Awhile back on one of these threads, someone suggested ToE could be falsified if we found very old human remains or artifacts, such as millions of years in the past.
That made me wonder if perhaps this hasn't already occurred, and like much of the story of evolution, the data has been twisted to make it fit into evolutionary paradigms, and sure enough, we see human artifacts and remains in the mid Miocene period.
In 1872, at the International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology meeting in Brussels, Ribeiro gave another report on his discoveries and displayed more specimens, mostly pointed flakes. A. W. Franks, Conservator of National Antiquities and Ethnography at the British Museum, stated that some of the specimens were the product of intentional work.
Ribeiro's Miocene flints made an impressive showing, but remained controversial. At the Paris Exposition of 1878, Ribeiro displayed specimens of Tertiary flint tools in the gallery of anthropological science. De Mortillet visited Ribeiro's exhibit and, in the course of examining the specimens carefully, decided that they had indubitable signs of human work.
De Mortillet, along with his friend and colleague Emile Cartailhac, enthusiastically brought other archaeologists to see Ribeiro's specimens, and they were all of the same opinion: the flints were definitely made by humans. Cartailhac then photographed the specimens, and de Mortillet later presented pictures in his Muse Prhistorique (G. and A. de Mortillet, 1881).
De Mortillet (1883:99) wrote: "The intentional work is very well established, not only by the general shape, which can be deceptive, but much more conclusively by the presence of clearly evident striking platforms and strongly developed bulbs of percussion.
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Miocene flint tools are reported from Puy de Boudieu, near Aurillac, in the department of Cantal in the Massif Central region of France (Verworn, 1905). The flint implements were found in layers of fluviatile sands, stones and eroded chalk, along with fossils of a typical Miocene fauna, including Dinotherium giganteum, Mastodon longirostris, Rhinocerus schleiermacheri and Hipparion gracile. The implement-bearing layers were covered with basalt flows (Verworn, 1905:17).
Verworn was very cautious in identifying the objects he found as objects manufactured by humans. Summarising his methodology, Verworn (1905:29) said:
"Suppose I find in an interglacial stone bed a flint that bears a clear bulb of percussion, but no other symptoms of intentional work. In that case, I would be doubtful as to whether or not I had before me an object of human manufacture. But suppose I find there a flint which on one side shows all the typical signs of percussion, and which on the other side shows the negative impressions of two, three, four or more flakes removed by blows in the same direction. Furthermore, let us suppose one edge of the piece shows numerous successive small parallel flakes removed, all running in the same direction, and all, without exception, located on the same side of the edge. Let us suppose that all the other edges are sharp, without a trace of impact or rolling. Then I can say with complete certainty: it is an implement of human manufacture."
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Thus the stone tools he found in them were evidence for a human presence in the Tertiary of Portugal. Most of his discoveries occurred in formations of lower Miocene age, which would make them about 20 million years old. For decades, his discoveries attracted considerable and often favorable attention in scientific circles. But the announcement of the discovery of Java man in the 1890s changed things. Java man was from the earliest Quaternary, and was accompanied by no stone tools. From that point on, most scientists thought it impossible that makers of stone tools existed in the Tertiary, and Ribeiro's discoveries slid into oblivion. Having only read about them in his reports, it was quite an experience, this July, to go into the old Museum of Geology in Lisbon, and handle the actual artifacts. They were hidden away in the storage cabinets, no longer displayed to the public.
When I looked at the collections, I saw that some of them had some interesting labels. Originally classified by Ribeiro as Miocene or Pliocene, the new labels, written in the early 20th century, assigned the objects to accepted stone tool industries of the middle and late Pleistocene. At that time, the objects were apparently still on display. But some time after that they were removed from display. When I was at the museum, the director said he would like to put the objects on display once more. I take that as a sign of progress. It was also interesting to touch and read Ribeiro's original field notes and maps. And finally, it was interesting to retrace his steps to some of the sites where he found his Miocene artifacts. The paper I gave on Ribeiro's discoveries was well received at the European Association of Archeologists annual meeting in Lisbon this September. Ribeiro must have felt something special when he took the artifacts out of the ground, where they had lain buried for millions of years. And I felt something special as I took them out of the scientific oblivion, in which they had lain for many decades.
flash3
In the basement of the British Museum of Natural History there is a two-ton slab of limestone which was quarried from the Grande Terre deposits on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, in 1812. The rock is dated by evolutionists as being Lower Miocene. The slab clearly contains the skeletal remains of a female human being who died a violent death. She would have stood about 5 feet 2 inches high.
The limestone is harder than statuary marble, and it enveloped the body while the sediment was still in a liquid state, prior to hardening into rock. The body was buried suddenly and catastrophically based upon the position of the bones. The organic material in the rock proves that the body had not decayed prior to burial. Using evolutionary time scales this human skeleton would be dated as 25 million years old! That would be 21 million years earlier than any supposed findings of pre-humans in East Central Africa. (Kinda like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.)
This evidence was not hidden at first. During the early nineteenth century it was openly displayed in England as a scientific curiosity and many other such remains were claimed to have been found on the island. Once Darwinianism became established in academic circles, however, the specimen was quietly removed to the basement of the Museum where its last public viewing was in the 1930s. (The last geological survey of the island that mentions the presence of human remains in these Lower Miocene deposits, is that of Spencer, 1901.)
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This message has been edited by randman, 08-06-2005 01:34 AM
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