of stone spoons, handles, spearheads, and a human jaw—all found in the auriferous gravels beneath the latite cap of Tuolumne Table Mountain. The jaw measured 5.5 inches across from condyle to condyle, which is within the normal human range. Whitney (1880, p. 288) remarked that all the human fossils uncovered in the gold-mining region, including this one, were of the anatomically modern type. The gravels from which the jaw came could be anywhere from 9 to 55 million years old.

6.2.6.5 Human Bones from the Missouri Tunnel

Whitney reported several discoveries from Placer County. In particular, he gave this account of human bones that were found in the Missouri tunnel: “The Missouri Tunnel runs from the Devil’s Cañon southerly into the ridge between it and the Middle Fork of the American River, a little above Yankee Jim’s. This region has been described in the preceding pages as deeply covered with volcanic materials. In this tunnel, under the lava, two bones had been found . . . which were pronounced by Dr. Fagan to be human. One was said to be a leg bone; of the character of the other nothing was remembered. The above information was obtained by Mr. Goodyear from Mr. Samuel Bowman, of whose intelligence and truthfulness the writer has received good accounts from a personal friend well acquainted with him. Dr. Fagan was at that time one of the best known physicians of the region” (Whitney 1880, p. 277).

In October 1989, our researcher (Stephen Bernath) contacted the California Division of Mines and Geology regarding the age of the deposits at the place where the Missouri tunnel was located. George Saucedo informed him that the andesitic deposits in that vicinity are probably part of a larger formation that has yielded a potassium-argon date of 8.7 million years ago. Thus the human skeletal remains found under the andesitic deposits in that location would have an age of over 8.7 million years.

6.2.6.6 Dr. Boyce’s Discovery

Professor Whitney (1880, p. 276) reported a discovery made in 1853 by a physician named Dr. H. H. Boyce at Clay Hill in El Dorado County, California. In 1870, Dr. Boyce wrote to Whitney (1880, p. 276), who had requested information: “While engaged in the business of mining in the spring of 1853, I purchased an interest in a claim on this hill, on condition that it prospected sufficiently well to warrant working it. The owner and myself accordingly proceeded to sink a shaft for the purpose of working it. It was while doing so that we discovered the bones to which you refer. Clay Hill is one of a series of elevations which constitute the water-shed between Placerville Creek and Big Cañon, and is capped with a stratum of basaltic lava, some eight feet thick. Beneath this there are some thirty feet of sand, gravel, and clay. The country-rock is slightly capped on this, as on most of the elevations, the slope being towards the centre of the hill. Resting on the rock and extending about two feet above it, was a dense stratum of clay. It was in this clay that we came across the bones. While emptying the tub, I saw some pieces of material which on examination I discovered were pieces of bones; and, on further search, I found the scapula, clavicle, and parts of the first, second, and third ribs of the right side of a human skeleton. They were quite firmly cemented together; but on exposure to the air began to crumble. We made no further discoveries.” According to Whitney (1880, p. 276), Boyce “stated there could be no mistake about the character of the bones, and that he had made a special study of human anatomy.”

Sinclair (1908, p. 123) reported that he examined Clay Hill in 1902 and found “no basalt capping appeared either on the hill or anywhere in the vicinity.” He did, however, note the presence of “a small area of andesitic breccia on the top of the hill” (Sinclair 1908, p. 123). Both andesite and basalt are dark greyish volcanic rocks; thus it is possible that Boyce, not a trained geologist, may have mistaken the andesite for basalt. Whitney (1880, p. 276) said that Boyce’s “description of the geology of Clay Hill agrees, in the main, with that given by Mr. Goodyear, who states that the deposit on the bed-rock was from twentyfive to thirty feet thick, all but the lower five feet consisting of ‘mountain gravel’, a local name for the volcanic material capping the hills in that vicinity.”

According to the United States Geological Survey Map made by W. Lindgren and H. Turner in July 1893, the andesitic deposits on the top of Clay Hill are Pliocene or Miocene in age—therefore the stratum in which the human bones were found must be at least as old.

But Sinclair persistently attempted to cast whatever doubt he could on the discovery. He said he could not locate the clay stratum said to have contained the bones “owing to the heavy talus slopes” (Sinclair 1908, p. 123). He further stated: “The impression conveyed . . . is that the skeleton found by Dr. Boyce was at a depth of thirty-eight feet, in undisturbed strata under eight feet of so-called basalt. There is nothing, however, in the letter to show that this was the section passed through in sinking the Boyce shaft” (Sinclair 1908, p. 123). Because of the ambiguity about the exact location of the shaft, Sinclair thus concluded (1908, p. 123): “The skeleton may have been found in such a place and at such a depth in the clay that the possibility of recent interment would have to be considered. As the evidence is presented, we are not justified in regarding the skeleton from Clay Hill as of great antiquity.”

The points raised by Sinclair are valid, and we agree that there are reasons to doubt the antiquity of the skeletal remains found at Clay Hill. Yet the presence of heavy talus slopes, with so much rock that Sinclair was not able to gain access to the stratum of clay at the base of the hill, seems to argue against, rather than for, the possibility of a recent burial into the clay from the slope of the hill. Also, if there were a recent burial, it is peculiar that so few bones were recovered.

This brings us to the end of our review of fossil human skeletal remains from the auriferous gravels of California. Despite the imperfections of the evidence, one thing is certain—human bones were found in the Tertiary gravels, dating as far back as the Eocene. How the bones got there is open to question. The reports of the discoveries are sometimes vague and inconclusive, yet they are suggestive of something other than pranks by miners or recent intrusive burials by Indians. The presence of numerous stone tools, incontestably of human manufacture, in the same formations, lends additional credibility to the finds.

In an address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, delivered in August, 1879, O. C. Marsh, president of the Association and one of America’s foremost paleontologists, said about Tertiary man: “The proof offered on this point by Professor J. D. Whitney in his recent work (Aurif. Gravels of Sierra Nevada) is so strong, and his careful, conscientious method of investigation so well known, that his conclusions seem irresistible. . . . At present, the known facts indicate that the American beds containing human remains and works of man, are as old as the Pliocene of Europe. The existence of man in the Tertiary period seems now fairly established” (Southall 1882, p. 196).

6.2.7 More European discoveries (Miocene and eocene)

More evidence for human beings in the early and middle Tertiary comes from Europe. According to de Mortillet, M. Quiquerez reported the discovery of a skeleton at Delémont in Switzerland in ferruginous clays said to be Late Eocene. About this find, de Mortillet (1883, p. 72) simply said one should be suspicious of human skeletons found with the bones in natural connection. De Mortillet (1883, p. 72) further stated that one should be cautious about a similarly complete skeleton found by Garrigou in Miocene strata at Midi de France.

It is possible, however, that these skeletons were from individuals buried during the Eocene or Miocene periods. A burial does not necessarily have to be recent. The truly frustrating thing about finds such as these is that we are not able to get more information about them. We find only a brief mention by an author bent on discrediting them. Because such finds seemed doubtful to scientists like de Mortillet, they went undocumented and uninvestigated, and were quickly forgotten. How many such finds have been made? We may never know. In contrast, finds which conform to accepted theories are thoroughly investigated, safely enshrined in museums, and widely taught to millions around the world.

We are now nearing the end of our survey of evidence for Tertiary man uncovered by scientists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Much of this evidence is comparable to (or better than) the evidence used by paleoanthropologists in support of the standard scenario of human evolution. For example, in the case of Castenedolo, human skeletal remains were taken from undisturbed Pliocene formations by a professional geologist. By way of contrast, most of the Java man discoveries reported by von Koenigswald and others (Sections 7.3, 7.4) were made at poorly specified locations by paid native collectors, with no scientist present. Yet the Castenedolo find is rarely mentioned in standard textbooks, while the Java Homo erectus finds are routinely reported.

Over time, the scientific community eliminated Castenedolo and other discoveries discussed in this chapter from the realm of serious consideration. In 1924, in one of the final published discussions of this material, Hugo Obermaier offered a decidely negative opinion about human beings in the Tertiary. “A fact of such transcendent importance would be demonstrated beyond question by the discovery of human skeletons of Tertiary age, but up to the present time none of the supposed discoveries of this nature is sufficiently well proved to withstand any serious scientific investigation. Neither the ‘Eocene’ skeleton of Delemont in Switzerland, nor the ‘Pliocene’ remains of Colle del Vento near Savona, Liguria, nor those of Matera, all in Italy, have supplied any data for the solving of this interesting problem—being therefore relegated to oblivion, even as the Indian skull of Calaveras, California. Neither has it been possible to prove that the discoveries of F. Ameghino in South America during the last fifteen years . . . are of Tertiary age as claimed” (Obermaier 1924, p. 2).

It is questionable whether the evidence mentioned by Obermaier, and additional evidence presented in this chapter (such as the Castenedolo finds), should have been “relegated to oblivion.” Is it really the case that there were no valid scientific grounds for considering this evidence? It would appear that it was simply the great age of the discoveries, an age that conflicted with accepted ideas about human evolution, that was the real problem. In any case, science has quite effectively buried this disconcerting evidence. For example, we have so far been unable to find any other data on the Matera skeleton referred to by Obermaier.

6.3 Pre-tertiary Discoveries

We shall now consider rare cases of anatomical evidence for the presence of human beings in pre-Tertiary geological contexts. As we have seen in earlier chapters, some scientists believed ape-men existed as far back as the Miocene and Eocene. A few bold thinkers even proposed that fully human beings were alive during those periods. But now we are going to proceed into times still more remote. Since most scientists had trouble with Tertiary humans, we can just imagine how difficult it would have been for them to give any serious consideration to the cases we are about to discuss. One is tempted not to mention such finds as these because they seem unbelievable. But the result of such a policy would be that we discuss evidence only for things we already believe. And unless our current beliefs represent reality in total, this would not be a wise thing to do.

6.3.1 Macoupin, Illinois (Carboniferous)

In December of 1862, the following brief but intriguing report appeared in a journal called The Geologist: “In Macoupin county, Illinois, the bones of a man were recently found on a coal-bed capped with two feet of slate rock, ninety feet below the surface of the earth. . . . The bones, when found, were covered with a crust or coating of hard glossy matter, as black as coal itself, but when scraped away left the bones white and natural.”

We wrote to the State Geological Survey Division of the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources for information about the age of the coal in which the bones were found. We received the following response from C. Brian Trask of the Geological Survey, who wrote in a letter dated July 9, 1985: “In response to your inquiry concerning age of coal, the youngest bituminous coal beds in Illinois are found in the upper Pennsylvanian system. . . . The coal mined in the 1860’s in Macoupin County is probably the Herrin (No. 6) Coal, although the Colchester (No. 2) Coal occurs at this depth locally in the western part of the county. The Herrin Coal is late Desmoinesian (middle to late Westphalian D) in age.” In North America, the Pennsylvanian makes up the latter half of the Carboniferous, which extends from 286 million to 360 million years ago. From the information provided by Trask, it would thus appear that the coal in which the Macoupin County skeleton was found is at least 286 million years old and might be as much as 320 million years old.

6.3.2 Human Footprints from the carboniferous

Our final examples of anomalous pre-Tertiary evidence are not in the category of fossil human bones, but rather in the category of fossil humanlike footprints. Professor W. G. Burroughs, head of the department of geology at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, reported (1938, p. 46): “during the beginning of the Upper Carboniferous (Coal Age) Period, creatures that walked on their two hind legs and had human-like feet, left tracks on a sand beach in Rockcastle County, Kentucky. This was the period known as the Age of Amphibians when animals moved about on four legs or more rarely hopped, and their feet did not have a human appearance. But in Rockcastle, Jackson and several other counties in Kentucky, as well as in places from Pennsylvania to Missouri inclusive, creatures that had feet strangely human in appearance and that walked on two hind legs did exist. The writer has proved the existence of these creatures in Kentucky. With the cooperation of Dr. C. W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Smithsonian Institution, it has been shown that similar creatures lived in Pennsylvania and Missouri.”

The Upper Carboniferous (the Pennsylvanian) began about 320 million years ago (Harland et al. 1982, p. 94). It is thought that the first animals capable of walking erect, the pseudosuchian thecodonts, appeared around 210 million years ago (Desmond 1976, p. 86). These lizardlike creatures, capable of running on their hind legs, would not have left any tail marks since they carried their tails aloft. But their feet did not look at all like those of human beings; rather they resembled those of birds. Scientists say the first appearance of apelike beings was not until around 37 million years ago, and it was not until around 4 million years ago that most scientists would expect to find footprints anything like those reported by Burroughs from the Carboniferous of Kentucky.

Burroughs (1938, p. 46) stated: “The footprints are sunk into the horizontal surface of an outcrop of hard, massive grey sandstone on the O. Finnell farm. There are three pairs of tracks showing left and right footprints. . . . Each footprint has five toes and a distinct arch. The toes are spread apart like those of a human being who has never worn shoes.” Kent Previette (1953) wrote: “Scientists and travelers who have seen the tracks which he [Burroughs] proved to be genuine, or studied photographs of them, state that they resemble those of the most primitive people of the Andes, the aboriginal Chinese, and the South Sea islanders—all being people who have never worn shoes.”

Giving more details about the prints, Burroughs (1938, p. 46) stated: “The length of the foot from the heel to the end of the longest toe is nine and one-half inches though this length varies slightly in different tracks. The width across the ball of the foot is 4.1 inches while the width including the spread of the toes is about six inches. The foot curves back like a human foot to a human appearing heel.” These humanlike tracks are thus quite distinct, unlike the more famous but indistinct Paluxy “man tracks” reported in Biblical creationist literature.

David L. Bushnell, an ethnologist with the Smithsonian Institution suggested the prints were carved by Indians (Science News Letter 1938a, p. 372). In ruling out this hypothesis, Dr. Burroughs (1938, pp. 46–47) used a microscope to study the prints and noted: “The sand grains within the tracks are closer together than the sand grains of the rock just outside the tracks due to the pressure of the creatures’ feet. Even the sand grains in the arch of one of the best preserved tracks are not as close together as in the heel of the same track, though closer together than the sand outside the track. This is because there was more pressure upon the heel than beneath the arch of the foot. In comparing the texture of sandstone only the same kind of grains and combinations of grains within and outside of the tracks are considered. The sandstone adjacent to many of the tracks is uprolled due to the damp, loose sand having been pushed up around the foot as the foot sank into the sand. The forward part of one track is covered by solid Pottsville sandstone only a few days or weeks younger than the sandstone in which is the track. Another track nearby is also partially covered by solid Pottsville sandstone of the Coal Age.” These facts led Burroughs to conclude that the humanlike footprints were formed by compression in the soft, wet sand before it consolidated into rock some 300 million years ago.

Two doctors from the town of Berea, Alson Baker and A. F. Cornelius, also counted the sand grains per unit area under magnification and arrived at the same result as had Dr. Burroughs. They reported: “We examined the arrangement of the sand grains in the deepest portions of the prints, with special attention to the heels. The sand grains in the bottoms of the prints were much more closely packed than those in the slopes, and those in the slopes were more closely packed than those in the rock an inch from the margins of the prints, or at any other point. Each member of the party certified and checked these findings and we all agree that the imprints were made by pressure when the sand was soft and wet. The fact that the sand grains in the bottoms and slopes of the imprints are of exactly the same kind as those in all other parts of the rock surface examined, seems to prove conclusively that the closer arrangement observed was not due to any possible drifting in of extraneous material” (Science News Letter 1938a, p. 372).

Burroughs also consulted a sculptor. Kent Previette (1953) wrote: “The sculptor said that carving in that kind of sandstone could not have been done without leaving artificial marks. Enlarged photomicrographs and enlarged infrared photographs failed to reveal any ‘indications of carving or cutting of any kind.’”

If the prints were not carvings, were they left by a nonhuman Carboniferous species? The most advanced land animals then existing were amphibians that resembled crocodiles and moved about on four legs. But Burroughs (1938, p. 47) wrote: “There are no indications of front feet although the rock is large enough to have recorded front feet if front feet had been used to move about. In the pair of footprints that show the left and right feet about parallel to each other, the distance between the feet is about the same as that of a normal human being. Nowhere on this rock nor on another rock outcrop that also has numerous similar tracks upon its surface, is there any sign that these creatures had tails.” Nor were there any belly marks (Previette 1953).

Burroughs (1938, p. 47) added: “The creatures that made the tracks have not as yet been identified, but a name for these creatures has been chosen by the writer with the co-operation of Dr. Frank Thone, Editor in Biology, Science Service, Washington, D.C., Dr. C. W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Smithsonian Institution, and Miss Charlotte Ludlum, Professor of Latin, Berea College. The name chosen is Phenanthropus Mirabilis.” The word phenanthropus means “looks human,” and mirabilis means “remarkable.”

Burroughs himself stopped short of claiming that the prints were made by humans, but his presentation leaves one with the strong impression that they were human. When asked about them, Burroughs said, “They look human. That is what makes them especially interesting, as man according to some textbooks has been here only a million and a half years” (Previette 1953). But mainstream science reacted predictably to any suggestion, that the prints were made by humans. Science News Letter (1938b) published an article titled “Human-Like Tracks in Stone Are Riddle to Scientists.” A subtitle stated: “They Can’t Be Human Because They Are Much Too Old —But What Strange Biped Amphibian Can Have Made Them?” Despite the doubts of scientists, the Burroughs footprints continued to attract public attention, which might explain why geologist Albert G. Ingalls felt compelled to set matters straight in Scientific American.

Ingalls (1940, p. 14) stated that a scientist, confronted with the suggestion that the tracks were human, would have little choice but to reply: “What? You want man in the Carboniferous? Entirely and absolutely— totally and completely— impossible. We admit we don’t know exactly what made the prints, but we do know one agency that didn’t, and that is man in the Carboniferous.”

But what about scientific detachment—the willingness to give up established ideas or tentative hypotheses when confronted with contrary evidence? Ingalls (1940, p. 14) wrote: “Science is like the streets of New York: it is never finished, and is always being torn up, often in a major way. . . . Nevertheless, asking the scientist for man in the Carboniferous is like asking the historian for Diesel engines in ancient Sumeria. The comparison is no exaggeration but an understatement. If man, or even his ape ancestor, or even that ape ancestor’s early mammalian ancestor, existed as far back as in the Carboniferous Period in any shape, then the whole science of geology is so completely wrong that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving. Hence, for the present at least, science rejects the attractive explanation that man made these mysterious prints in the mud of the Carboniferous with his feet.”

Ingalls thought the prints were made by some as yet unknown kind of amphibian. “Science has no proof that these tracks were not made by one or more of these animals — one with which it is not yet familiar—for it does not know everything. Professor W. G. Burroughs, Berea College, Kentucky, geologist, champions this theory, supported by the paleontologist Charles W. Gilmore at the United States Museum” (Ingalls 1940, p. 14). Here Ingalls appears to have put his own interpretation on Burroughs’s ambiguous testimony, bringing the wayward researcher firmly back within the bounds of scientific sanity.

We should note that scientists do not really take the amphibian theory seriously. Human-sized Carboniferous bipedal amphibians do not fit into the accepted scheme of evolution much better than Carboniferous human beings— they wreak havoc with our ideas of early amphibians, requiring a host of evolutionary developments we now know nothing about.

Ingalls (1940, p. 14) wrote: “What science does know is that, anyway, unless 2 and 2 are 7, and unless the Sumerians had airplanes and radios and listened to Amos and Andy, these prints were not made by any Carboniferous Period man.”

6.3.3 A Central Asian Footprint (Jurassic)

The Moscow News (1983, no. 24, p. 10) gave a brief but intriguing report on what appeared to be a human footprint in 150-million-year-old Jurassic rock next to a giant three-toed dinosaur footprint. The discovery occurred in the Turkmen Republic in what was then the southeastern USSR. Professor Amanniyazov, corresponding member of the Turkmen SSR Academy of Sciences, said that although the print resembled a human footprint, there was no conclusive proof that it was made by a human being. This discovery has not received much attention, but then, given the current mindset of the scientific community, such neglect is to be expected. We only know of a few cases of such extremely anomalous discoveries, but considering that many such discoveries probably go unreported we wonder how many there actually might be.

6.4 Conclusion

The evidence reviewed in Chapters 2–6 suggests the existence of anatomically modern humans as far back as the early Tertiary. None of this evidence tends to be reported in modern textbooks on anthropology. Should it be reported? We leave it to the reader to decide. If taken seriously, this evidence would certainly challenge the currently dominant understanding of human origins and antiquity, but perhaps this topic is not as thoroughly understood as some believe. The cultural evidence we have considered, in the form of stone tools and incised bones, suggests a relatively primitive level of advancement. There is, however, evidence that suggests a higher level of cultural achievement. But unlike the evidence considered in Chapters 2–6, much of this evidence was never reported by scientists. For a review of this controversial evidence see Appendix 2.