Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

In the course of his comments about the piece of cut wood, Moir (1927, p. 47) made these observations: “The specimen, which is quite comparable with other wood found in the Forest Bed, is . . . slightly curved, four-sided, and is flat at one end and pointed at the other. . . . The flat end appears to have been produced by sawing with a sharp flint, and at one spot it seems that the line of cutting has been corrected [Figure 2.9], as is often necessary when starting to cut wood with a modern steel saw. The present form of the specimen is due to the original round piece of wood—which has been identified by Dr. A. B. Rendle, F.R.S., as yew—having been split four times longitudinally in the direction of its natural grain. The pointed end is somewhat blackened as if by fire, and it is possible that the specimen represents a primitive digging stick used for grubbing up roots.”

While there is an outside chance that beings of the Homo erectus type might have been present in England during the time of the Cromer Forest Bed, the level of technological sophistication implied by this sawn wood tool is extraordinary and suggestive of sapiens-like capabilities. In fact, it is hard to see how this kind of sawing could have been produced even by stone implements. Small flint chips mounted in a wooden holder, for example, would not have produced the clean cut evident on the specimen because the wooden holder would have been wider than the flint teeth. Hence one could not have cut a narrow groove with such a device. A saw blade made only of stone would have been extremely brittle and would not have lasted long enough to perform the operation. Furthermore it would have been quite an accomplishment to make such a stone blade. Thus it seems that only a metal saw could produce the observed sawing. Of course, a metal saw at .4–.5 million years is quite anomalous.

It is remarkable that the incised bones, bone implements, and other artifacts from the Red Crag and Cromer Forest Beds are hardly mentioned at all in today’s standard textbooks and references. This is especially true in the case of the Cromer Forest Bed finds, most of which are, in terms of their age, bordering on the acceptable, in terms of the modern paleoanthropological sequence of events.

In Gowlett’s Ascent to Civilization (1984, p. 88), we read: “There is a possibility that some finds from Britain are older than the Hoxnian [an interglacial period dated approximately 330,000 years ago]: for example the high terrace finds from Fordwich and from Kent’s Cavern near Torquay. The importance of such finds lies in the demonstration that perhaps as much as 500,000 years ago, man was able at least for a time to colonize Europe out to its extremities. At Westbury-sub-Mendip, in south-west England, remains of extinct animals associated with very few stone tools suggest contemporaneity with the Cromerian phase, estimated at c. 0.7–0.5 million years, and named after beds in eastern England, where there are faunal remains but no archaeological traces.” Elsewhere Gowlett stated “it is safest to assume that the first occupation of Europe would have been by tool-making men in the earlier Pleistocene.” This would “imply a date about 1.5 million years ago” (Gowlett 1984, p. 76).

Considering that Gowlett was prepared to find evidence of toolmaking humans in Europe at 1.5 million years ago, it is odd to find him stating that the Cromer Forest Bed contains “no archaeological traces” (Gowlett 1984, p. 88). Gowlett, a professor at Oxford University, should have been knowledgeable about the recent history of paleoanthropology in England. Was he unaware that in the early twentieth century Moir and others found bone tools, incised bones, and other artifacts (including a whole flint industry) in the Cromer Forest Bed? That would seem unlikely. Did he think the finds to be not genuine? Perhaps he was aware of the discoveries and considered them genuine but deliberately avoided including them in his discussion, even though they would have helped his case. Why? It could be that mentioning them would have implied his acceptance of the still older sub-Red Crag discoveries of Moir and others, which pose a strong challenge to the whole scenario of human origins and antiquity.

2.21 Concluding Words about Intentionally Modified Bone

It is really quite curious that so many serious scientific investigators in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century independently and repeatedly reported that marks on bones from Miocene, Pliocene, and Early Pleistocene formations were indicative of human work. Among the researchers making such claims were Desnoyers, de Quatrefages, Ramorino, Bourgeois, Delaunay, Bertrand, Laussedat, Garrigou, Filhol, von Dücker, Owen, Collyer, Calvert, Capellini, Broca, Ferretti, Bellucci, Stopes, Moir, Fisher, and Keith.

Were these scientists deluded? Perhaps so. But cut marks on fossil bones are an odd thing about which to develop delusions—hardly romantic or inspiring. Were the above-mentioned researchers victims of a unique mental aberration of the last century and the early part of this one? Or does evidence of primitive hunters really abound in the faunal remains of the Tertiary and early Quaternary?

Assuming such evidence is there, one might ask why it is not being found today. One very good reason is that no one is looking for it. Evidence for intentional human work on bone might easily escape the attention of a scientist not actively searching for it. If a paleoanthropologist is convinced that toolmaking human beings did not exist in the Middle Pliocene, he is not likely to give much thought to the exact nature of markings on fossil bones from that period.

Even for those prepared to find signs of human work, the interpretation of marks on fossil bones is a difficult matter. This led Binford (1981, p. 181) to write: “One might reasonably ask at this point that if we cannot establish a pattern of bone modification unambiguously referable to man, why study the faunal products of man and seek greater understanding of his highly variable behavior? The answer to this is simply that the basic task of anthropology—of which archaeology is a part—is to seek an understanding of man’s variable cultural behavior.” Binford clearly defined the dilemma inherent in the empirical approach to such questions—it is imperfect, yet there appears to be no other choice. So it seems that great caution is required. In fact, our study of the empirical methods used by paleoanthropologists suggests these methods cannot give a completely reliable picture of the past, and of human origins in particular.

Eoliths

3.1 Anomalously Old Stone Tools

Even when considered alone, the evidence gathered from incised and broken bones, as detailed in the preceding chapter, inflicts heavy damage on the conception that toolmaking hominids emerged only in the Pleistocene. But we now turn to a more extensive and significant category of evidence—ancient stone implements.

Nineteenth-century scientists turned up large quantities of what they presumed to be stone tools and weapons in Early Pleistocene, Pliocene, Miocene, and older strata. These were not marginal discoveries. They were reported by leading anthropologists and paleontologists in well-established journals, and were thoroughly discussed at scientific congresses. But today hardly anyone has heard of them. One wonders why. As in the case of the bones discussed in the previous chapter, the hard facts of these discoveries, though disputed, were never conclusively invalidated. Instead, reports of these ancient stone implements were, as time passed, simply put aside and forgotten as different theoretical scenarios of human evolution came into vogue.

Here is what appears to have taken place. In the 1890s, Eugene Dubois discovered and promoted the famous, yet dubious, Java ape-man (Section 7.1). Many scientists accepted Java man, found unaccompanied by stone tools, as a genuine human ancestor. But because Java man was found in Middle Pleistocene strata, the extensive evidence for toolmaking hominids in the far earlier Pliocene and Miocene periods no longer received much serious attention. How could such toolmaking hominids have appeared long before their supposed ape-man ancestors? Such a thing would be impossible; so better to ignore and forget any discoveries that fell outside the bounds of theoretical expectations.

And that is exactly what happened—whole categories of facts were interred beneath the surface layers of scientific cognition. By patient research we have, however, managed to locate and recover a vast hoard of such buried evidence, and our review of it shall take us from the hills of Kent in England to the valley of the Irrawady in Burma. We shall also give consideration to anomalously old crude stone tool industries discovered by researchers in the late twentieth century.

The anomalous stone tool industries we shall consider fall into three basic divisions: (1) eoliths, (2) crude paleoliths, and (3) advanced paleoliths and neoliths.

According to some nineteenth-century authorities, eoliths (or “dawn stones”), were stones with edges naturally suited for certain kinds of uses. These, it was said, were selected by humans and used as tools with little or no further modification. Often one or more of the natural edges of the stone would be chipped to make it more suitable for a desired function. To the untrained eye, Eolithic stone implements were often indistinguishable from ordinary broken rocks, but specialists in lithic technology developed criteria for identifying upon them signs of human modification and usage.

In the case of more sophisticated stone tools, called paleoliths, the signs of human manufacture were more obvious, involving an attempt to form the whole of the stone into a recognizable tool shape. Questions about such implements centered mainly upon the determination of their correct age. Some Paleolithic implements, such as those used in Europe during the Late Stone Age and in recent historical times by the American Indians, display a high degree of artistry and craftsmanship, with very fine and elaborate chipping and graceful, symmetrical shapes. Most of the implements we shall be examining, however, are far more rudimentary. In fact, some researchers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have categorized them among the eoliths. But we have chosen to make a rough distinction between eoliths and crude paleoliths. While the eoliths are formed from naturally broken pieces of stone, perhaps with some slight chipping on a working edge, the crude Paleolithic industries include some specimens that have been deliberately flaked from stone cores and then modified by more extensive chipping into definite tool shapes. In distinguishing crude paleoliths from eoliths, we have also relied on experts who have testified that anomalously old paleoliths from the Pliocene, Miocene, and earlier periods are identical to accepted Paleolithic implements of the Late Pleistocene.

Our third division, advanced paleoliths and neoliths, refers to anomalously old stone tools that resemble the very finely chipped or smoothly polished stone industries of the standard Late Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.

Over the years, the terms eolith, paleolith, and neolith have been used in various ways. For most researchers, they have denoted not only levels of technical development but also a definite temporal sequence. Eoliths would be the oldest implements, followed in turn by the paleoliths and neoliths. But in the course of our discussion we will mainly use these terms to indicate degrees of workmanship. The evidence, we propose, makes it impossible to assign dates to stone tools simply on the basis of their form.

In this chapter, we shall discuss anomalous eoliths. In Chapter 4, we shall discuss anomalous crude paleoliths, and in Chapter 5, we shall discuss anomalous advanced paleoliths and neoliths. This threefold division is not perfect. We were confronted with borderline cases in which assignment to one chapter or another was difficult. Within the cruder stone tool industries are often found individual implements and groups of implements that might be classified as more sophisticated; and similarly, among the more sophisticated industries are found examples of implements that might be classified among the most crude. Also, some individual researchers discovered a number of industries, of varying levels of complexity, and for the sake of convenience, these have been grouped together. Because of this, it has not been possible, or practical, to achieve a complete segregation of tool types in different chapters. Still, we have found it useful to attempt to make a rough division between (1) the Eolithic, (2) the crude Paleolithic, (3) and the advanced Paleolithic and Neolithic types.

Having expressed these cautions, we can now embark upon our examination of the Eolithic stone tools, beginning with those found by Benjamin Harrison in England and proceeding to tools found in other countries during the latter part of the nineteenth century. We shall then consider the discoveries of J. Reid Moir in England. In the last sections of this chapter, we shall examine attempts by H. Breuil and A. S. Barnes to discredit Eolithic industries, and finally we shall review modern examples of Eolithic industries.

3.2 B. HARRISON AND THE EOLITHS OF THE

KENT PLATEAU, ENGLAND (PLIOCENE)

3.2.1 Young Harrison

The small town of Ightham, in Kent, is situated about twenty-seven miles southeast of London. Nearby one finds the home of the unfortunate second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, who lost her head to the executioner’s blade. In the more sedate years of the Victorian era, a respectable small businessman named Benjamin Harrison kept a grocery shop in Ightham. On holidays he roamed the nearby hills and valleys, collecting flint implements which, though now long forgotten, were for decades the center of protracted controversy in the scientific community.

Even as a boy, Harrison was interested in geology and read Lyell’s Principles of Geology at age thirteen. In the course of his walks, he grew well acquainted with the landscape around Ightham. This region of southeastern England, known as the Weald of Kent and Sussex, had a complex geological history. In the past, it was a broad rise. In later times, the central part of the rise was eroded away by the forces of nature (Figure 3.1), leaving hills to the north (the North Downs) and south (the South Downs).

S N

Figure 3.1. The Weald region of Kent and Sussex, England. The dotted line shows the ancient land surface, now eroded away, leaving the present North Downs (N) and South Downs (S) (Moir 1924, p. 638). The Kent Plateau is in the North Downs region.

The North Downs rise to the Kent Plateau near Ightham, and it is on the Kent Plateau that Harrison made some of his most significant discoveries. Young Harrison developed into an accomplished amateur paleoanthropologist. Perhaps semi-professional would be a better word than amateur, for Harrison did much of his work in close consultation with, and sometimes under the direct supervision of, Sir John Prestwich, the famous English geologist, who lived in the vicinity. Harrison also corresponded regularly with other scientists involved in paleoanthropological research and carefully catalogued and mapped his finds, according to standard procedures.

A room over Harrison’s shop served as a museum where he kept his flint tools. On the walls he displayed geological maps of the Weald region of Kent and Sussex, water colors of implements he had found, and portraits of Charles Darwin, Sir John Prestwich, and Sir John Evans.

3.2.2 Neoliths and Paleoliths

Harrison’s first finds were not of the very crude Eolithic variety. They were Neolithic implements. Neoliths are smooth-surfaced, polished stone artifacts, displaying highly sophisticated craftsmanship. According to modern opinion, Neolithic cultures date back only about 10,000 years, and are associated with agriculture and pottery. Harrison found neoliths scattered over the present land surfaces around Ightham.

In the early 1860s, the discoveries of Boucher des Perthes in France were attracting the attention of British scientists. Boucher des Perthes had found paleoliths in the gravels of the Somme River valley. These implements were older and somewhat cruder than the neoliths Harrison was collecting. Having learned of the finds of Boucher des Perthes, Harrison himself began to search for similar specimens. These Paleolithic implements, although cruder than Neolithic implements, are still easily recognized as objects of human manufacture. They are thus distinct from Eolithic implements. Modern authorities would assign European Paleolithic tools to the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Harrison looked for paleoliths in ancient deposits of gravel on river terraces, and in 1863 discovered his first paleolith in a gravel pit near Ightham (E. Harrison 1928, p. 46). In addition to searching himself, Harrison trained local workmen to recognize flint implements and collect them for him. Over the years, he amassed a substantial collection of paleoliths.

In 1878, William Davies, a geologist of the British Museum, saw some of Harrison’s flint implements and agreed that some of them were paleoliths. Harrison sent a report and some specimens to Sir John Lubbock, who also stated that some of the implements were definitely Paleolithic. G. Worthington Smith, of the Royal Anthropological Institute, visited Ightham and after inspecting the flints initially agreed that some were paleoliths but then later changed his mind (E. Harrison 1928, p. 81).

In 1879, Harrison first met Sir John Prestwich, an eminent geologist, who had a country house eight miles away, at Shoreham. Harrison asked Prestwich some questions about the geological position of the discoveries of Boucher des Perthes in relation to the present level of the Somme River. From Prestwich’s window, they could see the Darent River valley. Prestwich said: “If we take the Darent to be the Somme, the gravels would lie at about the level of the railway station.” The author of Benjamin Harrison’s biography, Sir Edward R. Harrison, wrote (1928, p. 84): “As this remark was made, it flashed through Harrison’s mind that some of his own palaeoliths had been found in gravels that were higher, in relation to the level of the streams to which they belonged, than was the level of the railway station in respect to the Darent. Broadly speaking, greater relative height meant greater antiquity, and, consequently, amongst his finds were implements that might be older than those found by Boucher des Perthes in the Somme valley.”

To further clarify the matter, let us suppose we have a river running on a level plain a million years ago. As it excavates a channel, it will deposit gravel on the terraces of its banks. As the river descends through the strata, it will deposit more gravels at successively lower levels. In this way, it may be seen that the oldest river gravels, about one million years old, would be found at the higher levels of the valley, while the most recent ones would be found at the lowest levels, on the banks of the present river. The ages of the different levels of gravel are therefore the reverse of the ages of a typical sequence of geological strata, in which the higher strata are the youngest and the lower strata are the oldest. It should, however, be kept in mind, that in actual practice, the assignment of ages to river terraces and gravels is rarely so simple as in this hypothetical illustration.

On September 11, 1880, Harrison made a typical discovery. Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, p. 87) informs us: “He walked to examine a bed of gravel lying on High Field, at the head of the gorge of the Shode. In this gravel, far above the present level of the stream, he found a palaeolithic implement. His thoughts, on making this discovery, must have been somewhat as follows. The gravel was a very ancient gravel, even in a geological sense, and in it was an implement that had been made by man and carried down afterwards by a stream running at a much higher level than the present stream, to the position in which it was found. So man was older than the very old gravel. Harrison sent news of his find to Prestwich, who came at once to Ightham to see for himself the geological position in which the implement had been found.” Prestwich pronounced it a very old bed and advised further research. Prestwich himself and workers under his direction made similar finds.

As word of the newly discovered stone implements spread, James Geikie, one of England’s leading geologists, wrote about them on May 2, 1881 to G. Worthington Smith: “They will yet be found in such deposits and at such elevations as will cause the hairs of cautious archaeologists to rise on end. I hope other observers will take a hint from you and search for paleolithic implements in places which have hitherto been looked upon as barren of such relics” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 91).

Geikie’s remarks about searching for stone tools “in places which have hitherto been looked upon as barren of such relics” help clarify why modern scientists do not often report finding evidence for a human presence in very ancient times. Because of their preconceptions, they do not look for such evidence in all the places where it might be found. For example, since modern scientists do not accept a fully human presence in the Pliocene, they do not look for advanced stone tools in Pliocene deposits. And if they do find such tools in unexpectedly old deposits, they explain them away. But in the nineteenth century, it was not clear to scientists that they should not be looking for evidence of a human presence in the Pliocene and earlier. So they looked for it, and when they found it, reported it straightforwardly.

In 1887, Harrison read an article by Alfred Russell Wallace on human antiquity in America and then wrote Wallace a letter. Wallace, famous for publishing a scientific paper on evolution by natural selection before Darwin, wrote to Harrison: “I am glad you find my article on ‘The Antiquity of Man in America’ interesting. It is astonishing the amount of incredulity that still prevails among geologists as to any possible extension of the evidence as to greater antiquity than the paleolithic gravels. The wonderful ‘Calaveras skull’ has been so persistently ridiculed, from Bret Harte upwards, by persons who know nothing of the real facts, that many American geologists even seem afraid to accept it” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 130).

The Paleolithic gravels referred to by Wallace are equivalent to those of the Somme region, in which Boucher des Perthes found stone tools. These belong to the Middle Pleistocene period of the Quaternary. The Calaveras skull as well as many stone tools were found in far older Tertiary strata in California. The Tertiary includes the Pliocene, Miocene, Oligocene, Eocene, and Paleocene periods. We shall discuss the Calaveras skull and several related discoveries later in this book (Sections 6.2.6, 5.5). The tactic of persistent ridicule mentioned by Wallace was, however, so effective that a good many modern students of paleoanthropology have never even heard of the California finds.

Prestwich and Harrison considered some of the stone implements found near Ightham to be Tertiary in age. The geological reasons for this opinion were discussed by Prestwich in a paper presented to the Geological Society of London in 1889. In preparation for his report, Prestwich asked Harrison to catalog and map his finds. Harrison did so, with the following results: 22 flint implements had been found at elevations over 500 feet, 199 at elevations between 400 and 500 feet, and 184 at elevations under 400 feet, amounting to a total of 405 implements found since 1880 (E. Harrison 1928, p. 129).

In his presentation to the Geological Society, with Harrison sitting in the audience, Prestwich first demonstrated that the higher formations of gravel around Ightham could not have been deposited by the present streams, at any point in their history. He gave evidence showing that the Shode could not have flowed any higher than the 340-foot level (Prestwich 1889, p. 273). Thus the tools in the gravels at elevations over 400 feet must have been quite old, having been deposited by ancient rivers.

This analysis is confirmed by modern authorities. Francis H. Edmunds, in a study published by the Geological Survey of Great Britain, wrote (1954, p. 59): “Occasional patches of gravel, unassociated with any present river system, have been recorded at various localities in the Wealden District. . . . they cap hilly ground and occur usually about 300 ft. above sea level. They consist of a few feet of roughly-bedded flint or chert gravel in a clayey matrix.”

Prestwich, having discussed the geological history of the high-level gravels, which he called hill drifts, then dealt with an important question regarding the implements found in them. Could these implements, perhaps of recent origin, have been dropped into the very old hill drift gravels in an age not long past? Prestwich believed that this was true of some of the implements, the Neolithic ones. But along with the Neolithic tools, dropped in the ancient hill drift gravels within the last few thousand years, there were, according to Prestwich, far older Paleolithic tools. These could be distinguished from the Neolithic tools by their deeply stained surfaces and the wear on their edges. Prestwich (1889, p. 283) stated that the paleoliths “exhibit generally the deep uniform staining of brown, yellow, or white, together with the bright patina, resulting from long imbedment in drift-deposits of different characters.” In addition, he said that some of the paleoliths were “more or less rolled and worn at the edges by drift-action—some very much so” (Prestwich 1889, p. 283). The neoliths were relatively unstained and unworn.

Sir John Prestwich (1889, p. 286) went on to say about the paleoliths found by Harrison near Ightham: “It is clear from the condition of the implements that, although now occurring on the surface of the ground, they, unlike the neolithic flints, which are unstained and unaltered except by atmospheric agencies, have been imbedded in some matrix which has produced an external change of structure and colour; while the matrix itself, which has been removed by denudation, has nevertheless in several instances left traces on the implements sufficient to indicate its nature.”

Describing the remnants of one kind of matrix, Prestwich (1889, p. 289) stated: “a considerable portion of these paleolithic implements are studded on one side with small dark-brown concretionary incrustations of iron peroxide and sand. . . . From this we may infer that both the flint implements and the flints have at one time been imbedded in a sandy, ferruginous matrix, just as the film of calcite on the under side of some of the St. Acheul specimens shows them to come from one of the seams of calcareous sand or chalky gravel common in the drift there, or as the ferruginous concretions on the Dunks Green specimens indicate their origin in that drift.”

The identity of the matrix is hinted at by Edmunds (1954, p. 47): “At intervals along the higher parts of the North Downs, and near the crest of the Chalk escarpment, patches of rusty brown sand are present.” The hill drifts of the North Downs and the plateau drifts of the Chalk Escarpment are the locations where Harrison found most of his implements. Edmunds (1954, p. 47) further noted: “similar blocks of fossiliferous ironstone or ferruginous sandstone occur on the South Downs near Beachy Head. The fossils have been proved to be of Pliocene age.”

“Unfortunately,” stated Edmunds (1954, p. 47), “no fossils have been found in the sand resting on the top of the Downs, but their general resemblance to the fossiliferous sandstones . . . leads to the conclusion that they are the remains of an extensive sheet of sands laid down during a marine transgression which is thought to have taken place subsequent to the Miocene.” Ferruginous sandstone like that of the South Downs also occurs in the Lenham Beds of the Weald region. Some modern authors (Klein 1973, table 6) date the Lenham Beds to the Early Pliocene or Late Miocene. According to Edmunds, the sandy deposits on the North Downs, the Lenham Beds, and the ferruginous sandstone of the South Downs would all three be of the same Pliocene age.

Granting Edmunds’s explanation of the history and age of the iron-stained sands found on the North Downs and Chalk Escarpment, we can consider two hypothetical accounts about how stone implements might have come to be present in them.

The first account involves a Miocene origin for the implements. In the Late Miocene, toolmakers might have left implements on a land surface in the Weald region of southern England, which was later submerged by rising sea levels in the Early Pliocene. The implements were then embedded in marine deposits. Later in the Pliocene, the region again became a land surface, the central portion of which was uplifted (Figure 3.1). Rivers flowing down from the central uplands, in a northerly direction, eroded the ferruginous marine sands. The flint implements and ferruginous sands were deposited in the places where they are now found—as hilltop drifts at very high elevations on the North Downs and as plateau drifts on the Chalk Escarpment (Figure 3.2). During the Pleistocene glacial periods that followed, a different river system carved out valleys and deposited valley drift gravels on terraces below the North Downs hilltops and the Chalk Plateau, with their deposits of sands and gravels from the Pliocene.

Our second account involves a Pliocene origin for the tools. As above, a marine transgression took place in the Early Pliocene, depositing layers of sediment. Later in the Pliocene, the region again became a land surface, drained by rivers.

Figure 3.2. The relationships of gravel deposits (drifts) to generalized Weald landscape.

(1) Plateau drift deposited by rivers flowing north over the Early Pliocene land surface.

(2) Hilltop drifts deposited by a now vanished Late Pliocene river.

(3–5) Progressively younger valley drifts deposited by the present river in the Middle and Late Pleistocene.

People living along the banks of these rivers left stone tools, which were transported by the river to their present locations on the North Downs hilltops and the Chalk Plateau. This took place before the present river systems came into being. Embedded in the gravel deposits for long periods of time, the flint implements acquired their coloration and patina. These implements, their edges worn by transport, could not be any younger than the now-vanished northwardflowing rivers. Any implements more recently dropped into these gravels would have remained unrolled and unworn because no water was flowing at that high level. The new rivers were flowing at much lower levels.

How old were the Paleolithic flint implements on the Kent Plateau and in the hilltop drifts? Prestwich (1889, p. 292) concluded: “physiographical changes and the great height of the old chalk plateau, with its ‘red clay with flints’ and ‘southern drift’ high above the valleys containing the Postglacial deposits, point to the great antiquity—possibly Preglacial—of the palaeolithic implements found in association with these summit drifts.”

According to current opinion, glaciers approached, but did not actually cover the Kent Plateau. The Cromer Till of East Anglia, north of the Kent Plateau, represents the earliest definite geological evidence of glaciation in southern England (Nilsson 1983, pp. 112, 308). A till is a deposit of stones left by retreating glaciers. The Cromer till is .4 million years old. But evidence of an arctic climate occurs somewhat earlier than the Cromer Till, in the Beestonian cold stage at around .6 million years ago (Nilsson 1983, pp. 108, 308).

So strictly speaking, the preglacial period in southern England might be said to begin in the Middle Pleistocene. Interpreted in this light, Prestwich’s statement that the implements found in the summit drifts were preglacial could thus mean they were as recent as the early Middle Pleistocene. But, as we have seen, Edmunds (1954, p. 47) has proposed that the summit drifts, the ferruginous sands, are in fact Pliocene in age.

Hugo Obermaier (1924, p. 8), a leading paleoanthropologist of the early twentieth century, stated that the flint implements collected by Harrison from the Kent Plateau “belong to the Middle Pliocene.” J. Reid Moir, a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, also referred Harrison’s discoveries to the Tertiary (Section 3.3.1).

A Late or Middle Pliocene date for the implements of the Kent Plateau would give them an age of 2–4 million years. Modern paleoanthropologists attribute the Paleolithic implements of the Somme region of France to Homo erectus, and date them at just .5–.7 million years ago. The oldest currently recognized implements in England are about .4 million years old (Nilsson 1983, p. 111). So the Paleolithic implements of the Kent Plateau pose a number of difficulties for modern paleoanthropology.

3.2.3 Eoliths

Among the Paleolithic implements collected by Benjamin Harrison from the Kent Plateau were some that appeared to belong to an even more primitive level of culture. These were the eoliths, or dawn stones (Figure 3.3). This name eventually came to be used for a wide variety of very crude stone tool industries from England and other countries.

Figure 3.3. An eolith from the Kent Plateau (Moir 1924, p. 639).

The Paleolithic implements discovered by Harrison, although somewhat crude in appearance, had been extensively worked in order to bring them into definite tool and weapon shapes (Figure 3.4). The Eolithic implements, however, were, as defined by Harrison, natural flint flakes displaying only retouching along the edges.

Figure 3.4. These implements from the Kent Chalk Plateau were characterized as paleoliths by Sir John Prestwich (1889, plate 11). Prestwich (1889, p. 294) called the one on the left, from Bower Lane, “a roughly made implement of the spear-head type.”

Such tools are still used today by primitive tribal people in various parts of the world, who pick up a stone flake, chip one of the edges, and then use it for a scraper or cutter.

The question then arises as to how such eoliths could be distinguished from broken pieces of flint unmodified by human action. There were, of course, difficulties in making such distinctions, but even modern experts accept lithic assemblages resembling the eoliths collected by Harrison as genuine human artifacts. We shall consider this subject in greater detail in the course of this chapter, but for now we shall mention as an example the crude cobble and flake tools of the lower levels of Olduvai Gorge (Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5. Top: Stone implements from Olduvai Gorge (M. Leakey 1971, pp. 45, 113). Bottom: Implements found by Benjamin Harrison on the Kent Plateau, England (Moir 1924, p. 639; E. Harrison 1928, p. 342).

The Olduvai Gorge implements are extremely crude, but to our knowledge, no paleoanthropologists have ever challenged their status as intentionally manufactured objects.

Harrison believed that the Kent eoliths belonged to an older period than that represented by his paleoliths. But in his 1889 report, Sir John Prestwich did not make a distinction between the two forms. Of the eoliths, Sir Edward R. Harrison stated: “Prestwich in his paper made no attempt to claim for them a higher antiquity than that of the Plateau paleoliths, with which they seemed to be associated” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 145). As we have seen, the nature of the drift gravels on the Kent Plateau and the hilltops of the North Downs suggested a Late Pliocene age for the implements.

In the aftermath of Prestwich’s presentation, Harrison found himself somewhat of a celebrity. His name appeared in newspapers, and scientists from all parts of the world began to make the pilgrimage to his museum above his grocery shop in Ightham. In June of 1889, the members of the Geological Society of London visited Ightham for a tour of the sites from which the stone implements had been recovered.

Even the considerable authority of Prestwich was, however, not enough to end all controversy regarding Harrison’s discoveries, particularly the eoliths. Many scientists still saw in the eoliths nothing but the result of purely natural, rather than artificial forces. Nevertheless, Harrison was gradually winning converts. On September 18, 1889, A. M. Bell, a Fellow of the Geological Society, wrote to Harrison: “I am glad that you saw the veteran Professor [Prestwich], and that his verdict on these unbulbed scrapers coincides with our own. I have looked again and again at the edges of those which I selected, and with an increasing feeling that there is a human purpose dimly visible in the working. There seems to be something more in the uniform though rude chipping than mere accidental attrition would have produced. I have come to this conclusion with diffidence: first, because I had hitherto regarded the bulb or trace of artificial blow as a sine qua non; second, and more important, because I feel and have all along felt that the real enemy to such a story as ours is the too enthusiastic friend who sees what is not there; but having made my conclusion, I hold it with all firmness. Until I see flints carefully and uniformly chipped all round their edges, and only in one direction of blow, by natural action, I shall believe that these are artificial” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 151).

A modern expert in lithic technology, Leland W. Patterson, also believes it is possible to distinguish even very crude intentional work from natural action. Considering “a typical example of a flake that has damage to its edge as a result of natural causes in a seasonally active stream bed,” Patterson (1983, p. 303) stated: “Fractures occur randomly in a bifacial manner. The facets are short, uneven, and steeply transverse across the flake edge. It would be difficult to visualize how random applications of force could create uniform, unidirectional retouch along a significant length of a flake edge. Fortuitous, unifacial damage to an edge generally has no uniform pattern of retouch.” Unifacial tools, those with regular chipping confined to one side of a surface, formed a large part of the Eolithic assemblages gathered by Harrison and others.

Prestwich, however, was at first very cautious about the eoliths, feeling more comfortable with the more readily identifiable paleoliths. But gradually he began to change his mind. On September 10, 1890, Harrison and Prestwich were searching the West Yoke ocherous gravels, which were stained red (ocher) by iron compounds. Harrison wrote: “Professor Prestwich was impressed by the great spread of worn gravel, and remarked that it was a ‘capital exhibition of ochreous drift in an important position.’ At his request I filled my satchel with the water-worn flints, which were scattered over the field in abundance. It was the dawn of the era of the eoliths, for on this day he pressed me to take home specimens that only a few months earlier he would have regarded as too doubtful to be preserved” (E. Harrison 1928, pp. 155–156).

In 1891, Prestwich presented at the Geological Society of London another paper, titled “On the Age, Formation, and Successive Drift-Stages of the Valley of the Darent; with Remarks on the Palaeolithic Implements of the District and on the Origin of its Chalk Escarpment.” In this paper, Prestwich (1891, p. 163) described a paleolith found by Harrison in a hole dug for the planting of a tree: “I have now seen the fine specimen. . . . It is 6 inches long by 3¾ in. wide, very flat and round pointed, and shows no wear. It more resembles one of the large St. Acheul types. It was found on the top of the soil last thrown out of the hole.” It is not clear what kind of sediments the tool was found in, but the manner in which Prestwich related the find suggests that he regarded it as a demonstration that the paleoliths were to be found not only on the surface, but in situ.

In addition to the paleoliths, Prestwich mentioned some of the cruder Eolithic implements. This brought some inquiries from William Topley, a fellow of the Geological Society and the author of a Geological Survey memoir on the Weald region. Harrison wrote in his diaries: “Mr. William Topley at the reading of the Darent paper said that he wished to know if there was any clear case of the flints being found in place. He added that the antiquity of the gravels in such an elevation [on the Plateau] was beyond question and certainly preceded the excavation of the great Chalk valleys and the present features of the Weald. In consequence of these remarks I went to the Vigo inn, and searched in and near the post holes dug for a fence. I found worked stones and thus recorded my first finds in situ” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 161). Thus the eoliths as well as paleoliths were to be found within the earth, and not just on the surface.

Harrison also noted that in most cases his eoliths occurred in places where there were no paleoliths. To him, this indicated a different age for the two types of implements.

A. R. Wallace, who was greatly interested in Harrison’s finds, asked him for a copy of Prestwich’s Darent paper. Harrison forwarded the paper to Wallace, who later replied: “I read Mr. Prestwich’s paper with great interest, especially with regard to the rude type of implements, which I had never seen represented before. They are certainly very distinct from the well-formed palaeolithic weapons, and their having a separate area of distribution is strong proof of their belonging to a different and earlier period” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 370).

3.2 .4 More on the Geology of the Kent Plateau

In 1891, Sir John Prestwich presented a third major paper on the stone implements of the Kent Plateau. In this paper, delivered to the Royal Anthropological Institute, Prestwich pointed out that the Chalk Plateau of Kent, where Harrison found paleoliths and eoliths, is bounded by a large valley running across its southern border. According to Prestwich, this valley was scooped out by water action during the glacial period. The Kent Plateau, however, contained drift gravels like those present on the South Downs, the hills that still exist on the other side of the southern valley. Prestwich (1892, p. 250) stated: “as the flint implements are closely associated with this plateau drift, and are limited to the area over which it extends, we are led to infer the pre-glacial or early glacial age of the men by whom they were fabricated.” Just to clarify the reasoning, let us imagine ourselves in the Late Pliocene, looking south from the present North Downs and Kent Plateau. Instead of the valley now there, we would see the rising surface of the Weald dome (Figure 3.1, p. 88). At this time, according to Prestwich, the now-vanished dome uplands would have been inhabited by humans who made crude stone tools. Rivers and streams running down from the uplands flow north, depositing their gravels and sediments, along with stone tools, on the surface of the region now occupied by the North Downs and Kent Plateau. The rivers also flow south from the divide of the central dome uplands, to the South Downs.

This process continues until the Pleistocene, a time of increased precipitation. Torrents of water flowing along an east-west axis, carve out a large valley where the Weald uplands once rose. Now the landscape is considerably changed, leaving the Kent Plateau and hills in the north separated by a deep, wide valley from hills to the south. At this point, the rivers no longer flow onto the plateau, but rather empty into the valley. But the old gravels and sediments, containing eoliths, remain on the Kent Plateau surface. They could only have been deposited there before the excavation of the valley. The proof of the accuracy of this scenario: the gravels and sediments found today on the Kent Plateau surface greatly resemble those found on the South Downs, now separated from the Kent Plateau by the great transverse valley. As we have seen, Edmunds (1954, p. 47) has identified the ferruginous deposits topping the North Downs with those now found in the South Downs. Since certain kinds of tools were found only in the ferruginous gravels and other such deposits on the North Downs and Kent Plateau, Prestwich concluded that these tools were made by the humans who lived on the central dome uplands, before the glacial period.

Modern authorities relate the geological history of the rivers of the Weald region and their gravel deposits in much the same way as outlined above. For example, Francis H. Edmunds, in a study published by the Geological Survey of Great Britain, wrote (1954, p. 69): “The original rivers of the Wealden district . . . flowed either northward or southward from an east-to-west watershed along the main axial line of the Weald.” These rivers left north-south gaps in the Weald landscape, some of which are not used by the present river systems. Edmunds (1954, p. 63) stated: “Certain physical features, notably the position of the river gaps through the North and South Downs, connect modern topography with that of the pre-Pliocene epoch.” A map by Edmunds (1954, p. 71) shows the Plateau gravels as having been deposited by the rivers flowing from south to north. This tends to confirm the views of Prestwich, who believed the Plateau gravels were laid down by rivers flowing north from the central dome uplands during the Pliocene and perhaps the preglacial Pleistocene.

Concerning the Plateau deposits (Clay-with-flints), Edmunds thought some were produced locally by dissolution of the underlying chalk formations, which contain flint. But Edmunds (1954, p. 56) added: “The Clay-with-flints in several Wealden localities, however, contains a major proportion of material which could not have been so derived, but which represents remainié Tertiary beds, of Eocene and Pliocene ages.”

This suggests that the worn and patinated eoliths (and paleoliths) found in the Plateau deposits could very well be of Tertiary age.

Maps supplied by Edmunds (1954, p. 71) show that the north-south river systems, which laid down the Tertiary Plateau gravels and the hill drifts, were later diverted into their present east-west channels. These east-west rivers deposited the Pleistocene gravels on terraces below the hill drifts, the higher terraces being the oldest (Figure 3.2, p. 93). This process of gravel deposition began during the glacial period.

The stone implements found in the higher terrace gravels of the present rivers were, according to Prestwich, similar to the Paleolithic implements encountered in the Somme region of France, where Boucher des Perthes conducted his investigations. In his address to the Anthropological Institute, Prestwich explained that in the Kent Plateau region Neolithic implements were mainly found in the lower, more recent, river beds along with fossil remains of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, and other Ice Age mammals.

To summarize, the eoliths were found mainly in the Pliocene drift gravels on the top of the Plateau, crude paleoliths mainly in the hilltop drifts of Pliocene rivers, better paleoliths mainly in the Pleistocene higher gravels of the present rivers, and polished neoliths in the lower more recent river gravels.

Most of the high Plateau discoveries were surface finds. But Prestwich (1892, p. 251) noted that “from the deep staining of the implements, and their occasional incrustations with iron oxide, we have reason to believe that they have been imbedded in a deposit beneath the surface.” This is significant. If the implements were embedded beneath the surface of the now-vanished dome uplands for a long time before they were transported to the Plateau, that would indicate an indefinitely great age for them. In other words, they were at least Late Pliocene in age, and perhaps far older.

Some of the Plateau implements were found not on the surface but in situ deep within the preglacial Plateau drift gravels. This would tend to rule out the supposition that the implements were of fairly recent origin and had been dropped on the drift gravels by the later inhabitants of the Plateau region. Prestwich (1892, p. 251) stated: “A fine specimen was found at South Ash in making a hole two feet deep for planting a tree, but as it was picked up on the thrownout soil, its exact position beneath the surface remains of course uncertain. It was the same with the one obtained in a post-hole at Kingsdown. For two others we have, however, the personal testimony of Mr. Harrison. One he took out of a bank of the red-clay-with-flints on the side of a pond and at the depth of two and a half feet, and the other from a bed of ‘deep red clay,’ two feet in depth, at the Vigo.”

In a footnote to the above passage, Prestwich (1892, p. 251) went on to say: “Mr. Bullen has just had a trench dug on the top of Preston Hill. It was nearly five feet deep, through surface soil (one foot); and the red-clay-with-flints in which, at a depth of three feet ten inches from the surface, he found an unworn white flint—apparently the broken point of a small implement.” As we have seen, Edmunds (1954, p. 56) characterized major portions of the clay-with-flints deposits as remainié beds of Tertiary age, some Pliocene, some even Eocene.

3.2.5 The Relative Antiquity of Eoliths and Paleoliths

Returning to the eoliths found on the surface of the Plateau, Prestwich (1892, p. 252) asked: “could these implements, like the neolithic implements which occur on the same ground, have been dropped on the surface where they are now found, at some later date?” Although most of the Neolithic implements were found in the lower river terraces, some did occur on the Plateau. Prestwich (1892, p. 252) went on to state, in response to his own question: “The answer to this is, that these neolithic implements show only weathering by exposure on the surface, and are found at all levels, whereas the plateau implements, besides their wear and colour, present all the physical characteristics due to having been imbedded in a special drift, and are confined to a special area. The two sorts, although found on the same ground, remain perfectly distinguishable.”

Prestwich (1892, p. 252) then gave an extensive answer to an objection raised by Sir John Evans: “Then again, is it not possible that similar rude specimens occur in the valley drifts, and have been overlooked owing to the prevalence of the better finished implements to which attention had been exclusively given.” If eoliths were found in connection with the paleoliths or neoliths in the valleys, that might weaken Prestwich’s argument for their great age, which was based on the fact that they tended to be found only in the very ancient Plateau drifts. Prestwich (1892, p. 252) answered as follows: “A large number of rude and badly finished specimens have been collected in the valley drifts, but they all belong to one set of types, and though I have seen and handled many hundreds of these, I question whether, with the exception of the derived specimens [those washed down from the Plateau] to be named presently, there were any like the ruder and most primitive of the plateau types. The distinction is as well marked as that between the ruder specimens of Roman pottery and rude early British pottery.” Prestwich (1892, p. 252) went on to state: “Boucher de Perthes collected everything in the Somme district, which showed any traces of workmanship, howsoever indistinct, or even of similitude, yet I do not remember that in his great collection there were specimens of the peculiar character of these plateau implements.” In other words, the evidence from the Somme region confirmed Prestwich’s hypothesis that the Kent Plateau eoliths were of a distinct type, different from superficially similar crude implements of later periods. In a footnote, Prestwich (1892, p. 252) added: “I do have one specimen given me by M. Boucher de Perthes, from near St. Riquier, five miles north-east of Abbeville, which may belong to this group. It is said to have been found at a depth of four metres [about 13 feet], and evidently comes from the red clay drift, which there caps, as it does here, the higher chalk hills. It is four inches long by one and half inches wide, rod-shaped, very roughly chipped all around and at ends, and has a white patina, to which some of the red clay as yet adheres.” This discovery would appear to be well worth looking into, and is representative of the intriguing items one comes across in old journal articles. It might represent a stone implement far older than the others discovered by Boucher de Perthes in the river gravels of the Somme valley at Abbeville, now dated to the Middle Pleistocene, about a half million years old.

After giving testimony about not finding specimens like the Plateau eoliths in Boucher des Perthes’s collection, Prestwich (1892, pp. 252–253) stated: “Nor had Mr. Harrison, during his rigorous examination of the Shode Valley, discovered any specimens in the valley drifts of the Ightham district to correspond with the group of plateau implements. At my request, he has re-examined several of these localities, as well as the large pit at Aylesford in the Medway Valley, and the pits at Milton Street (Swanscombe) in the Thames Valley, with this special object in view. He reports to me that he finds no contemporary specimens of the plateau type, and very few derived specimens of that type.”

Prestwich (1892, p. 268) then cited evidence from De Barri Crawshay, who stated: “I find that on examination of my collection of over 200 specimens of implements and scrapers from the 100 foot level around Swanscombe, Kent, I have but one . . . which is a plateau specimen undoubtedly derived. . . . I have always made specially careful search for all these ochreous flints in the low level gravels, and have rarely found one at all.”

Derived specimens are those washed down from the Plateau and left in the lower level gravels. Prestwich (1892, p. 253) stated: “The derived plateau specimens are easily distinguished, by their greater wear, distinct colour, and peculiar shapes, from the implements contemporary with these valley drifts.”

The valley Paleolithic specimens were very extensively worked, with fine, regular chipping, and generally took the form of points meant, perhaps, to be used as spear heads. There were some crude, unfinished specimens among them, but they were obviously of the same type as the finished paleoliths, and not of the Plateau type (Prestwich 1892, p. 255).

About the Plateau eoliths, Prestwich (1892, p. 256) stated: “The trimming slight though it may be, is to be recognised by its being at angles or in places incompatible with river drift agencies, and such as could not have been produced by natural causes.” Prestwich admitted that some specimens resembling the more advanced valley paleoliths were found along with the Plateau eoliths, and stated (1892, p. 257): “It is not easy to account for the presence of these abnormal specimens. If contemporaneous with the others, we might assume that there were then some workmen more skilled than their neighbors in the fabrication of flint implements.” Working against this hypothesis, according to Prestwich, was the fact that the rude Eolithic specimens were heavily patinated and were very worn, whereas the finished Paleolithic specimens were unpatinated and had perfectly sharp edges. Prestwich surmised the latter might have been left on the Plateau by Paleolithic men in more recent times, long after the eoliths had been deposited. Prestwich (1892, p. 258) then made a very important observation: “Though the work on the plateau implements is often so slight as scarcely to be recognisable, even modern savage work, such as exhibited for example by the stone implements of the Australian natives, show, when divested of their mounting, an amount of work no greater or more distinct, than do these early palaeolithic specimens.” This implies that it is not necessary to attribute the Plateau eoliths to a primitive race of ape-men. Since the eoliths are practically identical to stone tools made by Homo sapiens sapiens, there is no reason to rule out, a priori, the possibility that the eoliths (and the paleoliths) may have been made by humans of the fully modern type in England during the Late Pliocene. As we shall demonstrate later on (Section 6.2), scientists of the nineteenth century made several discoveries of skeletal remains of anatomically modern human beings in strata of Pliocene age.

In the discussion that followed Prestwich’s presentation of his report, Sir John Evans repeated his point that the presence in the Plateau drift gravels of paleoliths made it possible that eoliths were contemporary with them and thus more recent than Prestwich and Harrison believed (Prestwich 1892, p. 271). Years later Harrison wrote in a letter, dated June 3, 1908, to W. M. Newton: “At the meeting of the Anthropological Institute in 1891, Dr. Evans closed his observations with the following sentence, ‘Before we accept these’ [the Eolithic implements] — l ooking at Prestwich —‘we must think twice,’—looking at me— ‘we must think thrice, and’—looking round the whole meeting— ‘we must think again’” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 165).

Other members of the Anthropological Institute also commented. General Pitt-Rivers maintained that stones resembling the eoliths were to be found in all gravels, insinuating that eoliths were simply a product of purely natural forces (Prestwich 1892, p. 272). In support of Prestwich, J. Allen Brown reported that some flints from the upper terraces of the Thames River resembled the Ightham ones, and might be of the same age and origin (Prestwich 1892, p. 275). The journal of the Anthropological Institute recorded a summary of Prestwich’s concluding remarks: “In reply, Professor Prestwich said that he had looked forward to the possibility of there being some substantial objections to his views which might have escaped him. He had, however, heard nothing but an amplified repetition of the very same difficulties which had occurred to him, and had been discussed and explained in the paper” (Prestwich 1892, p. 275).

Careful study of the report bears out Prestwich’s statement. With regard to the doubts of General Pitt-Rivers, Prestwich had already demonstrated that the chipping on the eoliths was quite different from that produced by purely natural forces on river gravels. He had also offered explanations for the presence of both paleoliths and eoliths in the Plateau gravels, explaining that some of the paleoliths, which were sharp and unworn, had probably been introduced into the Plateau gravels at a much later period than the deeply stained and much worn eoliths.

Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, p. 166) gave a summary of the three papers presented by Prestwich: “The first paper opened up the subject of Harrison’s discoveries by describing the palaeolithic implements found around Ightham in the post-glacial valley gravels, in the glacial high-level gravels, and in the very ancient, pre-glacial gravels of the high Chalk Plateau. . . . The second paper, on the drift stages of the Darent valley, added to the evidence contained in the Ightham paper. . . . The third paper was directed to the character of the rude implements, the nature of the chipping upon their edges, the classification of the specimens in groups representing different kinds of tools, and the other reasons that existed for attributing them to the hand of man.” In light of Prestwich’s testimony, it is remarkable that most modern studies of stone implements generally do not mention Harrison’s eoliths, and those few that do give only brief, highly critical, and often sarcastic notices of dismissal.

3.2.6 A. R. Wallace Visits Harrison

On November 2, 1891, Alfred Russell Wallace, who was at that time one of the world’s most famous scientists, paid an unannounced visit to Benjamin Harrison at his grocery shop in Ightham. Harrison recorded the incident in his notebooks: “Dr. A. R. Wallace, accompanied by Mr. Swinton of Sevenoaks, dropped in unexpectedly at 10.30. I had previously purchased Dr. Wallace’s Travels on the Amazon, and from his portrait, which forms the frontispiece to this work, I recognized him before he entered my shop. I therefore greeted him with ‘Dr. Wallace, I presume,’ a recognition which puzzled him until I explained that I had many times studied his portrait. This evidently pleased him. A long and patient examination was made of the old types of implement and of some later paleoliths” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 169). Harrison then took Wallace on a walking tour of the sites where the implements had been found.

Harrison also noted: “When I was showing him my rude implements and placing them in groups, he asked, ‘Was it not a pleasure to you to find such agreement in form and work when first you became certain of them?’ I answered that it was a supreme time. . . . Our conversation turned to the subject of the new and startling find of implements in the auriferous gravels of North America, startling in the fact that although their positions indicated a high antiquity, yet their forms were similar to those of implements in use by the Indians at the time of the discovery of the continent in the fifteenth century” (E. Harrison 1928, pp. 169–170). The stone implements from the auriferous, or gold bearing, gravels were of Neolithic type (Section 5.5). As we shall show, they provided evidence for the presence of humans of the modern type in the very early Pliocene, or perhaps even as far back as the Eocene.

The day following his visit to Ightham, Wallace wrote in a letter to Harrison: “I was very greatly interested in your collection of the oldest paleoliths. Could you not write a popular article giving an account of your discovery of them, with all the main features of their form and peculiarities, and the special areas in which they are found, illustrated by outline sketches of all the chief types of form, and laying particular stress on the fact that each of these types, however made, is illustrated by numbers of specimens showing how natural flint pebbles of suitable form have been selected, and by being chipped on one side only, have been brought to the required shape and edge? If you could write as you speak, I think such a paper would be published by one of the good reviews” ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 171). Harrison did not write such an article immediately, but, according to Sir Edward Harrison, in 1904 he published a pamphlet along the lines suggested by Wallace.

On March 14, 1892, the noted Scottish geologist Sir Archibald Geikie wrote to Benjamin Harrison about the paper presented by Prestwich at the Anthropological Institute: “I was delighted to receive a copy of Mr. Prestwich’s paper [on eoliths] a few days ago, and to read his account of your very successful investigations. It is a strange tale which these implements tell, and you may be congratulated on the successful result of your long and laborious, but, no doubt, very interesting quest. Yes, paleolithic man is old. . . . I am at present preparing a work the object of which is to show the results of glacial and archaeological researches into the antiquity of man which have been obtained up to the present time.

The more one investigates the question, the further into the past does paleolithic man seem to recede” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 175).

3.2.7 More Objections

Worthington G. Smith, repeating a common objection, wrote to Harrison on March 26, 1892: “It appears to me that the importance of your discovery of implements rests on your lighting on genuine undoubted examples on the high levels. I don’t attach much importance myself to the dubious and disputed forms [the eoliths], because such forms occur with genuine implements in all paleolithic gravels. The very rudest forms can never mean anything, unless such forms are exclusive, and pertain only to certain deposits” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 175). Here Smith appears to have ignored all the evidence amassed by Prestwich for the greater antiquity of the Plateau eoliths, even when found in association with more advanced Paleolithic types. Among other things, Prestwich repeatedly emphasized that the eoliths, and some of the paleoliths, are very much worn and patinated whereas other paleoliths and neoliths retain the original color of the flint and have sharp edges.

All that aside, however, it appears that Harrison did find locations in which the eoliths occur by themselves. Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, p. 176) has stated of the eoliths: “Harrison was influenced principally by their rude character, and he thought it likely that they were, for that reason, the tools of a race older than paleolithic man. Subsequently, when excavations had been made in the drifts, he found confirmation of his views in the fact that whilst certain drifts produced occasional paleoliths in apparent association with rude implements, there was also on Parsonage Farm and elsewhere, an older drift or ‘buried channel’ which, in his experience, contained rude implements alone.”

Of course, the fact that the eoliths are sometimes found by themselves had already been reported by Prestwich. All this reveals much about scientific discussion concerning anomalous evidence. Scientists whose preconceptions dispose them to reject certain evidence often tend to repeat their objections even after they have been met with apparently adequate responses, as if the response had never been made. Doctrinaire scientists also set conditions they believe should be met, even when such conditions have already been met. All of this makes for an Alice-in-Wonderland type of discourse: “My dear sir, I have found crudely chipped stone tools alone.” “Well sir, I really think you should find these chipped stone tools alone.” “But I have sir.” “Then you very well should do so, or I shall never believe you.” Or: “Dear sir, let me demonstrate how this set of stone tools is older than this other set.” “Very well, but I really think you should now demonstrate that this set of tools is older than the other set.” “But I already have.” “Yes, but you should do it, and until you do so, I shall never believe you.”

Sir John B. Evans provides a good example of this kind of interchange. Evans wrote to Harrison on October 29, 1892: “A certain number of flints, such, for instance, as several from Ash, are to my mind undoubtedly fashioned by man; there are others which probably have been worked, and others again which possibly have had their edges retouched. The great majority, however, seem to me to have assumed their present forms by natural agency. . . . When the more perfect implements are found with these ruder forms, there is no reason for regarding them as otherwise than contemporary . . . everyone will accept the ordinary forms of paleolithic implements as having been found at the high levels, and I am doubtful as to the desirability of complicating the question with a second race of men and a set of implements of extremely questionable character” (E. Harrison

1928, p. 184). Here Evans admitted that some of the rude implements display signs of human work. If he admitted that some, however few, were the result of human work, this conclusion was not nullified by the fact that the “great majority” appeared to have been the result of natural action. As for the relative ages of the eoliths and the paleoliths, he appears to have either missed or deliberately ignored all the evidence suggesting that the Eolithic implements could have been more ancient.

A troubled Harrison wrote to Prestwich, who replied on November 15,

1892: “No explanation necessary. Your collection stands on its merits. Differences of opinion there will always be. All you have to say is that Sir John Evans accepts some specimens and rejects others. Let everyone judge for himself ” ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 185).

Despite the continuing controversy, the British Museum still thought enough of the eoliths to purchase, in 1893, a set of representative specimens ( E. Harrison

1928, p. 186 ). Harrison, meanwhile, continued his investigations, with the special intention of proving that the eoliths occurred not in all gravels, as some critics asserted, but only in special locations, in the very old Pliocene drift. In many gravel deposits around Ightham, Harrison noted the complete absence of any stones resembling his Eolithic implements. For example, Harrison’s notebook entry for September 3, 1893 read: “To Fane Hill—a long search, but not a single specimen of old old work.” Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, p. 188) stated: “This negative evidence confirmed Harrison in his opinion that the eoliths had been artificially chipped. Had they been merely the work of natural forces it was to be expected that they would be found in large numbers in all flint-bearing gravels alike.”

For years, Harrison’s eoliths continued to be a topic of serious discussion in scientific societies, including the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, p. 192) wrote: “A. M. Bell championed the cause of the rude implements at the meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh in 1892. It fell to Professor T. Rupert Jones to undertake a like service in 1894, when the meeting was held at Oxford.” The 1894 meeting was, according to A. M. Bell, who wrote to Harrison on August 10, 1894, “not a triumph . . . not a defeat, but leaves things much as they were” ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 193).

3.2.8 The British Association Sponsors Excavations

In order to resolve the controversy over the age of the eoliths, the British Association, a prestigious scientific society, financed excavations in the high-level Plateau drift and other localities in close proximity to Ightham (E. Harrison 1928, p. 194). The purpose was to show definitively that eoliths were to be found not only on the surface but in situ, deep within the Pliocene preglacial gravels. Alfred R. Wallace had also expressed a desire for such proof, having written to Harrison on November 8, 1893: “I suppose you have not found any of your old flints yet, in situ by digging, or in the undisturbed gravel at some distance below the surface. When you do that you will have more converts” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 189). It would appear that Harrison had already found some eoliths in situ (such as the ones from the post holes dug near Vigo Inn, see Section 3.2.4), but this excavation, financed by the respected British Association, would be more conclusive.

It should be noted that many accepted flint industries were initially discovered on the surface. For example, John Gowlett (1984, p. 72) described the finds at Olorgesailie, in Kenya: “Hand axes were found weathering out on the surface by Louis and Mary Leakey, and it soon became evident that this was one of the major Middle Pleistocene localities of East Africa.” Today there is an open-air museum at Olorgesailie, where visitors may walk on catwalks above a land surface covered with stone implements. A similar situation is found at Kilombe in the Kenya rift valley. Gowlett (1984, p. 68) stated: “Kilombe is a massive Acheulean site in Kenya. Artifacts on this site were first noticed in 1972 by geologist Dr. W. B. Jones as an extensive scatter on the surface, evidently weathered out from nearby Pleistocene beds.” Describing the Kilombe hand axes, which were made from flakes of stone, Gowlett (1984, p. 70) stated: “many of these large flakes were only gently retrimmed in the final shaping and the original form is quite apparent.” The Kilombe flake implements, with only slight human modification, conform to the description of eoliths. At both Kilombe and Olorgesailie, stone implements were later found in situ. The same was true of the sites on the Kent Plateau.

The British Association selected Harrison himself to supervise the Plateau excavations, under the direction of a committee of scientists. Harrison recorded in his notebooks that he found many examples of eoliths in situ, including “thirty convincers” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 189).

3.2.9 The Royal Society Exhibition

In 1895, the same year that the Geological Society of London awarded him part of the Lyell Fund (E. Harrison 1928, p. 196), Harrison was invited to exhibit his eoliths at a meeting of the Royal Society. He was quite pleased to have the chance to show his specimens to this scientific elite (E. Harrison 1928, p. 197). Sir Edward Harrison (1928, p. 197) stated: “This was an opportunity not to be missed, and he informed Prestwich of his intention to send for exhibition the specimens found in situ in the excavation in the drift at Parsonage Farm. Prestwich did not dissent from this proposal, but he advised the exhibition also of carefully selected surface specimens, arranged in groups. Harrison followed this counsel in the main, but he included too large a proportion of specimens from the pit, and amongst them specimens which did not impress those who saw them so much as he had hoped.”

Some scientists, however, were quite impressed, among them E. T. Newton, a Fellow of the Royal Society and paleontologist of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, who wrote to Harrison on December 24, 1895: “I hope you will not mind your specimens remaining with me until after the Christmas holidays. I feel satisfied that most of them, to say the least, show human work, and some of these are definitely from one of the pits. . . . Some of the specimens I should be very doubtful about, but there are others that I cannot bring myself to believe are accidental; they have been done intentionally, and, therefore, by the only intellectual being we know of, Man” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 202). Here we have an example of a qualified scientist fully accepting as genuine human artifacts some of the eoliths excavated from the Pliocene Plateau drifts. Modern authorities, who have never examined the specimens in question, might thus be cautious of prematurely dismissing them.

3.2.10 The Problem of Forgery

Of course, recognizing intentional human work is always beset with many difficulties, and in his notebooks Harrison mentioned one of the most vexing—forgery. On March 26, 1896, Harrison was visited by William Cunnington, a Fellow of the Geological Society. Harrison wrote: “He was well acquainted with Flint Jack, the notorious forger of flint implements. Flint Jack’s first appearance was characteristic. He entered Mr. Cunnington’s office, and, taking from his pocket some flints wrapped in paper, said, ‘I hear you buy flint arrowheads.’ ‘You are Flint Jack.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I am, and as I was passing I thought you would like to see some arrow-heads made!’ On one occasion Mr. Cunnington set him up in life and gave him decent clothing, hoping to reform him, but in vain. Mr. Cunnington sent him to Farmingham to get some fossils. On his return he produced a stone which he said he had bought for a shilling from a shepherd. Recognizing at once that the stone was a forgery, Mr. Cunnington accused him of making it, and refused to have anything more to do with him. The forged implement was made of sandstone. Flint Jack had shaped it with a pick, and had afterwards rubbed it over with earth to disguise its new appearance” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 205).

Harrison was not without his own experience of forgers. In his notebook entry for May 29, 1894, he stated that Smith, an Ightham laborer, had told him: “When Seldon and I were working on the railway he said to me, ‘I wonder whether we shall find any flints for Mr. Harrison.’ We did not find any of the right sort, not your sort, you know. He said, ‘Here’s a big ’un. I’ll take him home and hammer him up a bit, file him, and make him look like one of the right sort.’ When he brought it to you, he thought you would not know it, but would think it was one of the right sort. He asked you if it was one of the right sort, and you said, ‘This is one of your own make, Seldon.’ Seldon said, ‘I thought he would not know, but I was too tricky, he know’d it. Its no use taking home-made ones to him, he knows too much. But he give me some tobacco for being tricky’” (E. Harrison

1928, p. 195). It should, however, be noted that it is not only laborers who are responsible for forgery. As we shall see, in the case of Piltdown man the finger of guilt points in the direction of the scientists themselves.

3.2.11 “The Greater Antiquity of Man”

In 1895, Sir John Prestwich published in Nineteenth Century, a popular magazine directed at the intelligent public, a review of the Ightham implements titled “The Greater Antiquity of Man.” Since it gives, in layman’s terms, an excellent summary of the scientific issues involved in the eolith question, we shall here reproduce some sections of the article.

Prestwich (1895, p. 621) first described the Kent Plateau, as it existed in the Pliocene epoch: “It then, was a high level plain of chalk covered by argillaceous [clayey] and drift beds, which thus became furrowed by the escaping rainfall; and as the furrows gradually deepened they ended in the formation of the existing chalk valleys. It will, therefore, be seen that these valleys must be newer than the hills through which they are cut, and consequently that the beds of sand and gravel, with the remains of extinct mammalia, together with the flint implements of Palaeolithic man, found in these valleys, must also be newer than the drift scattered on the summit of those hills.”

It was in the Plateau drift that the eoliths were to be found. Prestwich distinguished them from Paleolithic implements. Paleolithic implements were very elaborately worked into recognizable tool and weapon forms. Describing the much more crudely fashioned eoliths, Prestwich (1895, p. 622) wrote: “Other scrapers have been formed out of split Tertiary flint-pebbles, sometimes split naturally, and at other times artificially. The edges are trimmed generally all round, so as to act as a rough scraper in whatsoever position the pebble may best be held. At the present day a similar practice prevails among some North American Indians, who, whenever in want of a scraper, select a pebble, which they split and then trim the edges. They rarely keep the old scraper, fresh ones being so easily obtained. This tool is called a pashoa, or scraper, and is used by the Shoshone Indians to dress skins.”

Prestwich then pointed out that these rude Eolithic implements from the Pliocene Plateau drifts had features that distinguished them from rude implements that might be found in more recent deposits. “But says one critic, rudeness of form is no test of age, and leaves it to be inferred that these specimens are no older than other rude forms of later ages. Who of the advocates of the plateau implements ever said that it was? I know of none. We particularly remarked in 1892 that rudeness of form alone was no proof of antiquity, and that there were plenty of very rude specimens of the valley types. We would again emphasise the fact that there are rude implements not only of the valley gravels, but also of neolithic times, whilst among the stone implements of living savages there are many as rude as those of the plateau group” (Prestwich

1895, p. 624).

Prestwich (1895, p. 624) went on to say: “Each epoch had, however, its typical forms, and these are broadly persistent, howsoever rude the specimens may be. In the neolithic period axe and chisel shapes predominate; in the valley gravels the long pointed and spatula-shaped implements are characteristic of the period; and in the plateau group various forms for scraping and hammering prevail. There are, no doubt, pointed forms in the plateau group, but they have a different cachet from those of the valley group, as these again differ from those of the subsequent Stone period. There are, besides, certain generalised forms which persist throughout all the periods, though perhaps varying a little in some minor details. Simple flakes likewise, more or less worked, are found in all three periods.”

Prestwich then pointed out that many Eolithic implements had been found not on the surface but in excavations into the drift deposits. Of these drift deposits on the Plateau, Prestwich (1895, p. 624) stated: “The drift on that surface is certainly not of local origin, as is shown by the presence in it of fragments of strata derived from the hills some miles distant to the south.” As previously noted, the drift could only have arrived in its present position on the Plateau before the chalk valleys, which now intervene between the Plateau and the southern hills, were excavated.

Answering the charge that the eoliths were perhaps naturefacts rather than artifacts, Prestwich (1895, p. 625) stated: “It has also been frequently asserted that these implements are natural forms produced by the friction of the shingle on the shore or in the beds of rivers. Challenged to show any such natural specimens, those who have made the assertion have been unable, although nearly three years have elapsed since the challenge was given, to bring forward a single such specimen. If, moreover, implements were formed in that manner, they should be found in gravel beds of all ages and origins. So far from running water having this constructive power, the tendency of it is to wear off all angles, and reduce the flint to a more or less rounded pebble.”

So here one of Britain’s foremost geologists, a Fellow of the Geological Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, made quite a coherent case for the human origin and Pliocene date of the Eolithic implements collected by Benjamin Harrison. He answered in a convincing manner all possible objections to his interpretation. Of course, some scientists maintained their opposition, as might be expected of persons with strongly held beliefs. Nevertheless, we must still wonder why, as far as modern paleoanthropology is concerned, the Plateau eoliths have completely disappeared from view. Apparently there is no place in the modern views on human origins for toolmaking hominids in England at least 2–4 million years ago in the Pliocene period.

3.2.12 On the Treatment of Anomalous Evidence

In 1896, Prestwich died, but Harrison, in his prominent patron’s absence, continued with the Plateau excavations and answered the doubters. On May 18, 1898, Harrison wrote to W. J. Lewis Abbott, reproducing in his letter a poem called “That Chocolate Stone,” written by his son ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 219):

If only that chocolate stone could explain what the dickens it did in the past,

That those sages might cease from exciting the brain, and the hatchet be

buried at last,

Whether eolith, neolith, nature, or man, could they but of that question dispose,

Why, those eminent men might relinquish the pen—till a new controversy

arose.

This verse, light and humorous though it may be, strikes at the very heart of an important epistemological consideration. In the absence of direct knowledge of the past, any discussion of paleoanthropological evidence, which is always somewhat ambiguous, is certain to involve controversy, because of the differing preconceptions and methods of analysis of the participants in the debate. Empiricism thus becomes inextricably entangled with speculative modes of thought and deeply held emotional biases and prejudices. In most cases, the speculation and bias are carefully masked with a thin veneer of fact. But as imperfect as this process may be, it is, for scientists, the only one that can be applied; therefore, one can at least insist on consistent application of principles and close reasoning from the observed facts. This granted, the case made by Prestwich and Harrison held up quite well against the arguments thrown by their opponents, who simply seemed to be searching for ways to reject something they were a priori not prepared to accept.

An interesting example of this may be found in G. Worthington Smith’s continued opposition to Harrison’s eoliths. On March 22, 1899, Benjamin Harrison wrote in a letter to Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, p. 224): “After I became acquainted with Mr. Worthington Smith in 1878, he from time to time sent me interesting trifles, which were duly marked and placed in a drawer. In going through this lot yesterday, I came upon some interesting rude specimens from Basuto Land. These are about as rude as can be, and are facsimiles of those now found in Bushmen’s caves in Central Africa. They feature [resemble] my rude implements. Strange that Smith classes all my Plateau finds [eoliths] as cretins, make-beliefs, casuals, travesties—anything but human made. And yet, as long ago as 1880, he sent me those then-acknowledged stones, as if to encourage me to look for similar specimens. When I find them, he scouts [rejects] them!” Here we have an apparent instance of inconsistent application of principles on the part of Smith.

Harrison wrote to Smith about this, who replied, in a somewhat humorous tone, on March 23, 1899, that although he vaguely recalled perhaps having sent some flakes and stones, he failed to see what bearing they had on the present question: “I don’t quite see what . . . modern flakes have to do with high-level implements.” Smith then stated that he himself had found stones resembling eoliths but never took them home. He then concluded his letter to Harrison with more humor: “Now I hope you are quite well and blessed with a happy and peaceful mind, without pre-glacial nightmares . . . and palaeolithic tailless apes” (E. Harrison 1928, pp. 224–225). The not so subtle ridicule of the very idea of Homo sapiens existing in the Tertiary is typical of the unscientific methods used by scientists to dismiss evidence that falls outside their particular circle of comprehension. Smith’s admission that he himself had deliberately avoided collecting specimens of eoliths is also somewhat damaging to the notion of evenhanded scientific treatment of controversial questions. It often happens that anomalous evidence is ignored. Smith’s statement that he failed to see any connection between modern flakes and ancient ones is also quite curious, for such comparative studies of lithic technologies were, and presently are, recognized as an appropriate method for evaluating intentional human work on stone objects.

Smith once wrote to Harrison, who had asked him to consider certain points bearing on the eolith question: “As for answering questions and giving opinions about dubious subjects, it is not always easy, and silence, philosophic doubt, or no settled convictions are better, especially in face of a high priest like you. It is like a Salvation Army captain full of zeal, coming here and asking me about Noah and his ark, Balaam and his ass, and Jonah and his whale. The better plan, according to my view, is to bolt and say nothing” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 187). When one considers the support given to Harrison’s discoveries by reputable scientists such as Sir John Prestwich, Smith’s characterization of Harrison seems a bit unfair. As we shall see, the put-offs and put-downs from Smith’s repertoire are, for a good many scientists, still the favored methods for dealing with evidence that has uncomfortable implications for established views on human evolution. They avoid acknowledging anomalous evidence, never discuss it on its merits, and if pressed, simply ridicule it and those who support it.

3.2.13 More Honors for Harrison

As time passed, however, Harrison continued to receive more honors and his eoliths more attention. In 1899, upon recommendation by Prime Minister Balfour, Queen Victoria awarded him a prestigious Civil List pension “in consideration of your researches on the subject of prehistoric flint implements” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 230). The Royal Society also granted him an annuity. That same year, T. Rupert Jones made a presentation about eoliths at the British Association meeting in Dover, exhibiting some small implements that attracted much attention (E. Harrison 1928, p. 231). In August of 1900, Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum and Professor Packard of Brown University paid Harrison a visit. Packard accepted all of Harrison’s finds as genuine and Woodward agreed that the Plateau drift in which the eoliths were found was probably Pliocene in age (E. Harrison 1928, p. 237). On August 21, 1900, Harrison received a letter from Dr. H. P. Blackmore, who stated that he accepted the eoliths because of “the fairly uniform heights of deposits in which eoliths are found: differing greatly in age of deposit from the more recent river drift or paleolithic gravels” (E. Harrison 1928, pp. 237–238). In 1902, at the British Association meeting in Belfast, W. J. Knowles and F. J. Bennett came out in favor of the eoliths, while Boyd Dawkins was opposed. Some of Harrison’s eoliths were placed on exhibition in the British Museum.

Ray E. Lankester, who was a director of the British Museum (Natural History), became a supporter of Harrison’s Kent Plateau eoliths. On April 15, 1904, Lankester wrote to Harrison: “Good health and happiness to you— courageous and indomitable discoverer of pre-paleolithic man” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 271). Sir Edward R. Harrison stated: “Professor Ray Lankester, who expressed publicly his belief that the eoliths were artificial, and in the Romanes lecture in Oxford, in 1905, declared that they carried ‘the antiquity of man at least as far back beyond the paleoliths as these are from the present day’, desired to emphasize the value, as evidence of purpose, of similarity of shape of certain eoliths, and wrote to Harrison for specimens to illustrate a book that he had in course of preparation. He was impressed by the large number of implements with a ‘tooth-like prominence rendering the flint fit for use as a “borer”’ and also by a group he called trinacrial, from their resemblance in shape to the island of Sicily” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 270). In his presidential address to the British Association in 1906, Lankester affirmed his belief in “the human authorship” of Harrison’s eoliths (E. Harrison

1928, p. 270).

As time passed, Benjamin Harrison continued to win more and more converts. Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, pp. 287–288) wrote: “A visit from Professor Max Verworn of Göttingen, who had come to England in connexion with the centenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, gave Harrison great pleasure. Professor Verworn, who stated that he did not at first believe in eoliths or in any of the supposed evidence of Tertiary man, but had modified his views after personal investigation of the Miocene deposits of the Cantal [Section 4.3.3], spent five days at Ightham. The fullest use was made of the time available, both in Harrison’s museum and in the field. Professor Verworn found an interesting old paleolith in situ in the Plateau gravel at the Vigo, an implement that from its position near the crest of the Chalk escarpment, and its rolled condition, could only have come from the vanished Wealden hills. . . . Harrison could not have wished for a more striking discovery to have been made by his visitor in order to satisfy him of the great antiquity of man in Kent.” If Sir Edward Harrison is using the word paleolith in its then accepted sense, we have here an account of an implement more technically advanced than the Eolithic type being found in the very old gravels of the Plateau, and having the worn appearance of implements belonging to those gravels. This gives added support to the possibility that humans of the modern type may have existed in later Tertiary times in England, perhaps 2– 4 million years ago.

On July 25, 1909, Professor Verworn wrote to Harrison from Göttingen: “If up to then I had the slightest doubt of the artificial nature of the eoliths of Kent, my visit on the spot and your splendid collection would have quite converted me” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 288).

3.2.14 More Opposition

The controversy over the eoliths continued well into the twentieth century. On April 28, 1911, Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock) wrote to Harrison: “I am satisfied that many, if not most of your eoliths are worked, though the numbers are staggering. I am not satisfied, however, that palaeolithic implements are in all cases younger” (E. Harrison 1928, pp. 294–295). In his last edition of his book Prehistoric Times, Lord Avebury fully accepted the eoliths of Harrison, as well as the implements of J. Reid Moir, which we shall discuss in the next section of this chapter ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 305). The opposition, however, continued to criticize the eoliths. In 1911, F. N. Haward published a paper purporting to show that natural forces were able to chip flints in a way that gives the impression of human work. We shall discuss Haward’s objections in connection with the flint implements of J. Reid Moir.

At this point, one may question the necessity of giving such a detailed treatment of the Harrison eoliths. There are several good reasons for doing so. The authors have discovered that modern students of paleoanthropology are generally not at all acquainted with many nineteenth-century discoveries demonstrating the presence of humans of the modern type in Tertiary times. And when these discoveries are brought to the attention of modern students, they tend to categorize them as “crackpot” or “oddball” cases that somehow gained some public notoriety and were quickly dismissed when brought to the attention of scientific authorities. We have also noted a strong prejudice against anomalous evidence that is “old.” Old accepted evidence is honored— for example, Java man, highlighted in all modern textbooks, was a nineteenth-century discovery. But the less familiar nineteenth-century evidence, which goes against the theories presented in modern textbooks, is tainted with suspicion, more so if one has never even heard of it before. In such cases, one often encounters in modern students a very strong assumption that if one has not even heard of some anomalous evidence, then it must have been completely rejected on purely scientific grounds long ago. One reason for presenting a detailed account of anomalous evidence is to show that it was not always of a marginal, crackpot nature. Rather anomalous evidence was quite often the center of serious, longstanding controversy within the very heart of elite scientific circles, with advocates holding scientific credentials and positions just as prestigious as those of the opponents. By presenting detailed accounts of the interplay of conflicting opinion, we hope to give the reader a chance to answer for himself or herself the crucial question—was the evidence actually rejected on purely scientific grounds, or was it dropped from consideration and forgotten simply because it did not lie within the parameters of certain circumscribed theories?

In his book Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives, W. J. Sollas of Oxford rejected Harrison’s finds ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 298 ). In response, Harrison sent him an eolith. On February 1, 1912, Sollas wrote to Harrison: “The specimen you send for my inspection is one of the most interesting of your finds that I have seen. I read its history as follows: (1) Natural agencies detached it as an irregular flake from a flint nodule. . . . (2) It lay in the bed of a stream with the rough side uppermost and was battered on the exposed surface by pebbles, which have left percussion cones as their mark. . . . (3) Still later, it was chipped in a remarkable manner over a portion of its margin” ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 298 ). Here Sollas attributed a remarkable sequence of manufacturing steps to purely natural forces. The end result was a sharp-edged flint implement, something not usually to be expected from the movement of stones in a stream, the random battering of which, as modern authorities point out and anyone can see, tends to produced rounded pebbles.

Sollas then observed: “It is the chipping which is of especial interest to both of us. Two explanations may be given: (1) That the chipping is the result of superincumbent pressure acting upon a yielding substratum. In favour of this it may be pointed out that the chipping is confined to the margin, which we might judge from the general shape of the stone to have thinned off a blunt edge. (2) That the chipping was done by man. In favour of this is the fact that over one part of the specimen the chipping is such as to remove all sharp edges, as if it had been intended for a comfortable hold for the hand . . . while on the opposite side the chipping has produced a projecting point which would be very effective if the flint were used as a weapon for striking a blow. In fact this flint would make a splendid ‘knuckle duster.’ I should not wonder if this was its true nature. But I should not like to commit myself to the assertion that it was” (E. Harrison 1928, pp. 298–299). One wonders why he should not like to commit himself. The points raised here by Sollas himself seem to run very much in favor of the hypothesis that the stone object was of human manufacture.

Sollas then stated (E. Harrison 1928, p. 299): “Granting that it was, however, what does it prove? The patina of the latest chipping is not deep, it looks to my eyes remarkably fresh, and, since palaeolithic implements are found in your deposits, what evidence have you to show that this was not also palaeolithic?” Here the same old question, to which Prestwich long ago had given a detailed and convincing scientific response, came up again. To repeat Prestwich’s basic points, the Eolithic implements, being quite well worn, were distinctly different in appearance from the paleoliths; furthermore, they were sometimes found by themselves in specific deposits. Despite his doubts, Sollas did, however, request more samples for the Oxford museum and Harrison sent six.

At the beginning of the First World War, the British Army, perhaps fearing a German invasion, dug trenches on the hills around Ightham, creating more exposures of gravel for Benjamin Harrison to search. Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, p. 317) wrote that one of the local flint hunters trained by Benjamin Harrison “joined up at the outbreak of war in 1914, was stationed in the Somme valley, found a palaeolith when digging a trench, carried it with him ‘over the top’, and finally brought it safely to Ightham, and to Harrison, when he came home on leave.”

Harrison died in 1921, and his body was buried on the grounds of the parish church, St. Peter’s, in Ightham. On his gravestone one finds the words: “He found in life, ‘books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything’” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 331). A memorial tablet, set in the north wall of St. Peter’s on July 10, 1926, bears this inscription: “IN MEMORIAM.—Benjamin Harrison of Ightham, 1837–1921, the village grocer and archaeologist whose discoveries of eolithic flint implements around Ightham opened a fruitful field of scientific investigation into the greater antiquity of man. A man of great mind and of kindly disposition” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 332). Factually speaking, however, the “fruitful field of scientific investigation into the greater antiquity of man” opened by the eoliths of the Kent Plateau was buried along with Harrison.

3.3 Discoveries by J. Reid Moir in East Anglia

Our journey of exploration now takes us to the southeast coast of England and the discoveries of J. Reid Moir. Starting in 1909, Moir found flint implements in and beneath the Red and Coralline Crags of East Anglia (Suffolk). We shall first give an overview of Moir’s discoveries and then discuss in detail the scientific controversies they sparked, concluding with a survey of recent opinion.

3.3.1 Moir and Harrison

J. Reid Moir, a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and president of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, was acquainted with Benjamin Harrison’s eoliths. Moir (1927, p. 17) believed the gravels on the Kent Plateau, from which Harrison had recovered his eoliths, were the remnants of an old Tertiary land surface, perhaps as old as the Eocene. But, as we have seen, some authorities would assign the gravels of the Kent Plateau to the Pliocene (Sections 3.2.2,

3.2.4). Moir wrote: “It is probable that these flints were shaped by a race of apelike people who lived on a land surface which existed at one time over what is now the Weald of Kent, which was then enjoying a tropical climate. . . . They were probably small, squat men, with very ape-like skulls and projecting jaws, and in many ways more like animals than men” (1927, pp. 17–18, 19).

Moir was an evolutionist. He believed that the degree of primitiveness shown by a very old stone tool industry was indicative of the correspondingly primitive physiological character of the toolmaker. But even today tribal people, physiologically identical to MIT computer scientists, make implements just like the crudest ever found in ancient strata. Furthermore, skeletal remains of fully human character have been found in strata dating back to the Pliocene and even further (Sections 6.2, 6.3). It is therefore possible that the eoliths discovered by Harrison were made by human beings of the type Homo sapiens sapiens.

Harrison found many eoliths during excavations sponsored by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. But he found most on the surface and although geologist Sir John Prestwich argued strongly for their Tertiary age, stubborn critics remained doubtful. The geological position of Moir’s finds was more secure, for most of them were found in situ, deep below the land surface in various locations in East Anglia.

3.3.2 The Age of the Crag Formations

The Red Crag formation (Table 2.1, p. 78), in which Moir made some of his most significant discoveries, is composed of the shelly sands of a sea that once washed the shores of East Anglia. At some places beneath the Red Crag is found a similar formation called the Coralline Crag. Some authorities have placed the Red Crag wholly within the Early Pleistocene. For example, J. M. Coles (1968, p. 19) proposed that the boundary between the Red and Coralline Crags represents the boundary between the Pleistocene and the Pliocene. Others have said that the Red Crag spans the Pleistocene-Pliocene boundary. W. H. Zaguin (1974), for example, placed the lower part of the Red Crag in the Pliocene (Nilsson 1983, p. 108). And still others, such as A. S. Romer (1966, p. 334), put the Red Crag entirely within the Pliocene. Claude Klein (1973, table 6) also placed the Red Crag in the Pliocene and gave it a date of 2.5– 4.0 million years.

Tage Nilsson (1983) called attention to potassium-argon dates for Icelandic formations that some experts correlate with those of East Anglia. Nilsson (1983, p. 106) stated: “If the correlation of the uppermost Tjörnes Beds with the Butley Red Crag is justified, this would imply a probable age of 2.5–3.0 million years for the youngest Red Crag in Britain.” According to Nilsson, this view is supported by paleomagnetic data, which suggest a date of over 2.5 million years for the Red Crag. Paleomagnetic dating relies on the fact that the magnetic field of the earth periodically reverses. Signs of this can be detected in various formations, which are thus labeled normal and reversed in terms of their magnetic polarity. Nilsson (1983, p. 106) stated: “the Red Crag in East Anglia is normally magnetized and probably referable to the later part of the Gauss Normal Epoch, and [is] thus more than 2.5 million years old.”

After studying the range of geological opinion, we have arrived at a conservative age estimate of at least 2.0–2.5 million years for the Red Crag. The range of dates assigned to the Red Crag raises an important question. The conventionally accepted evidence for human evolution comes from sites representing only the last 2 or 3 million years of the earth’s history. Much depends upon being able to arrange fossils from these sites in an accurate temporal sequence. But if the quantitative age determinations of fairly recent formations can vary by hundreds of thousands of years, or even a million or more years, then the integrity of proposed evolutionary sequences, at least insofar as they are founded on stratigraphic evidence, becomes problematic.

Below the Crags of East Anglia are found detritus beds, sometimes called bone beds, composed of a mixture of loose materials—sands, gravels, shells, and bones derived from a variety of older formations. According to Moir, the detritus beds also contain stone implements.

It is certain that these stone implements are older than the Late Pliocene Red Crag. But how much older they actually are depends upon how one interprets the detritus bed below the Red Crag. J. Reid Moir (1924, pp. 642–643) wrote: “The sub-Red Crag detritus bed, which is sometimes as much as three feet in thickness, is, as its name implies, composed of materials of different periods occurring prior to the time when the deposit was laid down. Sir Ray Lankester has shown that these varying materials have been derived from the following sources:—(a) the chalk, [Cretaceous] (b) the London Clay [Eocene], (c) a Miocene land surface, (d) a marine Pliocene deposit (the Diestian Sand), (e) the earlier sweepings of a land surface which submerged after the Diestian deposit, and (f) later sweepings of the same land surface. It will thus be seen that the flint implements, now to be described, that were found in the detritus bed, may be referable to any of the periods represented by c, e, or f of the above list. We have no reason to think that at the epochs when the chalk and the London Clay were being laid down, man was present upon this planet, nor can he well be associated with the marine accumulation (d).”

Modern authorities give similar accounts of the detritus bed below the Red Crag. Tage Nilsson (1983, p. 105) stated: “At the bottom of the Red Crag deposits there is often a stony layer, constituting a kind of basal conglomerate, the Red Crag Nodule Bed. This mainly consists of flint pebbles and phosphorite nodules, washed out from older bedrock. It contains usually densely mineralized and often well-rounded and polished mammal fossils, which must in part be reworked from Eocene and other pre-Quaternary deposits.”

According to Nilsson (1983, p. 105), some fossils of Villafranchian species (such as Mammuthus meriodionalis) were found in the detritus bed. The Villafranchian land mammal stage spans the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary. This might suggest that the Red Crag detritus bed contains materials from the Early Pleistocene.

Arguing against this is the fact that the detritus beds are often found in situ beneath the intact Red and Coralline Crags (Moir 1924, p. 641), which can be safely referred to the Pliocene. Thus the Villafranchian component of the detritus bed fauna can be assigned to the Pliocene (rather than Pleistocene) part of the Villafranchian stage.

We note that potassium-argon dates obtained for a Villafranchian site in France reached 2.5–3.0 million years (Nilsson 1983, pp. 24, 158). We can therefore conclude that the age of the materials in the detritus beds at the base of the Crags range from Late Pliocene to perhaps Cretaceous in age. The Cretaceous chalk is, however, a marine formation, making the Eocene London Clay the earliest habitable land surface in the stratigraphic sequence of East Anglia.

3.3.3 Tools from Below the Red Crag (Pliocene to Eocene)

J. Reid Moir found in the sub-Crag detritus beds many types of stone tools, showing varying degrees of intentional work (Figure 3.6). He concluded that the cruder tools were older. Since the detritus beds, according to this scheme, appeared to contain a succession of stone tools from different periods, perhaps as far back as the Eocene, Moir (1935, pp. 360–361) wrote: “then it becomes necessary to recognize a much higher antiquity for the human race than has hitherto been supposed. I am fully aware of the implication of such a conclusion and the responsibility attaching to those who support it. Nevertheless, after a very careful and painstaking examination of all the available facts, I have been compelled to accept this conclusion as true, and have no hesitation in stating that such is the case.”

Moir connected the crudest tools, resembling the Harrison eoliths, with the Miocene elements of the detritus bed below the Red Crag. He considered them to be contemporary with the flint implements discovered in French Miocene formations at Aurillac (Section 4.3). But further than that he would not go, having stated, as above mentioned: “We have no reason to think that at the epochs when the chalk and the London Clay were being laid down, man was present upon this planet” (Moir 1924, p. 643).

Figure 3.6. Pointed implement from below the Red Crag (Moir 1935, p. 364). This specimen is over 2.5 million years old.

J. Reid Moir may have thought in that way, but, as we shall demonstrate later in this book, there is evidence that humans of the fully modern type were in fact present throughout the Tertiary, including the Eocene period, during the time when the London Clay was be-

ing deposited upon the underlying Cretaceous chalk (Sections 3.4.2, 5.5, 6.2, and 6.3; also Appendix 2).

So the stone implements collected by Moir from beds below the Red Crag formation could be of that age. In fact, it is quite possible that any of the stone implements, from the crudest to the most sophisticated, could be referred to any period from the Late Pliocene to the Eocene.

At the very least, then, the implements are Late Pliocene in age. But according to present evolutionary theory one should not expect to find signs of toolmaking humans in England at 2–3 million years ago. Two million years before the present, our toolmaking hominid ancestors (of the Homo habilis type) should still have been confined to their homeland in Africa. Three million years before the present, we should expect to find in Africa only the apelike australopithecines, who are not generally recognized as makers of stone tools.

Of his Miocene inhabitants of England, Moir (1927, p. 31) wrote: “Unfortunately, no actual bones of the people who made these implements have yet been discovered, but, judging from these specimens, we conclude that their makers were possessed of considerable strength, and represent an early and brutal stage in human evolution.”

We do not deny the possibility that ape-man-like creatures might have been responsible for the implements reported by Moir. But even today, modern humans are known to manufacture very primitive stone tools. It is thus possible that beings very much like Homo sapiens sapiens could have made the crudest of the implements recovered by Moir from below the Red Crag. In the absence of skeletal evidence directly connected with the stone tools, it is impossible to say with certainty what kind of creature manufactured them. All may have been made by humanlike creatures, all may have been made by ape-man-like creatures, or perhaps some were manufactured by humanlike creatures and others by apeman-like creatures.

The implements themselves were a matter of extreme controversy. Many scientists thought them to be products of natural forces rather than of human work. Nevertheless, Moir had many influential supporters. These included Henri Breuil, who personally investigated the sites (Section 3.4.7). He found in Moir’s collection an apparent sling stone from below the Red Crag (Section 5.3.1). Another supporter was Archibald Geikie, a respected geologist and president of the Royal Society (Millar 1972, p. 100). Yet another was Sir Ray Lankester, a director of the British Museum. Lankester identified from among Moir’s specimens a representative type of implement he named rostro-carinate. This word calls attention to two prominent characteristics of the tools. “Rostro” refers to the beaklike shape of the working portion of the implements, and “carinate” refers to the sharp keellike prominence running along part of their dorsal surface (Moir 1927, p. 26).

Lankester presented a detailed analysis of the “Norwich test specimen” (Figure 3.7). A particularly good example of the rostro-carinate type of implement, it was discovered beneath the Red Crag at Whitlingham, near Norwich (Moir 1927, p. 28; Osborn 1921, p. 576). If the Norwich test specimen is from below the Red Crag, it would be over 2.5 million years old. If it is from below the Norwich Crag as suggested by Sparks and West (1972, p. 234), it would be over 2.0 million years old (Table 2.1, p. 78). The Norwich test specimen combined a good demonstration of intentional work with clear stratigraphic position Sir Ray Lankester wrote in a Royal Antropological Institute report in 1914: “it is not possible for anyone acquainted with flint-workmanship and also with the nonhuman fracture of flint to maintainthatitiseveninaremotedegree possible that the sculpturing of this Norwich test flint was produced by other than human agency” (Coles 1968, p. 27).

Professor J. M. Coles of Cambridge University (1968, p. 27) later noted: “His description was full and was accompanied by drawings and photographs showing that approximately 40 flakes had been removed from various angles and positions around the flint, consisting of two cleaving fractures, a group of large conchoidal flakings, and a third group of smaller flakings directed upon specific parts, particularly the beaked portion.”

Figure 3.7. The Norwich test specimen. J. Reid Moir (1927, p. 28) said it was found beneath the Red Crag at Whitlingham, England. The beak (arrow) forms the working portion of the implement, which, if from below the Red Crag, would be over 2.5 million years old.

At a lecture before the Royal Society in London, Lankester said he hoped “that no one would venture to waste the time of the society by suggesting that sub-crag flints had been flaked by natural causes, as by so doing it would be plain that they had a very scanty knowledge of such matters.” Someone present did, however, venture to suggest exactly that. Lankester said it was “the sort of thing I would expect to hear from a savage.” Another time G. Worthington Smith, known to us for his skeptical exchanges with Benjamin Harrison of Ightham, said of the eoliths and pebble tools: “We have here choppers that do not chop and borers that do not bore.” Lankester retorted: “You, sir, are a bore who does bore” (Millar 1972, p. 100).

About the age of the rostro-carinate tools, Lankester stated in 1941: “I do not intend to proceed without caution to any conclusion on this subject, but it seems to me quite possible that there is a close relationship between the men who made the Upper Miocene rostro-carinate implements of Aurillac [Section 4.3] and those who made similar implements in Suffolk before the deposit of the Red Crag” (Moir 1935, p. 359).

Moir (1935, p. 360) himself also observed that intact counterparts of the beds that provided the materials for the detritus layer below the Red Crag could be found elsewhere in Europe and contained stone implements: “the Upper Miocene deposits of France [Sections 4.2, 4.3] and some older beds in Belgium [Section 4.4] have already yielded flaked flints, claimed by certain competent investigators as of human origin.”

3.3.4 The Foxhall Finds (Late Pliocene)

One important set of discoveries by Moir occurred at Foxhall, where he found stone tools (Figure 3.8) not in the detritus bed but in the middle of the Red Crag formation. Some authorities, including Moir, have placed the upper part of the Red Crag in the Early Pleistocene, but our review of the range of geological opinion has led us to place the entire Red Crag formation in the Late Pliocene. The Foxhall implements would thus be over 2.0 million years old. Moir (1927, p. 33) wrote: “The finds consisted of the debris of a flint workshop, and included hammer-stones, cores from which flakes had been struck, finished implements, numerous flakes, and several calcined stones showing that fires had been lighted at this spot. The Foxhall implements are, in the majority of cases, of a yellowish white colour, and more finely made than the still more ancient specimens found at the base of the Crag, and give us a very clear idea of the type of workmanship of which these ancient Suffolk people of Early Quaternary times were capable. While if the famous Foxhall human jaw-bone, which was apparently not very primitive in form, was, indeed, derived from the old land surface now buried deep beneath the Crag and a great thickness of Glacial Gravel, we can form the definite opinion that these ancient people were not very unlike ourselves in bodily characteristics.” The jaw spoken of by Moir has an interesting history (Section 6.2.1). For now, we shall simply note that some scientists who examined it considered it like that of a modern human being.

Figure 3.8. Front and rear views of two stone tools from the Red Crag at Foxhall, England. They are Late Pliocene in age. Henry Fairfield Osborn (1921, p. 572) said of the tool on the left: “Two views of pointed flint implement flaked on the upper and lower surfaces and with a constricted base, from sixteen-foot level of Foxhall pit. Primitive arrowhead type, which may have been used in the chase.” Of the implement on the right, Osborn wrote: “Borer ( perçoir) from sixteen-foot level of Foxhall.”

It is unfortunate that the Foxhall jaw is not available for further study, for it might offer further confirmation that the flint implements from Foxhall were of human manufacture. But even without the presence of actual human skeletal remains, the tools themselves point strongly to a human presence in England during the Late Pliocene, perhaps 2.0–2.5 million years ago.

The American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn (1921, p. 573) came out strongly in favor of the implements having been manufactured by human beings and argued for a Pliocene date: “Proofs which have rested hitherto on the doubtful testimony of irregular eoliths generally considered by archaeologists as not of human manufacture, now rest on the firm foundation of the Foxhall flints in which human handiwork cannot be challenged; these proofs have convinced the most learned and most conservative expert in flint industry in Europe today, namely Abbe Henri Breuil of the Institut de Paleontologie Humaine.” According to Osborn (1921, p. 573), the Foxhall specimens included borers, arrowheadlike pointed implements (some hafted), scrapers, and side scrapers very much like early Mousterian racloirs.

Osborn (1921, p. 566) concluded: “This discovery of man in Pliocene time delights the present writer for a personal reason, namely, because it tends to render somewhat more probable his prophecy made in April 1921, before the National Academy of Sciences at Washington that one of the great surprises in store for us in science is the future discovery of Pliocene man with a large brain.” This sort of talk would not go down very well today.

Osborn (1921, p. 565) backed not only the Foxhall flints but the rest of Moir’s work as well: “The discoveries of J. Reid Moir of evidences of the existence of Pliocene man in East Anglia open a new epoch in archaeology. . . . they bring indubitable evidence of the existence of man in southeast Britain, man of sufficient intelligence to fashion flints and to build a fire, before the close of the Pliocene time and before the advent of the First Glaciation.”

But whether one accepts Osborn’s Pliocene date or Moir’s Early Pleistocene estimate, neither is to be expected if one accepts the standard version of hominid evolution in an African homeland. This is especially true if, as the Foxhall jaw indicates, the maker of the Foxhall flint tools was fully human. The first Homo sapiens are thought to have come into existence only a couple of hundred thousand years ago at most, and the standard textbook version is that fully modern Homo sapiens sapiens is only about 100,000 years old.

Another scientist won over by the Foxhall finds was Hugo Obermaier, previously a consistent and vocal opponent of Eolithic discoveries. Obermaier was one of those scientists who believed that eoliths were produced by natural forces similar to the forces operating in cement and chalk mills (Section 3.5). But Obermaier (1924, p. 41) wrote: “Very recently a large bed of flints with evidences of fire has been found on the eastern coast of England near Norwich and beneath the Late Pliocene deposits known as the

‘Red Crag’ and the ‘Norwich Crag.’ The authenticity of the flints as of human origins is disputed by some archaeologists, but is accepted by others, including Louis Capitan, the veteran archaeologist of France, and Henri Breuil, who is frequently quoted in these pages. This discovery of Foxhall is the first evidence we have of the existence of Tertiary man.”

Someone might have asked Obermaier if, having accepted the Foxhall flint tools as proof of human existence in the Tertiary, he might reevaluate any of the Tertiary Eolithic industries he had once rejected.

Figure 3.9. Pointed tool from the Cromer Forest Bed, East Runton, England (Moir 1927, p. 45). It could be from about .8 million to 1.75 million years old, depending upon how one dates the Cromer Forest Bed.

3.3.5 Cromer Forest Bed (Middle or Early Pleistocene)

Thus far we have considered Moir’s discoveries in the Tertiary bone bed below the Late Pliocene Red Crag and his finds in the Red Crag itself at Foxhall. We shall now turn to some discoveries in the more recent Cromer Forest Bed of Norfolk. As we have seen (Section 2.19; Table 2.1, p. 78), the Cromer Forest Bed dates from about .4 million years to about .8 million years ago, or perhaps even as much as 1.75 million years ago. During this period, according to Moir, the delta of the Rhine extended to East Anglia.

Moir found specimens of a stone industry (Figure 3.9), including large handaxes, lying on the beach at Cromer and East Runton in Norfolk. He stated that they originated from a stone bed exposed in the base of the cliffs along the shore. Moir (1924, p. 649) wrote: “The Cromer specimens are found chiefly upon the foreshore. . . . They lie upon the chalk, and have evidently been derived from a formation at the very base of the Cromer Forest Bed series of deposits, which form the lowermost strata of the high bluffs of the Norfolk coast. . . . In some places, as at East Runton, about two miles northwestward of Cromer, large areas of the implementiferous bed can be seen in situ upon the chalk, and from this deposit have been recovered several very definite examples of Early Paleolithic hand axes.” If the implements are, as Moir stated, from the lowest part of the Cromer Forest Bed formation, they would, according to modern estimates, be at least .8 million and perhaps as much as 1.75 million years old.

Moir (1924, p. 652) went on to describe the implements: “There is no doubt that the Cromer industry shows an advance from the sub-Crag culture, but it is nevertheless closely related to it. The ancient Cromerians, using probably large hammerstones of flint, were able to detach in some cases enormous flakes of flint, and the whole industry is on a large and massive scale. On the foreshore at Cromer the contents of a workshop site were found, comprising hand axes, choppers, side scrapers, points, and numerous flakes. . . . Their skill in flint-flaking is evidenced by the immense flake scars produced by the primary quartering blows, the well-formed striking platforms, and the regular and accurate secondary flaking.” Critics of anomalous stone tools often ask for just the type of evidence reported by Moir—a variety of finished tool types and flakes in close association, indicating a workshop site.

3.3.6 Moir Versus Haward

Having briefly reviewed Moir’s discoveries beneath the Red and Coralline Crags, in the Red Crag at Foxhall, and from the Cromer Forest Bed, we shall now examine the history of the scientific controversies surrounding them. J. M. Coles (1968) of Cambridge gave a rare modern summary of the disputes.

In 1919, F. N. Haward attacked Moir’s discoveries, claiming that they were the product of geological pressure acting on flint. Moir and A. S. Barnes replied to Haward in articles published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia. Moir (1919, p. 158) made the following comments: “It appears that Mr. Haward has found in the Norwich Stone Bed a flint, or flints, which exhibit a flake detached, but not removed from the parent block, and he concludes, and rightly concludes, that such flakes have become so detached since the bed in which they occur was laid down. He draws attention to the well-known fact that flints in the chalk, and, I may add, in other deposits as well, break up into pieces of varying size, and that such breakage is of natural origin. And once more I am in agreement. But here, I fear, we take widely different paths.”

Haward believed the cause of breakage to be pressure. Moir agreed that this was indeed one possible cause, and pointed out that he had himself published a paper on this topic (“The Fractured Flints of the Eocene ‘Bull-Head’ at Coe’s Pit, Bramford, near Ipswich”) in the Journal of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia. Moir (1919, pp. 158–159) went on to state: “But I know also that pressure flakes exhibit certain peculiarities of their surfaces which differentiate them markedly from other flakes which have been removed by percussion, and so far as I can ascertain, Mr. Haward has not yet demonstrated, scientifically, that the few flakes upon which he bases his portentous argument have without doubt been detached by pressure. It may also be recalled that the Norwich Stone Bed, as I can testify from actual observation, contains very often fragile bones of mammals, and the sands above it, at Whitlingham, where a large proportion of the sub-crag implements described by Mr. Clarke have been found, have embedded in them even more fragile shells. And it is legitimate to ask why, if pressure is fracturing the hard, resistant flints in the Stone Bed, the easily-broken organic remains mentioned are quite frequently found intact.” Rejecting the pressure hypothesis, Moir suggested another explanation. Before being embedded in the deposit a flint nodule might have been subjected to blows strong enough to produce incipient bulbs of percussion. Later, under the influence of heat, for example, the flakes might have come off. Moir (1919, p. 159) added that Haward himself had noted that some flaked flints he studied bore signs of percussion.

Moir (1919, p. 159) then stated: “But whatever the exact cause of such fracturing may be, it is clear that such cases are very rare, and moreover, when they are found, only one or two flakes are seen to be in contact with the parent block. Yet Mr. Haward does not hesitate to infer that all the other flints exhibiting numerous flake-scars upon their surfaces, and a definite implemental form, have been produced by this same natural fracturing. When also it is remembered that many, if not most, of these latter specimens show by their colouration and condition that they are definitely more ancient than the bed in which they now occur, it will be seen that this inference rests upon a very attenuated and shaky basis. But if this is the case in regard to the Norwich Stone Bed flints, what is one to say about the extension of Mr. Haward’s inference to the specimens found under totally different conditions beneath the Red Crag of Suffolk, and where, up to the present, no evidence of any fracturing in situ has been seen?” Moir (1919, pp. 160–161) pointed out that the specimens found below the Red Crag displayed only signs of flake removal by percussion, with no sign of pressure fracturing.

Moir (1919, p. 161) concluded his remarks with this affirmation: “students of human and animal bones have regarded the existence of man in the Pliocene as almost a necessity, and from my later researches I incline to the belief that not only was man present on this earth at that period, but that he was then culturally much more advanced than has hitherto been imagined.”

3. 3.7 Warren’s Attack on Moir

Still the opposition to Moir continued, with scientists clinging with remarkable tenacity to variations of the natural pressure-flaking hypothesis. Coles (1968, p. 27) stated: “A more scholarly attack on the authenticity of the ‘industries’ was made by S. Hazzledine Warren in 1921, who claimed that mechanical movement of flint upon flint under pressure produced flaking comparable to that seen on not only the Kentish eoliths but also the rostro-carinates and other Crag assemblages. Warren based his argument upon his observations of fractured flints in Eocene deposits in Essex, and upon experiments. Moir and Barnes defended themselves vigorously, and claimed that natural pressure flaking could easily be distinguished from the edge-flaking on the Kentish eoliths and on the Crag series. The naturally-produced specimens claimed by Warren to be of rostrocarinate form from the Essex gravels were said to be entirely different.” In1923, an international commission of scientists concluded that the flaking on the specimens collected by Warren was in fact different from that on Moir’s implements (Section 3.3.8).

Warren’s report was delivered in an address to the Geological Society of London, and was later published in the Society’s journal. In the Eocene location studied by Warren, the flints were lying beneath layers of sediment, upon a chalk surface, where he claimed that they had been subjected to pressure and differential movement by “solution of the chalk surface.” In other words, the flints had been crushed by the pressure of overlying layers as they slipped into holes eroded in the chalk by the action of ground water. Warren claimed to have found, in locations where such crushing had occurred, many specimens resembling not only eoliths but Mousterian implements as well.

Of one such specimen ( Figure3.10), Warren (1920, p. 248) stated: “This, a good example of a trimmed-flake point, is the most remarkable specimen of the group.

Figure 3.10.S. Hazzledine Warren said that this object, which he believed to be the product of natural pressure flaking, almost exactly resembled a Mousterian trimmed point implement ( MacCurdy 1924b, p. 657). But although found in an Eocene formation, it could in fact be of human manufacture.

If considered by itself, upon its own apparent merits, and away from its associates and the circumstances of its discovery, its Mousterian affinities could scarcely be questioned. But, like all the other specimens illustrated, I dug it out of the Bullhead bed myself in circumstances which preclude the possibility of mistake.” In this connection George Grant MacCurdy, director of the American School of Prehistoric Research in Europe, wrote: “Warren states that if the best selected flakes from the Bullhead Bed were mingled with flakes from a prehistoric workshop floor, they could never be separated again unless it were by their mineral condition” (1924b, pp. 657–658).

Much depends upon whether or not the flaking on Warren’s specimens actually resembled that of Paleolithic humans. If the flaking was different, then Warren’s argument against Moir becomes irrelevant. If, on the other hand, the flaking was similar, then what are we to make of specimens, such as the one depicted in Figure 3.10, which are so very much like accepted Paleolithic stone tools?

Warren appeared to take for granted, in a fashion typical of those who shared his prejudices, that it was impossible to find in Eocene strata implements of human manufacture, particularly those displaying a relatively high level of stoneflaking technique. Moir, as we have seen, expressed the same view—no toolmaking beings could have existed in the Eocene (Section 3.3.3). But those who are free from such prejudices might justifiably wonder whether Warren had actually discovered, in the Eocene strata of Essex, a genuine object of human manufacture.

A similar event occurred some years earlier in France, where H. Breuil, in attempting to prove the natural origin of eoliths by geological pressure, also found in an Eocene formation specimens exactly resembling Late Paleolithic stone tools (Section 3.4.2). Breuil, however, was convinced that humans could not have existed in the Eocene.

As we noted in a previous chapter (Section 2.9), T. McKenny Hughes also expressed a conviction that humans could not have existed as far back as the Eocene, despite the presence in an Eocene formation of pierced shark’s teeth like those made by today’s inhabitants of the South Pacific. Other finds of objects of human manufacture in formations that might be as old as the Eocene occurred in California (Section 5.5). In this context, Warren’s Bullhead Bed discoveries, if regarded as genuine implements, do not seem so out of place.

In the discussion that followed Warren’s report, Mr. Dewey, one of the scientists present, pointed out that in some cases the Kent eoliths and Moir’s rostro-carinates are found in the middle of Tertiary sedimentary beds and not directly on the hard chalk. This circumstance, said Dewey, would rule out the particular pressure explanation given by Warren.

Warren had displayed some specimens during his talk. But Reginald Smith complained that Warren (and Breuil in France) had compared their natural productions with only a few of the very poorest eolith specimens. Smith accused Warren of discouraging research in early deposits.

The record stated: “Mr. H. Bury thought it unfortunate that such a discussion should have been raised without a fair representation of both sides of the case among the exhibits. The author [Warren] and Mr. Haward had brought forward the best specimens that they could find in support of their case; but for comparison they only produced some half dozen very inferior Kentish eoliths, and no sub-Crag implements at all. It was a mistake to suppose that believers in Pliocene man had ignored these pressure-flaked flints from the Eocene beds; on the contrary, the differences in detail which they observed between the two categories formed an essential factor in their argument” (Warren 1920, p. 251).

Bury’s point is well worth noting, for one often encounters something like the following in discussions of eoliths by their detractors. The skeptical authority will point out that such and such scientist found in Tertiary strata stone objects he incautiously believed to be of human manufacture and that the discovery was a matter of controversy for some years until such and such scientist delivered his definitive report that conclusively demonstrated that the stone objects had been produced by the pressure of the overlying layers. But in recounting this history the skeptical authority ignores the fact that the original discoverer had carefully considered and dismissed that very possibility. In considering the eolith question with an open mind, one learns to be suspicious of definitive disproofs, which often turn out to be quite rickety intellectual contraptions.

The notes of the discussion also recorded the following ironic remarks by one of the members of the Geological Society: “Mr. A. S. Kennard congratulated the author [Warren] on an important discovery, and considered that the paper strongly supported the claim for the human origin of the Kentish eoliths. He agreed with the author that it was unfair to decide from a few examples, and that the proper test was the whole group. Judged by this standard, neither of the series shown [by Warren] resembled the Kentish eoliths, since the more numerous and characteristic specimens [shown by Warren] were quite unknown on the Plateau” (Warren 1920, p. 251). Kennard thus turned the tables on Warren, taking his attempt to dismiss the eoliths as proof of their genuineness.

3.3.8 An International Commission of Scientists Decides in Favor of Moir

At this point, the controversy over Moir’s discoveries was submitted to an international commission of scientists for resolution. Coles (1968, p. 27) related that this group “was overwhelmingly in support of Moir’s conclusions, that the flints from the base of the Red Crag near Ipswich were in undisturbed strata, and that some of the flaking was indubitably of artificial origin.” In the words of the commission report: “The flints are found in a stratigraphic position, without trace of resorting, at the base of the Red Crag. A certain number of the flints do not appear to have been made by anything other than voluntary human action” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 44).

The commission, formed at the request of the International Institute of Anthropology, was composed of Dr. L. Capitan, professor at the College of France and the School of Anthropology; Paul Fourmarier, professor of applied geology at the University of Liége and the School of Anthropology; Charles Fraipont, professor of paleontology at the University of Liége and the School of Anthropology; J. Hamal-Nandrin, professor of the School of Anthropology at Liége; Max Lohest, professor of geology at the University of Liége and the School of Anthropology; George Grant MacCurdy, professor at Harvard University; Mr. Nelson, archeologist of the National Museum of Natural History of New York; and Miles Burkitt, professor of prehistory at the University of Cambridge (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 54).

The commission wanted to settle the following questions (Lohest et al.1923, p. 53): “(1) At the point where the flints considered worked were discovered, is it established that the strata in which they were found are definitely Pliocene and that no action of resorting or intrusive deposition is responsible for the introduction into ancient beds of modern objects? (2) Are the flints found among rocks or other conditions that could have produced pseudo-retouching by impact or pressure?” Concerning the flints themselves, the commission was to answer the following questions: “(1) Are the flints of the Crag worked, retouched, or utilized? (2) Can the retouching be compared to that produced by natural physical action? (3) Can one affirm that the flaking and retouching are due to intelligent and voluntary work?”

To answer these questions, the commission visited the principal sites where Moir had collected his specimens, including locations at Ipswich, Thorington Hall, Bramford, and Foxhall Road. They also examined the collection at the Ipswich Museum, the personal collection of Moir, and Warren’s collection of pressureflaked flints from the Bullhead Eocene beds. Also visited were the collections at the Cambridge Museum and the British Museum at South Kensington, as well as the collection of Mr. Westlake at Fordingbridge near Salisbury, which included his enormous collection of flints from Puy Courny and Puy de Boudieu near Aurillac, France (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 54).

The geologists Max Lohest and Paul Fourmarier reported on the stratigraphy of Moir’s discoveries. Lohest and Fourmarier stated: “The purpose of our mission to Ipswich was to verify whether flints showing indisputable signs of intentional work are in fact encountered in undisturbed Tertiary strata” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 54). These two experts confirmed, at Thorington Hall, that the Red Crag lies upon the Eocene London Clay, and that at the bottom of the Red Crag there is a “detritus bed,” which contains flints (not rolled), flint pebbles, phosphate nodules, fossil remains of deer, and also flints showing signs of intentional work.

Lohest and Fourmarier reported: “After minute examination, we believe we can affirm that the Red Crag, because of its cross-bedded stratification and numerous fossils at the pit at Thorington Hall, constitutes incontestably a primary deposit in place, not reformed, and that the deposit is Pliocene and formed in the immediate vicinity of the seashore. If the flints of this deposit are really the work of an intelligent being, then there is no doubt, according to us, that this being existed in England before the great marine invasion of Trophon antiquum, considered by all geologists as dating to the late Tertiary epoch” (Lohest et al.1923, pp. 55–56).

J. Hamal-Nandrin and Charles Fraipont also reported on the geological considerations: “The detritus bed from which the flints are recovered is surmounted by several meters of Red Crag deposits containing Pliocene shells. The Red Crag is apparently an ancient shore, and the shells accumulated in the sand on the actual shore. There are very delicate shells, such as bivalves; many are found whole, and the least pressure, the least touch, causes them to break. A deposit of this type is primary, not composite or resorted (remanié). It is in the underlying detritus bed that the flints are found. At Thorington Hall the detritus bed lacks many rocks. It contains coprolites, phosphate nodules, and only some small flint pebbles. The superimposed Red Crag is also almost without rocks” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 57).

Hamal-Nandrin and Fraipont then stated: “The rarity of rocks does not permit us to suppose that the flints may have been retouched by shocks or pressure in situ. It had to be done, either naturally or artificially, before their incorporation into the beds. Below the detritus bed is the London clay, from which some rolled blocks have been incorporated into the detritus bed. The detritus bed contains, along with bones of whales, fossils of terrestrial mammals certainly characteristic of the Pliocene. This gives evidence that it was upon an ancient land surface that the sea of the Late Pliocene deposited the Red Crag, a shoreline formation at this point. If the flints from below the Red Crag at Thorington Hall, in undisturbed strata, give signs of intelligent work, the being that used them is Pliocene” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 57).

Hamal-Nandrin and Fraipont then turned their expertise to determining the presence of signs of intentional work on the sub-Crag flints: “A certain number of the pieces collected from below the Red Crag, and now found in the collections of Mr. Reid Moir and the Ipswich Museum, present, in our opinion, the characteristics that distinguish worked flints: a striking platform, clear bulb of percussion, and edges with series of small flakes removed, indicating intentional retouching and utilization as a tool. If you were to find these in strata of the Mousterian period, you would not hesitate to say that they are tools showing intentional work and utilization. . . . In our present state of knowledge, we cannot see that anything other than intelligent action could be capable of producing such effects. . . . At Thorington Hall, the rarity of stones and their dispersal does not permit us to suppose that the flints have been naturally retouched by impact or pressure. One can observe that in the level where the specimens are found one does not find any worn and fractured flints other than the ones appearing to be the result of intentional work. The worked flints are not only rare, but extremely rare, according to prehistorians who have studied the strata” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 58).

After studying several of the collections of flints previously mentioned, Hamal-Nandrin and Fraipont declared themselves in favor of Moir’s view that the sub-Crag flints were implements of human manufacture. They further stated: “The chipped edges of the flints collected by Mr. Warren from the Eocene Bullhead beds, along with those produced artificially by him, are very different from the edges of those belonging to the detritus beds below the Crag at Ipswich” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 58).

Capitan’s report also supported Moir’s position, both on the sub-Crag finds and those from the Cromer Forest Bed and related formations on the Norfolk coast. Capitan noted that the Pleistocene Boulder Clay had yielded to Moir and others some rare specimens of Mousterian type. But the middle glacial gravels below the Boulder Clay, according to Capitan, contained an enormous number of flints modified by glacial action. The flakes and their pseudoretouching from purely natural causes became an object of special study and consideration, for the precise purpose of comparison with the flints recovered from below the Red Crag. Certain pieces from the glacial gravels did, however, appear to be clearly worked, resembling the Chellean and preChellean types of tools. They were chipped in simple fashion and had a bright characteristic patina (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 59).

Capitan described the Red Crag as a sandy clay, colored red by oxides of iron, containing isolated siliceous stones, phosphate concretions of round small size, fragments of shells, rare shark teeth and even more rare whale bones, and also relatively small pieces of fractured flint. These elements, he noted, were concentrated in a layer at the base of the Crag. Capitan stated: “This is the detritus bed. It is here exclusively (except at Foxhall where there is a second bed almost the same as this) that one finds, only after great trouble, isolated in the midst of the sands, and never in contact with other flints, some flakes and pieces of broken flint, and even more rarely the typical Red Crag specimens” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 60).

Members of the commission carried out four excavations into the detritus bed over the course of four days and found five or six typical specimens. Capitan stated: “I will not neglect to say that the flints were absolutely in place in compact terrain; two reposed at Thorington Hall on the underlying clay. . . . at Thorington Hall you have a detritus bed covered by marine sands. So everything there is from either before or contemporaneous with the sea that deposited the Crag” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 60).

Studying the specimens of Moir and those at the Ipswich Museum, Capitan categorized them as doubtful, probable, and definite. About half the total specimens were in the doubtful category, with almost another half in the probable category. In the probable group were all those flakes that showed traces of adaptation or retouching identical to that on accepted tools. Capitan stated: “We consider that the greatest number of these pieces are genuine tools bearing diverse traces of intentional work which one can distinguish, with practice, from natural fracturing and flaking. But if someone wants to express doubts, then we leave the discussion to them and will not seek to demonstrate the intentional work” (Lohest et al. 1923, pp. 61–62).

But Capitan stated that in addition to the many specimens in the probable category the commission recognized twenty pieces as indisputably worked: “They are of definite form, exactly like accepted Mousterian pieces. These are not freaks of nature or naturally broken stones used without modification as tools—they were products of volition, and show signs of a definite intent to construct a particular kind of tool” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 62). The commission selected eleven pieces for reproduction in their report: two Mousterian-like side scrapers (racloirs), two discoidal end scrapers (grattoirs), two points, two blades (one with much retouching), an actual handaxe, a sort of big chisel, and a big retouched piece of the grattoir form.

Capitan, praising the rigorous scientific procedures applied by Moir and his collaborators, then stated: “One might object that the small number of definite specimens is not sufficient, but this is due to the extremely rigorous process of selection. We are persuaded that a great many of the ones not selected are also worked” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 62). Capitan added: “The small number selected for this demonstration is deliberate because their legitimacy as products of human industry cannot in the least be challenged even by technical experts” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 62).

Capitan concluded: “We need not uselessly continue the discussion about whether these pieces are worked or not, giving undue attention to explanations from incompetents. For any person who has any real acquaintance with the characteristics of worked flints, such questions will not come up” (Lohest et al. 1923, pp. 62–63). If one rejected Moir’s finds, stated Capitan, then one would have to reject about 80 percent of the generally accepted Mousterian pieces (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 63).

Figure 3.11. A side scraper (racloir) discovered beneath the Red Crag at Thorington Hall, England (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 63).

Capitan next described some of the undisputed specimens. These came from Thorington Hall, Bramford, and the Bolton Company brickfield. From Moir’s reports (1924), it appears that the primary tool-bearing layer at each of these sites is the detritus bed below the Red Crag. This would make the flint tools Capitan described at least 2.5 million years old. And because the detritus bed contains materials from ancient Eocene land surfaces, the tools might be up to 55 million years old.

Concerning an implement from below the Red Crag at Thorington Hall (Figure 3.11), Capitan said: “The very best piece . . . is a great and thick racloir (side scraper) fashioned from an irregular oval flake, with numerous bulbs of percussion. It is of the same form as many of the most typical Mousterian racloirs, and like them it is retouched on all sides. On the outer surface, near the point of the instrument . . . a carefully retouched depression accommodates a finger for gripping the implement. In truth, this is a piece that can just as much be said to have been manufactured by humans as the best Mousterian racloirs. On the plane surface, on the other end of the implement . . . is an enormous bulb of percussion” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 63).

Of two discoidal grattoirs (end scrapers) recovered from Thorington Hall (Figure 3.12), Capitan stated: “Made from thick flakes, and carefully retouched all around, they both have in the middle of the upper surface a long deep flake removed.

Figure 3.12. Two discoidal scrapers from below the Red Crag at Thorington Hall, England (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 64).

On the other side of each, which is smooth, there is a bulb of percussion” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 63).

In using a grattoir, or end scraper, the scraping edge of the implement is held lengthwise along the line of force (or end first). In using a racloir, or side scraper, the tool’s scraping edge is held perpendicular to the line of force (or sideways).

In addition, Capitan drew attention to a particular implement (Figure 3.13) that he described as being “well retouched on every side and having an extremity terminating in a bevelled edge carefully made by regular retouching” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 64).

Capitan also noted “a big racloir, with the cortex partially removed and with the cutting edge carefully dressed and adapted by a series of regular and multiple retouchings. This edge is so perfectly rectilinear as to give clear indication it is of human origin” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 65).

Another implement (Figure 3.14) was retouched on two of its edges and displayed on its face three long flake scars. The fact that the three flake scars on the implement were parallel was, according to Capitan, a certain sign they were deliberately removed in succession. He believed this specimen from below the Red Crag appeared to be a handaxe absolutely identical to the best pre-Chellean types from the Somme region of France.

Capitan (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 66) described another specimen as follows: “A thin blade with a bulb on the inferior surface, and a very precise imprint of a second blade removed from the upper part.

Figure 3.13. An implement from below the Red Crag (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 65).

Figure 3.14. An implement from below the Red Crag at Bramford, England (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 66).

This work is absolutely human” (Figure 3.15). Yet another object illustrated in Capitan’s report was a pointed implement, with an apparent bulb of percussion visible at the base ( Figure 3.16).

In concluding his analysis, Capitan definitively stated that “there exist at the base of the Crag, in undisturbed strata, worked flints (we have observed them ourselves). These are not made by anything other than a human or hominid which existed in the Tertiary epoch. This fact is found by us prehistorians to be absolutely demonstrated” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 67).

Surprisingly, even after the commission report, Moir’s opponents, such as Warren, persisted in attempting to show that the flint implements from beneath the Red Crag and elsewhere were the product of some kind of natural pressure flaking.

Moir and Barnes kept defending their position and picked up supporters. Coles (1968, p. 29) stated: “In 1932 T. D. Kendrick outlined some of the different viewpoints, and came down strongly in support of Moir, not so much on the geological problems involved as on the character of some of the flints.” About Moir’s flints and other Eolithic industries, Kendrick said that “many of them are to be regarded as ‘probably artifacts,’ while there are one or two (in the British Museum) . . . that I feel certain are man’s handiwork” (Coles 1968, p. 29).

Figure 3.15. A blade implement found beneath the Red Crag formation at Bramford, England (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 66).

Figure 3.16. A pointed implement from below the Red Crag formation, England, thought to be from Late Pliocene to Eocene in age (Lohest et al.1923, p. 65).