Miocene humans

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.....
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."

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.

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.)

"The problem is, there's so much evidence against it," said Eugenie Scott, physical anthropologist and director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that defends teaching evolution in public schools. "For his view to be right would require answers that he can't provide."

Among the oldest anomalies you report are the Laetoli footprints, discovered by Mary Leakey. These footprints were found in Tanzania in 1979. How old are these footprints and what is so anomalous about them? Is there any other evidence for anatomically modern humans at this same time?The Laetoli footprints were found in layers of solidified volcanic ash, dated by the potassium-argon method as being about 3.7 million years old, so I would not call them one of the oldest. There are footprints and even shoe prints that go much further back in time than that. For example, the shoe print found by William Meister near Antelope Springs, Utah, goes back about 500 million years. The Laetoli footprints are still quite interesting. According to Mary Leakey, and other scientists, the footprints are exactly like those of modern human beings. This is unusual, because according to most scientists today, human beings capable of making these footprints did not come into existence until about 100,000 years ago. Mary Leakey did not believe, of course, that humans of our type existed 3.7 million years ago in Africa.So how did she explain the footprints?She and others proposed that there must have existed at that time some kind of hominid, some kind of ape-man, who had feet exactly like ours. That is possible. Unfortunately, there is no physical evidence to support that idea. We have many hominid skeletons from that period, and none of them have feet exactly like modern human feet. Their feet are all more or less apelike, with toes longer than modern human toes, and a first toe that can extend out to the side, like a human thumb. At present the only creature known to science with a foot exactly like that of a modern human being is a modern human being. So I would say that Mary Leakey discovered evidence that anatomically modern humans existed about 3.7 million years ago in Africa. Of course, someone might say that it would be better if we had anatomically modern human skeletons of that age. And such things do exist. For example, the Italian geologist Giuseppe Ragazzoni discovered anatomically modern human skeletal remains in Pliocene formations at a place called Castenedolo in northern Italy. The Pliocene goes from about 2 million years ago to 5 million years ago. And there are other such discoveries from other parts of the world.I'm particularly intrigued by the bola stones of Olduvai Gorge and Argentina. What do these stones tell us, that is, what were they used for and how are they incompatible with the current Darwinian paradigm of human evolution?Bola stones are stones that have been artificially rounded, and which many times also have a groove carved around the middle. The rounded, grooved stones are tied together with a thong, usually of leather. The result is the bola, a weapon that can be used to capture birds and animals. When thrown, the stone balls cause the thong to wrap tightly around the legs of the bird or animal, thus bringing it down. According to archeologists, bolas are a weapon made and used only by anatomically modern humans, humans of our kind. So Louis Leakey found bola stones in the lower levels of Olduvai Gorge, which go back to the Pliocene periods (2-5 million years). Leakey also found there a bone needle, which he believed was used for sewing leather. At Miramar, in Argentina, the Argentine archeologist Carlos Ameghino reported finding bola stones in undisturbed Pliocene formations, about 3 million years old. In the same layer, he also discovered the bone of an extinct South American mammal with a flint arrowhead embedded in it. Still later, another researcher found a partial human jaw in the same formation. According to the current Darwinian theory of human evolution, humans capable of making bola stones and arrowheads and bone needles did not exist until between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The reaction you received from the scientific community when Forbidden Archeology was published was incredible enough to warrant the publication of your book, Forbidden Archeology's Impact. How would you characterize the response?The response was varied, because the scientific community is not monolithic. There is one group within the scientific community that I call the fundamentalist Darwinists. These are scientists who take Darwinism as an ideology to be defended at all costs. They are attached to Darwinism for reasons that are not really scientific. Their reaction was to reject my work without really addressing any of the evidence. For example, Richard Leakey said Forbidden Archeology was "pure humbug." But he did not discuss any of the facts. However, there are others within the scientific community who accept the Darwinist theory of human evolution for reasons that are more or less scientific. They are at least willing to hear alternative ideas and discuss evidence. From members of this group I have gotten invitations to speak at scientific institutions like the Royal Institution of London and the Russian Academy of Sciences, and at professional conferences organized by groups such as the World Archeological Congress and the European Association of Archeologists.Some of the papers I have presented at these conferences have been published in the official proceedings of these conferences. Scientists from this more open-minded group have also reviewed my books in the professional journals of archeology, anthropology and the history of science. For example, noted historian of science David Oldroyd and his coauthor Jo Wodak said about Forbidden Archeology in Social Studies of Science that the book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on paleoanthropology for two reasons. First, the book goes into the evidence in greater depth than any other book they were familiar with, and second, the book raised important questions about the nature of scientific truth claims, particularly in regard to human evolution. Among this more open-minded group, there are some scientists who have actually come to agree with my conclusions.Were you surprised by the reaction from the Darwinist camp?As I said, there are two kinds of Darwinists. The first is the fundamentalist type. I was not surprised by their sneering kind of negative reaction. I anticipated that, and indeed, I used some of their more strident statements to get more attention for my work, both within the scientific world and among the general public. I was rather pleasantly surprised by the willingness of the more open-minded Darwinists to give me platforms to present my views at scientific societies, scientific conferences, and science departments at universities around the world. I was also pleasantly surprised by the amount of attention they gave to my work in book reviews in their professional literature.

Cremo and Thompson are quite right about the extreme conservatism of many archaeologists and physical anthropologists. While an undergraduate at a prominent southwestern university, I participated in classroom discussions about the claims for a very early occupation at the Timlin site (in New York) which had just been announced. The professor surprised me when she stated flatly that, if the dates were correct, then it was "obviously not a site." This dismissal of the possibility of such an ancient site, without an examination of the data or even a careful reading of the published claim, is dogmatism of the sort rightfully decried by Cremo and Thompson. George Carter, the late Thomas Lee, and Virginia Steene-McIntyre are among those whose claims for very early humans in America have been met with unfortunate ad hominem attacks by some conservative archaeologists; but, regardless of how shamefully these scholars were treated, the fact remains that their claims have not been supported by sufficiently compelling evidence. Cremo and Thompson are wrong, however, when they condemn scientists for demanding "higher levels of proof for anomalous finds than for evidence that fits within the established ideas about human evolution" (p. 49). It is axiomatic that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

Cremo and Thompson discuss the three to four million year old fossilized footprints discovered at Laetoli, and note that scholars have observed "close similarities with the anatomy of the feet of modern humans" (p. 262). Cremo and Thompson conclude that these footprints actually are the tracks of anatomically modern humans, but they offer no explanation for why these individuals were not wearing the shoes which supposedly had been invented more than 296 million years earlier.

In order for Cremo to be right, most of what we currently know in science has to be wrong.