Miocene humans

Divine Nature
by Michael A. Cremo and
Mukunda GoswamiAccording to Divine Nature, the real cause of the global environmental crisis is an underlying lack of spiritual understanding. The authors systematically demonstrate that most proposed solutions are only palliative and that humankind must undergo a profound change in consciousness to live in an environmentally sound way.

Michael, your books, Forbidden Archeology and Hidden History of the Human Race, co-written with Richard L. Thompson, presented the thesis that mankind is an exceedingly ancient race which was contemporaneous with the apelike creatures from which humans supposedly evolved. About how far back was your research able to document the human race? What is the oldest "anomaly" you reported in your book?The oldest artifacts go back about 2 billion years. These are round metallic objects that have been over the past couple of decades by miners in South Africa. The objects come from a mine near a place called Ottosdalin, in the West Transvaal region. The objects are one or two inches in diameter. The ones we had analyzed by metallurgists turned out to be made of an iron ore called hematite. The most interesting feature of the objects is the parallel grooves that go around the center of each one. Some have four grooves, some three, some two, some only one. The metallurgists who examined them said they were not produced naturally. Therefore, the objects must have been manufactured by someone with humanlike intelligence. Yet they are found solidly embedded in mineral deposits over 2 billion years old.

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.

The work is frustrating because it mixes together a genuine contribution to our understanding of the history of archaeology and paleoanthropology with a bewildering mass of absurd claims and an audaciously distorted review of the current state of paleoanthropology....Cremo and Thompson have little understanding of history and almost no understanding of the disciplines of paleoanthropology and archaeology. In the introduction, Thompson is identified as a generic "scientist" and "a mathematician," while Cremo is "a writer and editor for books and magazines published by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust" (p. xix). Their naive approach to history is revealed in their discussion of the alleged discovery of broken columns, "coins, handles of hammers, and other tools" quarried from limestone in France between 1786 and 1788 (p. 104). In order to establish the credibility of this report they note that it was published in the American Journal of Science in 1820. They attempt to support their charge that modern scientists are dogmatic by observing that "today, however, it is unlikely such a report would be found in the pages of a scientific journal" (p. 104). The American Journal of Science in the 1820s published many reports that would not be found in modern science journals. Mermaids (Shillaber 1823), sea serpents (American Journal of Science and Arts, 1826), and the efficacy of divining rods for locating water (Emerson, 1821) were topics of interest to scientists of that era. That such material was presented in a 19th century journal with "Science" in the title is no measure of its reliability or its relevance to modern science; likewise, that modern marine biologists no longer consider mermaids a worthy subject for research is no measure of their dogmatism. Cremo and Thompson might disagree, however, for they devote an entire chapter to reports of "living ape-men" such as Bigfoot, which, even if true, contribute nothing to their thesis that anatomically modern humans lived in geologically ancient times. Chimpanzees are "ape-men" of a sort, sharing 99% of our genetic makeup, and their coexistence with Homo sapiens sapiens does no violence to evolutionary theory....Cremo and Thompson's ignorance of the basic data of archaeology is exemplified by their reference to the Venus of Willendorf as a work of "Neolithic" rather than Paleolithic art (p. 84) and their mistaken identification of a nondescript stone blade from Sandia Cave as a "Folsom point" (p. 93)....Cremo and Thompson's claim that anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens have been around for hundreds of millions of years is an outrageous notion. Accepting that there is a place in science for seemingly outrageous hypotheses (cf. Davis, 1926) there is no justification for the sort of sloppy rehashing of canards, hoaxes, red herrings, half-truths and fantasies Cremo and Thompson offer in the service of a religious ideology. Readers who are interested in a more credible presentation of the overwhelming evidence for human evolution should consult Ian Tattersall's wonderful recent book The Fossil Trail: how we know what we think we know about human evolution.

This review was previously published in Skeptic by the Skeptics Society, Vol 4, No 1, pp 98-100, 1996. Many thanks to Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society for making it available.

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.