Verboden Archeologie

Dit artikel is een stencil dat ik kreeg in verband met de forum-discussie aan de

Landbouw Universiteit in Wageningen, waar Michael Cremo en ik aan meededen.

Zijn verhaal geeft vanuit een geheel andere hoek, namelijk betreffende de geologie

en archeologie, een bevestiging van wat de degeneratietheorie eigenlijk ook zegt.

Er bestaan overweldigende bewijzen waarmee kan worden aangetoond dat de mens al veel en veel langer op aarde

aanwezig is dan de traditionele wetenschappers tot nu toe wilden of durfden aan te nemen. Sterker nog, het blijkt dat

onze vroege voorouders long niet allemaal "holbewoners" waren.

Een interview van de Amerikaanse Laura Lee met Michael Cremo, auteur van Forbidden Archeology, vertaald door

Jacqueline Peters.

Er is een gegroefde metalen bol gevonden in Zuid-Afrika die dateert uit het precambische tijdperk. In Antelope,

Springs, Utah, werd een schoenafdruk uit het Cambrium gevonden. In Dorchester, Massachusetts, is een metalen

vaas gevonden uit het precambische tijdperk. In Schotland is een ijzeren spijker gevonden, die uit het Devoon stamt.

Een gouden draad in een steen is gevonden in Tweed, Engeland, en een ijzeren pot in Wilburton, Oklahoma, die

stamt uit het Carboon. Wat zeggen deze vondsten over onze vroege geschiedenis? Niet veel, omdat zulke

anomalieen (zo genoemd omdat ze buiten het model vallen) niet passen in het geldende denkmodel over onze

prehistorie. Om dit denkmodel in stand te houden, is het beter om deze vondsten te verwerpen dan ze in het model

proberen op te nemen of ze naar behoren te bestuderen.

Zou je ons iets kunnen vertellen over verboden archeologie, wat voor jou de beweegreden was om juist dit gebied te

gaan bestuderen, en wat je achtergrond is?

Ik ben in 1984 begonnen met het bestuderen van de "verboden archeologie". In die tijd discussieerde ik wel eens

met mijn co-auteur, Dr. Richard Thompson, over de oorsprong van de mens in de oudheid, en we hadden een paar

rapporten over anomale bewijsstukken. We besloten een grondig onderzoek uit te voeren, en ik stond echt versteld

van de bewijzen die we vonden.

Als je kijkt naar wat er in de moderne studieboeken wordt geschreven, krijg je de indruk dat mensen zoals wij -

Homo sapiens - zich pas in een recent verleden, zo'n 100.000 jaar geleden, uit aapachtige voorouders hebben

ontwikkeld. Alle bewijzen in deze boeken lijken dit idee te ondersteunen, dus lijkt er geen twijfel mogelijk. Maar

toen ik het nader onderzocht, kwam ik tot de conclusie dat er de laatste 150 jaar door antropologen bijna evenveel

materiaal onder de tafel is geschoven als ze hebben ontdekt, en het meeste materiaal dat ze weer begroeven, wat ze

negeerden, is bewijsmateriaal dat tegen dit idee ingaat. Bewijzen die veeleer het idee ondersteunen dat mensen zoals

wij al honderden miljoenen jaren op deze planeet rondlopen. Die verfijnde metalen vaas uit een precambisch stuk

rots die met een springlading werd opgeblazen in Dorchester, Massachusettes, dat zou betekenen dat wij reeds zo'n

zeshonderd miljoen jaar hier rondlopen.

Zeshonderd miljoen jaar oud? Wat zou er volgens jou gebeuren als al het bewijsmateriaal naast elkaar werd gelegd

en een gelijke kans kreeg? Stel dat er geen heersende theorie is en er komt iemand langs die de ruime hoeveelheid

bewijsmateriaal bekijkt en zich afvraagt hoe oud de historie van het menselijk ras op de aarde is.

Kijk, je moet wel bedenken dat als je al het relevante bewijsmateriaal naast elkaar op tafel legt, daar meerdere tafels

voor nodig zouden zijn. Als je met al die bewijzen rekening houdt, ziet het ernaar uit dat er al zo lang als je kunt

teruggaan in de tijd, mensen zoals u en ik naast andere soorten wezens op deze planeet bestaan -al honderden

miljoenen jaren, letterlijk.

Er zijn tegenwoordig wetenschappers zoals Myra Shackley, een Engelse antropologe, die zou zeggen dat we nog

steeds samen leven met schepsels zoals de Neanderthalers. Uit vele delen van de wereld komen berichten over

verschillende soorten wilde mensen, zoals de Yeti of de Sneeuwman in de Himalaya, Bigfoot of Sasquatch in

Noord-Amerika, en andere soortgelijke wezens in andere delen van de wereld. Dus het idee van coexistentie lijkt me

heel aannemelijk.

Laten we even meer in detail ingaan op deze bijzondere vondsten die miljoenen jaren ouder zijn dan eigenlijk zou

mogen, volgens de geldende theorie. Zou je kunnen beginnen met een paar voorbeelden? Wat ik graag zou willen

weten, is onder welke omstandigheden deze voorwerpen zijn ontdekt, hoe goed ze zijn gedocumenteerd, en waar ze

zich nu bevinden.

Ik zal je een goed voorbeeld geven uit de recente geschiedenis. Een van mijn favoriete. In 1979 vond Mary Leakey

(de vrouw van Louis Leakey, een van de beroemdste antropologen van de 20e eeuw) in Laetoli in Tanzania, in

vulkanische as van zo'n 3,6 miljoen jaar oud, enkele voetafdrukken van drie personen. Veel experts op dit gebied -

zoals fysische antropologen- hebben deze voetafdrukken bekeken. Dit is allemaal vastgelegd in de National

Geographic en in verschillende wetenschappelijk tijdschriften die we in ons boek vermelden. U kunt dit opzoeken,

de pagina ernaast houden als u wilt, en de foto's bekijken van deze voetafdrukken: ze zijn absoluut niet te

onderscheiden van moderne menselijke voetafdrukken. Een onderzoeker zei dat als je nu naar een strand zou gaan

naar voetafdrukken in het zand zou kijken, ze niet zouden afwijken van die voetafdrukken. Wat mij zo verbaasde

was dat ondanks dit alles, deze onderzoekers zo waren ingesteld dat ze de meest voor de hand liggende conclusie

niet wisten te trekken: dat deze voetafdrukken afkomstig moeten zijn van wezens die sterk op ons leken.

Aan de ene kant kijken ze naar al het bewijs en gebruiken ze dit wanneer het strookt met hun beeld van de

geschiedenis, terwijl ze ander, even overtuigend bewijs dat niet precies in hun straatje past, negeren.

Inderdaad. We noemen dit een "kennisfilter", en het is geen duivelse samenzwering met als doel het publiek te

misleiden. Het is eerder een soort zelfbedrog waar deze mensen aan meedoen. Bij deze voetstappen zeiden ze

bijvoorbeeld: "Ze moeten wel afkomstig zijn van de Australopithecus", een mensaapachtig schepsel waarvan wordt

aangenomen dat het drie miljoen jaar geleden in Afrika leefde. Er zijn voetbeentjes van dit wezen gevonden, maar

die komen niet overeen met deze voetafdrukken. Die afwijking is behoorlijk omdat de voetbeenderen van de

oeroude mensaapachtige wezens, erg lange, gebogen tenen laten zien. Hun grote teen leek op onze duim. Als je wel

eens naar de voet van een chimpansee keek, weet je dat de grote teen erg groot en flexibel is, net als onze duim,

zodat de chimpansee er goed mee naar takken kan grijpen. Dus de voetafdrukken die in Afrika zijn gevonden,

gedateerd op 3,6 miljoen jaar oud, komen helemaal niet overeen met de voetafdrukken van de Australopithecus.

Waarom werd de Australopithecus uitgekozen om als verklaring te dienen voor de voetafdrukken?

Omdat ze denken dat dit het enige schepsel uit die tijd is dat op twee benen liep, en omdat ze al het andere bewijs

negeren, het omvangrijke bewijs dat aantoont dat er in die tijd menselijke wezens zoals wij bestonden. Het komt niet

in hen op om de meest voor de hand liggende conclusie te trekken. Je hebt menselijke voetafdrukken. Dan moeten

die door een mens zijn gemaakt. Mary Leakey suggereerde dat deze afdrukken door een soort aapmens met

mensachtige voeten gemaakt zijn. Als dat het enige bewijs was waarover we beschikken, zou je nog kunnen zeggen

dat ze misschien gelijk had, maar in Forbidden Archeology beschrijven we vele soorten bewijsmateriaal: stenen

werktuigen, allerlei soorten artefacten, andere menselijke botten, complete menselijke skeletten die allemaal uit

dezelfde periode dateren. Daaruit maken wij op dat die voetafdrukken door mensen moeten zijn gemaakt.

Waaruit we kunnen afleiden dat de geschiedenis van de mensheid enkele zeer interessante hoofdstukken kent, die

worden genegeerd om de simpele reden dat we worden gehinderd door een inadequate theorie, andere verklaringen.

Een ander interessant geval is een skelet dat ook in Afrika is ontdekt, aan het begin van deze eeuw, in 1913, door Dr.

Hans Reck van de universiteit van Berlijn, meen ik. Hij werkte in een gebied dat tegenwoordig de Olduvai kloof

heet, een populaire plek onder archeologen. De Leakeys hebben daar later ook veel gewerkt. In 1913 vond hij het

fossiel van een menselijk skelet, met alle moderne anatomische kenmerken, in lagen van bijna twee miljoen jaar

oud. Dat is heel ongewoon, vooral omdat volgens de huidige wetenschappelijke geloofsleer de moderne mens pas

zo'n 100.000 jaar' geleden is ontstaan...

Hoe verklaarden ze dit dan? In 1913 stond de geschiedschrijving van de moderne mens toch min of meer in de

kinderschoenen, waarom kreeg dergelijk bewijsmateriaal geen gelijke behandeling?

Omdat de ideeën zich toen al gingen richten naar de ontdekking van de homo erectus op Java in 1894. Een

interessante ontwikkeling, die wel iets weg heeft van een detectiveverhaal. In 1859 schreef Charles Darwin The

Origin of Species, een boek dat toen wereldwijd intellectuele opschudding veroorzaakte. Vanaf dat moment was

men vooral sterk geïnteresseerd in de oorsprong van de mensheid.

We zijn nogal vaak met onszelf bezig, niet?

Zeg dat wel. Het ontstaan van de vlinder of de krab boeit ons heel wat minder. We zijn vooral geinteresseerd in waar

wij vandaan komen. Ik bekeek moderne studieboeken en merkte dat er uit de periode vanaf 1859, het jaar waarin

Origin of species was geschreven, tot aan 1894, het jaar waarin berichten verschenen over de vondst van de eerste

mens op Java, geen verdere rapporten te vinden waren. Dat vond ik heel mysterieus. Je zou verwachten dat vrijwel

direct erna, wetenschappers uit de hele wereld op zoek zijn gegaan naar de ontbrekende schakel en daarbij op allerlei

dingen zouden zijn gestuit. Dus vroeg ik een van mijn onderzoeksassistenten om in de bibliotheek een paar

studieboeken over antropologie van rond 1880 tot 1885 voor me te halen, gewoon om door te bladeren. Ik was

geschokt over de boeken die hij mee terug bracht. Geschreven door wetenschappers, geen kleine jongens. Dit waren

wetenschappers met aanzien, die in gerespecteerde tijdschriften melding maakten van allerlei soorten

bewijsmateriaal dat het bestaan van anatomisch moderne mensen aantoonde, geen aapmensen, geen ontbrekende

schakels -10 miljoen jaar geleden, evenals 20 miljoen jaar geleden, 30 miljoen jaar geleden, 40, 50 zo ver terug als

je maar wilt gaan. En dan heb ik het niet over een of twee ontdekkingen, maar over honderden. En in ons boek van

bijna duizend pagina's, Forbidden Archeology, worden ze allemaal beschreven.

Ongelooflijk. Maar waar zijn deze vondsten nu? Waar worden ze bewaard? Wat is ermee gebeurd? Deze vele

honderden vondsten van anatomisch moderne skeletten die zijn gevonden, van honderd miljoen jaar oud of nog

ouder, wat zou hiervan het alleroudste bewijsmateriaal zijn?

Als we het over de oudste gedocumenteerde vondst hebben, dan horen daar ook artefacten bij, voorwerpen die door

mensen zijn gemaakt. Het oudste artefact waarover we beschikken is een gegroefde metalen bol, ontdekt in Zuid-

Afrika. Er zijn veel van deze metalen bollen ontdekt -zuiver ronde, metalen objecten, waarvan sommige met drie

parallelle groeven rond het breedste gedeelte, van zo'n 2,8 miljard jaar oud... Als je bedenkt dat de aarde volgens de

huidige wetenschappelijke schattingen 5,3 miljard jaar oud is, is dat behoorlijk oud. De oudste vondst die direct op

de aanwezigheid van een menselijk wezen duidt, is een voetafdruk die in 1968 in Antelope Springs, Utah, werd

gevonden en die wordt gedateerd uit het Cambrium. Waarmee het dus zo'n 600 miljoen jaar oud is.

En de oudste skeletresten van anatomisch moderne mensen?

Het oudste menselijke skelet die de "verboden archeologie" kent, is het skelet dat in een kolenveld in Macoupin

County, Illinois werd ontdekt, en dat werd gemeld in een gerenommeerd tijdschrift, The Geologist. Het is afkomstig

uit het Carboon en waarschijnlijk zo'n 300 miljoen jaar oud. Dus dit zijn heel bijzondere vondsten. Wat er gebeurt, is

dat zaken die niet in de huidige paradigma's passen, soms niet bewaard blijven. Als je iets hebt dat past binnen de

huidige ideeen over de oorsprong van de mens in de oudheid, dan wordt dat door de gevestigde orde zorgvuldig

bewaard. "Aanvaarde" vondsten worden in een museum tentoongesteld, verschijnen op TV, in speciale bijlagen van

de National Geographic, dat soort dingen. Als iets niet in het huidige denkmodel past, hoor je er niets over. Het

wordt niet geconserveerd of behouden, en is erg moeilijk te achterhalen. Ik denk dat het de plicht is van mensen

zoals u, van allerlei soorten mediamensen, om wat verder te kijken. Bij een interview met een politicus die iets in de

doofpot probeert te stoppen bijvoorbeeld zou je zijn verhaal ook niet klakkeloos aannemen, maar het gaan

uitzoeken, de feiten proberen te achterhalen. Er zou nog veel meer uitgezocht moeten worden. We zouden mensen

niet blindelings moeten vertrouwen alleen omdat ze een belangrijke positie aan de universiteit hebben of een

universitaire titel voor hun naam.

Ik denk dat we de wetenschap met dezelfde ogen moeten gaan bekijken als de politiek. Als er geruchten zijn over

een politieke misdaad, accepteren we dat niet, en zullen we de verklaring van de politicus in kwestie ook niet

zomaar voor waar aannemen. Dan slikken we geen propaganda. Dus ik denk dat we diezelfde houding ook ten

aanzien van de wetenschap moeten aannemen. We moeten een beetje meer... sceptisch worden. Ons meer een

zelfstandige mening over allerlei zaken vormen. Soms is er een buitenstaander voor nodig om meer helderheid in

een bepaald vraagstuk te krijgen. Mensen zoeken bevestiging door een onafhankelijke partij dus je kunt niet altijd

naar de experts gaan en hun mening over hun eigen vakgebied aannemen. Je hebt dan buitenstaanders nodig die naar

binnen gaan, een beetje rondneuzen en graven naar informatie, en dat is eigenlijk wat wij gedaan hebben met ons

boek. We zijn er zonder vooroordelen op afgestapt en hebben speurwerk verricht. En we hebben daarbij heel wat

gevonden dat aantoont dat wat ons over het verleden wordt voorgeschoteld, geen objectief beeld is. Ze vertellen ons

niet de hele waarheid. We krijgen niet alle feitelijke informatie te horen, dus in Forbidden Archeology proberen we

juist om alle feiten te geven, zodat de lezer zelf een mening kan vormen over dit soort zaken.

Hoe eenvoudig verliep jullie onderzoek? Waren de artikelen opvraaghaar? Hoe wisten jullie waar je moest

zoeken als ze niet vrijelijk gepubliceerd en niet algemeen bekend waren?

Het leek bijna op een detective-verhaal. Je reist terug in de tijd. Je zoekt steeds verder terug in de archieven en je

begint dingen te vinden. Dan moet je obscure kleine voetnoten herleiden. Het lijkt of er iets wordt achtergehouden.

Je moet er echt naar graven. We moesten eerst tijdschriften, obscure tijdschriften en rapporten uit de hele wereld

zien te krijgen, waarvan sommige honderden jaren oud waren, die we vervolgens lieten vertalen uit het Duits en

Frans en Spaans en Russisch of uit de andere talen waarin ze toevallig geschreven waren, dus dat nam acht jaar in

beslag. Er was acht jaar hard en nauwgezet werk voor nodig om alle informatie voor dit boek te verzamelen. Het is

allemaal nauwkeurig gedocumenteerd dus elke verwijzing is terug te vinden in een voetnoot. Er zit een volledige

bibliografie bij.

We wilden zaken kiezen waarvoor we het sterkste bewijs hadden, voor wat betreft documentatie en

wetenschappelijk bewijs. Als we één ding geleerd hebben dan is het wel dat dit proces van "kennis filteren", zoals

wij dat noemen, nog steeds doorgaat. Zelfs nu nog. We hadden het geluk dat we een paar moderne onderzoekers

troffen die het slachtoffer zijn geworden van deze onderdrukking, en die zo vriendelijk waren om ons wat meer te

vertellen over hoe het systeem in feite werkt.

Hoe werkt het systeem precies?

Het draait om geld. En om posities. Kansen op publicatie. En er zijn kleine, uiterst machtige groepen personen die

deze posities beheren. Als je leraar aan een universiteit wilt worden, heb je aanbevelingen nodig. Als je wilt dat

jouw artikel in wetenschappelijke tijdschriften wordt gepubliceerd, moet het door een "keuring door anonieme

gelijken" (anonymous peer review) heenkomen.

Ze kunnen commentaar leveren, maar de kandidaat weet niet eens wie deze mensen zijn?

Nee, en in principe zou een dominante groep deze conventie erg gemakkelijk kunnen gebruiken om informatie uit

het systeem te filteren, waarvan men niet wil dat die een grotere gemeenschap bereikt, laat staan het grote publiek.

Bestaat er onenigheid binnen de academische wereld over dit soort praktijken, die zo makkelijk te misbruiken of te

gebruiken zijn, om de status quo te bewaren, dat de grenzen van het gebied niet verlegd worden?

Ik begeef me regelmatig op het Internet en daar zitten ook discussiegroepen op die de tekortkomingen van het

huidige systeem bespreken, evenals anderen die er kritiek op hebben, maar het systeem zelf verandert daar niet echt

door. De ene groep die ik heb gevonden -en waarvan ik de exacte naam niet zo gauw meer weet- was interessant

omdat de discussie ging over kansen op een baan. Technisch gesproken was dat het gespreksthema van de groep -

academische functies en hoe je hiervoor in aanmerking kunt komen, welke er beschikbaar waren- maar er waren

allerlei soorten discussies over het systeem en hoe het functioneerde, in die specifieke discussiegroep.

In deze vakgebieden heb je te maken met echt machtige mensen die de posten, publicaties en onderzoeksfondsen

beheersen, die je te vriend moet houden als je vooruit wilt komen. Zo zit het systeem in het kort in elkaar. Ik heb

persoonlijke discussies gevoerd met mensen die slachtoffer van het systeem zijn geworden, aan wie publicatie

ontzegd is, die niet op bepaalde posten mochten komen, en die geen geld kregen voor onderzoek. Hun zienswijzen

weken af van de leer. Een geval dat ook ter sprake komt in ons boek is dat van Virginia Steen McIntyre, een geologe

die voor de US Geological Survey werkte. Zij met enkele andere geologen dateerden een opgravingsterrein in

Hueyatlaco in New Mexico, in de late jaren zeventig, waar enkele zeer geavanceerde stenen werktuigen werden

gevonden. Stenen werktuigen die alleen konden zijn gemaakt door anatomisch moderne mensen. Ze stelden onder

andere met behulp van de uranium-serie-methode vast dat het terrein 300.000 jaar oud was. Volgens de huidige

doctrine zijn er pas 12.000 jaar geleden moderne mensen naar Noord-Amerika gekomen, hoewel sommigen dat nu

willen verlengen tot 25.000 of 30.000 jaar, maar volgens de standaard conservatieve doctrine is het 12.000 jaar.

Deze zeer geavanceerde stenen gereedschappen, van 300.000 jaar oud uit Mexico, zijn bijzonder afwijkend: mensen

van dat type zouden pas l00.000 jaar geleden aanwezig mogen zijn. In feite duiken de hier gevonden stenen

gereedschappen van dat type pas 40.000 jaar geleden in Europa op, dus het feit dat ze in Mexico -waar geen mensen

hoorden te zijn- werden aangetroffen, en dan nog wel 300.000 jaar geleden, zo'n 250.000 jaar eerder dan zulke

werktuigen ooit ergens werden gevonden. Deze onderzoekers schreven een rapport, maar ze konden het nergens

publiceren. Niemand durfde het aan.

Maar wat is er met de werktuigen gebeurd? Waar zijn die nu?

Ze zijn ergens opgeslagen in een of ander museum. Deze werden betrekkelijk recent gevonden, dus je kunt ze nog

steeds vinden. We hebben geprobeerd toestemming te krijgen om deze werktuigen te fotograferen zodat we ze in

ons boek konden opnemen. Maar ons werd verteld dat we alleen toestemming zouden krijgen om die foto's af te

drukken als we de werktuigen zouden dateren op minder dan 25.000 jaar oud; en zelfs als we alleen maar zouden

vermelden dat ze 300.000 jaar oud zijn, kregen we nog geen toestemming.

Een interessante ontdekking was de bewerkte schelp in de Red Crag formatie in Engeland. Dit is een geologische

formatie uit het late · Pleistoceen, van meer dan twee miljoen jaar oud. Henry Stopes, een lid van het

wetenschappelijke genootschap The Geological Society of England, heeft deze schelp gevonden. Er is een menselijk

gezicht in gegraveerd, en volgens huidige opvattingen zou je dit soort kunstvoorwerpen pas op zijn vroegst 40.000

jaar geleden in Europa mogen verwachten, dus twee tot drie miljoen jaar oud is behoorlijk abnormaal. Het werd in

de 19e eeuw ontdekt.

Als we teruggaan naar Noord-Amerika en meer recente tijden, waarvoor we sterke bewijzen hebben van hoe bewijs

kan worden achtergehouden, kennen we het geval van Dr. Lee die in een formatie uit de ijstijd op een plek die

Sheguiandah wordt genoemd, op het eiland Manitoulin in het Great Lake gebied in Canada, stenen werktuigen vond

van naar schatting 70.000 jaar oud. Zoals ik al zei, is de geldende opvatting dat er pas 12.000 jaar geleden mensen

naar Noord-Amerika zijn getrokken. Toen hij deze ontdekkingen deed, werkte hij samen met het National Museum

in Canada. Er werd een geoloog bijgehaald die de vindplaats bekeek en de datering bevestigde, maar hij werd

ontslagen, men wilde het rapport niet publiceren, en hij kon jarenlang geen andere baan krijgen. Dit heeft hem erg

aangegrepen. Bovendien werden al zijn stenen werktuigen door het museum afgepakt en ergens opgeslagen waar hij

er geen controle meer over had. Zo wordt het bewijsmateriaal uit de weg geruimd, verduisterd.

In jouw boek staan vooral die artefacten waarover bronnen zijn gevonden en die je aanspoorden om een speurtocht

te beginnen door de wetenschappelijke literatuur, maar je zei net ook dat sommige van deze vondsten waarover

minder exacte bronvermeldingen bestaan, afkomstig zijn van mijnwerkers omdat die beneden het aardoppervlak in

erg oude lagen graven. Ik heb bijvoorbeeld verhalen gehoord van mensen die bij het verbrokkelen van steenkool

voor hun kachels, gouden kettinkjes en metalen vazen tegenkwamen en andere ongelooflijke zaken. Ken je verhalen

over wat er is gevonden in ontzettend oude lagen steenkool, en vondsten door mijn werkers?

In ons boek, Forbidden Archeology, bespreken we er een paar. In 1897, in The Daily News, een krant uit Omaha,

Nebraska, een artikel met de titel "Bewerkte steen begraven in mijn". Dit ging over een stuk rots van zo'n zestig bij

dertig centimeter, dat in een ruitvormig patroon was bewerkt. De tekens op het oppervlak verdeelden het in ruiten,

en in het midden van elke ruit stond een menselijk gezicht gegraveerd, dat van een ouder persoon. De vraag is hoe

het daar terecht is gekomen. Deze mijn was diep onder de grond gegraven, op bijna 40 meter. Volgens de

mijnwerkers was de aarde daar onberoerd -iets waar mijnwerkers sterk bedacht op zijn omdat hun leven er van

afhangt. Als ze ergens graven, letten ze erop dat de steenkool geen sporen van eerdere graafwerkzaamheden

vertoont, bijvoorbeeld een oude mijnschacht die achteraf is dichtgegooid, omdat ze weten dat ze in zo'n geval in een

aardverschuiving terecht kunnen komen of onder de grond ingesloten kunnen worden. Ze weten dus waar ze het

over hebben. De steenkool in dat gedeelte, in de buurt van Omaha, Nebraska, was circa 300 miljoen jaar oud, dus

dat is echt verbazingwekkend. Waar is dat object nu? We hebben geprobeerd het op te sporen, maar we konden het

niet vinden. De kranten hebben erover geschreven. We vonden er veel literatuur over, maar omdat het zo ver af staat

van wat de moderne wetenschap zou accepteren, werd het niet ergens in een museum bewaard. Waarschijnlijk heeft

een van de mijnwerkers het gehouden, en is het na zijn overlijden op een ander familielid overgegaan, of misschien

heeft hij het weggegooid.

Ik heb gehoord dat er muren zijn gevonden die op ruim 40 meter diepte begraven lagen. Hiervan zijn voorbeelden

gevonden in Texas en in Californie, als ik het goed heb. Zijn jullie zulke enorme artefacten als begraven stenen

muren tegengekomen?

We zijn rapporten over zulke vondsten tegengekomen. Deze vermelden we ook in ons boek. Een zo'n geval is dat

van Heavener, Oklahoma, waar het verhaal vandaan komt van een mijnwerker die in 1928 aan het werk was in een

mijn op tweeënhalve kilometer diepte. Deze mijnen waren ingericht met verschillende kamers, waarbij er elke dag

een nieuwe kamer uit de grond werd geblazen. Op een ochtend werd er weer steenkool uit de mijn geblazen met

explosieven, en wat de mijnwerkers zagen aan het verste einde van de nieuwe kamer, was volgens hun beschrijving

een muur van zeer gladde, gepolijste betonnen blokken; het was een muur, die daar beneden was gebouwd. Toen ze

het meldden aan de leiding van de mijn, werden de mijnwerkers er door de bazen uitgezet, naar een andere mijn

gestuurd, en werd dat gedeelte van de mijn dichtgegooid. Er lijkt wel een patroon in te zitten. Het is alleen te hopen

dat sommige van deze zaken worden heropend en opnieuw onderzocht, door mensen die wat ruimdenkender zijn.

Ik vraag me af of, stel dat de aarde gedurende een dag doorschijnend zou zijn en we alle botten van dinosaurussen

konden zien, alle ongebruikelijke artefacten, alle menselijke overblijfselen, alle voetafdrukken, alle dingen die al een

eeuwigheid in de aarde begraven liggen, wat zouden we dan zien?

Wat we volgens mij zouden zien is een beeld van allerlei soorten wezens, mensen en anderszins, uit een tijd die

onvoorstelbaar ver teruggaat. Een probleem is dat alleen het kunnen zien niet genoeg is, omdat veel van wat we zien

wordt bepaald door onze ideeën. Je kunt iets altijd wegredeneren. Wat wij vooral zagen was dat het bewijsmateriaal

met twee maten wordt gemeten. Als iets past in de huidige denkmodellen, dan is er geen vuiltje aan de lucht. Als iets

echter tegen de huidige ideeen ingaat, kun je er onmiddellijk allerlei gebreken aan ontdekken, omdat je met dit soort

bewijsmateriaal dat je uit de grond opgraaft, zelfs onder de beste omstandigheden altijd wel een tegengestelde

verklaring kunt vinden. In het uiterste geval kun je altijd nog zeggen dat het gewoon een perfect uitgekiende vorm

van bedrog was, of een grap... Het probleem is echter dat wanneer je zoiets zou doen, en je dezelfde maatstaf zo

hanteren voor de dingen die je nu in het museum aantreft, dat je deze dingen ook zou moeten weggooien. Als je

bijvoorbeeld een anatomisch modern menselijk skelet vind in een steenkoollaag vlak onder het aardoppervlak, zou

het enerzijds, als het echt in de steenkool zat, 200 miljoen jaar oud zijn. Maar als er dan iemand komt die zegt dat

het veel recenter moet zijn omdat het zo dicht onder het aardoppervlak is aangetroffen. In feite zijn de meeste

archeologische ontdekkingen waarover we beschikken -zoals Lucy, het beroemdste exemplaar van de

Australopithecus, gevonden door Donald Johanson in Ethiopie in de jaren zeventig- op het aardoppervlak gevonden.

De meeste ontdekkingen van de Java-mens op Java zijn trouwens op het oppervlak gevonden. En niet begraven in de

grond.

Hoe zit het precies met de gouden kettingen die uit brokken steenkool vallen?

Deze worden beschreven in verscheidene boeken, ook in dat van ons. Een bijzonder interessante zaak is die van

1891, waarover een artikel verscheen in The Morrisonville Times uit Illinois. Om precies te zijn overkwam het de

vrouw van de uitgever van die krant. Mevrouw Culp was bezig steenkool te breken voor in de kachel, toen ze in een

steenkool een goud kettinkje vond, een uiterst verfijnde, bewerkte gouden ketting. Wat ze overhield was een stukje

steenkool waaruit aan beide zijden een stukje ketting hing, als was het een hanger. We hadden ervan gehoord, en

hebben de krant zelf benaderd om te vragen of het artikel nog bestond, en die stuurde ons een kopie van dit artikel.

We hebben ook contact opgenomen met de Geological Survey in de staat Illinois over de datering van het stukje

kool waarin de gouden ketting was gevonden. We hebben geprobeerd om dat gouden kettinkje -zo'n 300 miljoen

jaar oud- te vinden. We kwamen erachter dat de eigenares in 1959 was overleden, en dat een van haar familieleden

de ketting na haar dood heeft geerfd, maar daar loopt het spoor dood. Vandaar dat we deze vondst hebben

opgenomen in onze bijlage met extreme anomalieën, omdat we er geen volledige beschrijving van konden geven.

Het boek bestaat voor het grootste deel uit minder spectaculaire vondsten, waarvoor betere bronnen en

beschrijvingen beschikbaar zijn. De meeste artefacten zijn er nog steeds -het merendeel in musea en men kan ze

bekijken.

De gegroefde bollen werden bij Ottosdal in Zuid-Afrika gevonden. Ze worden al tijden lang gevonden, er zijn er

honderden van gevonden. Ze hebben niet allemaal parallelle groeven om de middellijn. Ze worden niet vermeld in

wetenschappelijke tijdschriften, en daarom hebben we dit specifieke geval in een bijlage achterin het boek

opgenomen. De bollen worden bewaard in een museum in Klerksdorp, Zuid-Afrika. We correspondeerden met

Roelf Marx, de curator van het museum aldaar, die ons vertelde dat ze een compleet raadsel vormden voor hem.

Volgens hem zien ze eruit alsof ze door mensen zijn vervaardigd. Dat waren zijn precieze woorden, dat ze door

mensen zijn gemaakt, terwijl toen deze bollen in de rots zijn ingesloten, er geen intelligent leven op aarde bestond.

Volgens hem zagen ze er weliswaar uit alsof ze door de mens zijn gemaakt, maar kunnen ze niet door de mens

gemaakt zijn omdat er op dat specifieke tijdstip geen mens, geen enkele levensvorm bestond. De bollen zijn

gevonden in een formatie van pyrofiliet, een mica-achtige mineraalsoort waarvan de ouderdom is geschat op 2,8

miljard jaar. Die gegevens had hij van professor Bisschoff, de leraar geologie aan een plaatselijke universiteit, de

universiteit van Potchefstroom. Deze bollen zouden zijn gemaakt van limoniet, een soort ijzererts, maar het is een

erg ongebruikelijke soort limoniet omdat dit materiaal veel harder is. Zelfs met een stalen punt kan er niet in gekrast

worden, wat betekent dat ze extreem hard zijn. Zuiver limoniet-erts is gewoonlijk erg zacht, dus dat maakt de bollen

uiterst raadselachtig.

Ik denk dat je geen enkele huidige wetenschapper bereid zou vinden om te verklaren dat deze bollen door een mens

zijn gemaakt, hoewel ze zouden zeggen dat ze er wel uitzien alsof ze door mensen zijn gemaakt.

Een laatste voorbeeld als uitsmijter. Men heeft een gedeelte van een afdruk van een schoenzool gevonden in rots van

het late Trias, waarvan de ouderdom is vastgesteld op 250.000 miljoen jaar. In deze afdruk was de draad waarmee

de zool was genaaid duidelijk te zien, afgedrukt in de rots. Hoe kun je zoiets over het hoofd zien wanneer er een

stiksel onder de zool zit en wanneer de rots uit het Trias stamt? Waar is die rots trouwens gebleven... ?

Dit is dus weer eens in de doofpot gestopt. De zoveelste keer dat we prachtig bewijsmateriaal hadden dat

wetenschappers onder ogen hebben gehad, en dat in de doofpot wordt gestopt. De ontdekker heeft het meegenomen

naar New York en naar de universiteit van Columbia. In Columbia heeft hij het laten zien aan de leiding van het

American Museum of National History en het aan hen gegeven. Toen we schreven naar het American Museum of

National History werd ons verteld dat ze hier geen informatie over hadden. Dat het rapport niet in hun archieven

voorkomt.

commentaar: De degeneratie-theorie zegt dat het leven begonnen is met de gelijktijdige creatie van in complexiteit verschillende

oertypen, die ongeveer op familieniveau gezocht moeten worden, van waaruit alle ondervarianten zijn ontstaan die

we nu en in de fossielen waarnemen. Het idee van de co-existentie van mensen met andere levende wezens

gedurende alle tijden van het bestaan van de aarde is dus identiek aan het idee van de degeneratie-theorie hierover.

Forbidden Archeology betekent óf dat er iets fundamenteel mis is met bestaande dateringsmethoden, óf dat er iets

fundamenteel mis is met de evolutie-theorie.

Ik zou discussie naar aanleiding van dit artikel aan willen moedigen door gebruik te maken van het Online Discussie

Platform en daar reacties in te zenden.

tekst en pagina's gemaakt door: Peter Scheele

een project van Peter-InSite.nl

geef hier je feedback over deze pagina of op de inhoud

laatste veranderingen: 08-12-97

copyright © 1997, Peter Scheele

Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human

Race By Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson

Published by BBT Science Books, 1996. ISBN: 0-89213-294-9. Hardbound, 952 pages.

Sample Chapter

INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In 1979, researchers at the Laetoli, Tanzania, site in East Africa discovered footprints in volcanic ash deposits over

3.6 million years old. Mary Leakey and others said the prints were indistinguishable from those of modern humans.

To these scientists, this meant only that the human ancestors of 3.6 million years ago had remarkably modern feet.

But ccording to other scientists, such as physical anthropologist R. H. Tuttle of the University of Chicago, fossil

bones of the known australopithecines of 3.6 million years ago show they had feet that were distinctly apelike.

Hence they were incompatible with the Laetoli prints. In an article in the March 1990 issue of Natural History,

Tuttle confessed that "we are left with somewhat of a mystery." It seems permissible, therefore, to consider a

possibility neither Tuttle nor Leakey mentioned--that creatures with anatomically modern human bodies to match

their anatomically modern human feet existed some 3.6 million years ago in East Africa. Perhaps, as

suggested in the illustration on the opposite page, they coexisted with more apelike creatures. As intriguing as this

archeological possibility may be, current ideas about human evolution forbid it.

Knowledgeable persons will warn against positing the existence of anatomically modern humans millions of years

ago on the slim basis of the Laetoli footprints. But there is further evidence. Over the past few decades, scientists in

Africa have uncovered fossil bones that look remarkably human. In 1965, Bryan Patterson and W. W. Howells

found a surprisingly modern humerus (upper arm bone) at Kanapoi, Kenya. Scientists judged the humerus to be over

4 million years old. Henry M. McHenry and

Robert S. Corruccini of the University of California said the Kanapoi humerus was "barely distinguishable from

modern Homo." Similarly, Richard Leakey said the ER 1481 femur (thighbone) from Lake Turkana, Kenya, found

in 1972, was indistinguishable from that of modern humans. Scientists normally assign the ER 1481 femur, which is

about 2 million years old, to prehuman Homo habilis. But since the ER 1481 femur was found by itself, one cannot

rule out the possibility that the rest of the skeleton was also anatomically modern. Interestingly enough, in 1913 the

German scientist Hans Reck found at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, a complete anatomically modern human skeleton in

strata over 1 million years old, inspiring decades of

controversy.

Here again, some will caution us not to set a few isolated and controversial examples against the overwhelming

amount of noncontroversial evidence showing that anatomically modern humans evolved from more apelike

creatures fairly recently--about 100,000 years ago, in Africa, and, in the view of some, in other parts of the world as

well.

But it turns out we have not exhausted our resources with the Laetoli footprints, the Kanapoi humerus, and the ER

1481 femur. Over he past eight years, Richard Thompson and I, with the assistance of our researcher Stephen

Bernath, have amassed an extensive body of evidence that calls into question current theories of human evolution.

Some of this evidence, like the Laetoli footprints, is fairly recent. But much of it was reported by scientists in the

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And as you can see, our discussion of this evidence fills up quite a large

book.

Without even looking at this older body of evidence, some will assume that there must be something wrong with it--

that it was properly disposed of by scientists long ago, for very good reasons. Richard and I have looked rather

deeply into that possibility. We have concluded, however, that the quality of this controversial evidence is no better

or worse than the

supposedly noncontroversial evidence usually cited in favor of current views about human evolution.

But Forbidden Archeology is more than a well-documented catalog of unusual facts. It is also a sociological,

philosophical, and historical critique of the scientific method, as applied to the question of human origins and

antiquity.

We are not sociologists, but our approach in some ways resembles that taken by practitioners of the sociology of

scientific knowledge (SSK), such as Steve Woolgar, Trevor Pinch, Michael Mulkay, Harry Collins, Bruno Latour,

and Michael Lynch.

Each of these scholars has a unique perspective on SSK, but they would all probably agree with the following

programmatic statement. Scientists' conclusions do not identically correspond to states and processes of an objective

natural reality. Instead, such conclusions reflect the real social processes of scientists as much as, more than, or even

rather than what goes on in nature.

The critical approach we take in Forbidden Archeology also resembles that taken by philosophers of science such as

Paul Feyerabend, who holds that science has attained too privileged a position in the intellectual field, and by

historians of science such as J. S. Rudwick, who has explored in detail the nature of scientific controversy. As does

Rudwick in The Great

Devonian Controversy, we use narrative to present our material, which encompasses not one controversy but many

controversies--controversies long resolved, controversies as yet unresolved, and controversies now in the making.

This has necessitated extensive quoting from primary and secondary sources, and giving rather detailed accounts of

the twists and turns of complex paleoanthropological debates.

For those working in disciplines connected with human origins and antiquity, Forbidden Archeology provides a

well- documented compendium of reports absent from many current references and not otherwise easily obtainable.

One of the last authors to discuss the kind of reports found in Forbidden Archeology was Marcellin Boule. In his

book Fossil Men (1957), Boule gave a decidedly negative review. But upon examining the original reports, we

found Boule's total skepticism unjustified. In Forbidden Archeology, we provide primary source material that will

allow modern readers to form

their own opinions about the evidence Boule dismissed. We also introduce a great many cases that Boule neglected

to mention.

From the evidence we have gathered, we conclude, sometimes in language devoid of ritual tentativeness, that the

now-dominant assumptions about human origins are in need of drastic revision. We also find that a process of

knowledge filtration has left current workers with a radically incomplete collection of facts.

We anticipate that many workers will take Forbidden Archeology as an invitation to productive discourse on (1) the

nature and treatment of evidence in the field of human origins and (2) the conclusions that can most reasonably

drawn from this evidence.

In the first chapter of Part I of Forbidden Archeology, we survey the history and current state of scientific ideas

about human evolution. We also discuss some of the epistemological principles we employ in our study of this field.

Principally, we are concerned with a double standard in the treatment of evidence.

We identify two main bodies of evidence. The first is a body of controversial evidence (A), which shows the

existence of anatomically modern humans in the uncomfortably distant past. The second is a body of evidence (B),

which can be interpreted as supporting the currently dominant views that anatomically modern humans evolved

fairly recently, about 100,000 years ago in Africa, and perhaps elsewhere.

We also identify standards employed in the evaluation of paleoanthropological evidence. After detailed study, we

found that if these standards are applied equally to A and B, then we must accept both A and B or reject both A and

B. If we accept both A and B, then we have evidence placing anatomically modern humans millions of years ago,

coexisting with more apelike hominids. If we reject both A and B, then we deprive ourselves of the evidential

foundation for making any pronouncements whatsoever about human origins and antiquity.

Historically, a significant number of professional scientists once accepted the evidence in category A. But a more

influential group of scientists, who applied standards of evidence more strictly to A than to B, later caused A to be

rejected and B to be preserved. This differential application of standards for the acceptance and rejection of evidence

constitutes a knowledge filter that obscures the real picture of human origins and antiquity.

In the main body of Part I (Chapters 2-6), we look closely at the vast amount of controversial evidence that

contradicts current ideas about human evolution. We recount in detail how this evidence has been systematically

suppressed, ignored, or forgotten, even though it is qualitatively (and quantitatively) equivalent to evidence favoring

currently accepted views on human origins. When we speak of suppression of evidence, we are not referring to

scientific conspirators carrying out a satanic plot to deceive the public. Instead, we are talking about an ongoing

social process of knowledge filtration that appears quite innocuous but has a substantial cumulative effect. Certain

categories of evidence simply disappear from view, in our opinion unjustifiably.

Chapter 2 deals with anomalously old bones and shells showing cut marks and signs of intentional breakage. To this

day, scientists regard such bones and shells as an important category of evidence, and many archeological sites have

been established on this kind of evidence alone.

In the decades after Darwin introduced his theory, numerous scientists discovered incised and broken animal bones

and shells suggesting that tool-using humans or human precursors existed in the Pliocene (2-5 million years ago),

the Miocene (5-25 million years ago), and even earlier. In analyzing cut and broken bones and shells, the discoverers

carefully considered and ruled out alternative explanations--such as the action of animals or geological pressure--

before concluding that humans were

responsible. In some cases, stone tools were found along with the cut and broken bones or shells.

A particularly striking example in this category is a shell displaying a crude yet recognizably human face carved on

its outer surface. Reported by geologist H. Stopes to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in

1881, this shell, from the Pliocene Red Crag formation in England, is over 2 million years old. According to

standard views, humans capable of this level of artistry did not arrive in Europe until about 30,000 or 40,000 years

ago. Furthermore, they supposedly did not arise in

their African homeland until about 100,000 years ago.

Concerning evidence of the kind reported by Stopes, Armand de Quatrefages wrote in his book Hommes Fossiles et

Hommes Sauvages (1884): "The objections made to the existence of man in the Pliocene and Miocene seem to

habitually be more related to theoretical considerations than direct observation."

The most rudimentary stone tools, the eoliths ("dawn stones") are the subject of Chapter 3. These imlements, found

in unexpectedly old geological contexts, inspired protracted debate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries.

For some, eoliths were not always easily recognizable as tools. Eoliths were not shaped into symmetrical

implemental forms. Instead, an edge of a natural stone flake was chipped to make it suitable for a particular task,

such as scraping, cutting, or chopping. Often, the working edge bore signs of use.

Critics said eoliths resulted from natural forces, like tumbling in stream beds. But defenders of eoliths offered

convincing counterarguments that natural forces could not have made unidirectional chipping on just one side of a

working edge.

In the late nineteenth century, Benjamin Harrison, an amateur archeologist, found eoliths on the Kent Plateau in

southeastern England. Geological evidence suggests that the eoliths were manufactured in the Middle or Late

Pliocene, about 2-4 million ago. Among the supporters of Harrison's eoliths were Alfred Russell Wallace, cofounder

with Darwin of the theory of

evolution by natural selection; Sir John Prestwich, one of England's most eminent geologists; and Ray E. Lankester,

a director of the British Museum (Natural History).

Although Harrision found most of his eoliths in surface deposits of Pliocene gravel, he also found many below

ground level during an excavation financed and directed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

In addition to eoliths, Harrison found at various places on the Kent Plateau more advanced stone tools (paleoliths) of

similar Pliocene antiquity.

In the early part of the twentieth century, J. Reid Moir, a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and president

of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, found eoliths (and more advanced stone tools) in England's Red Crag

formation. The tools were about 2.0-2.5 million years old. Some of Moir's tools were discovered in the detritus beds

beneath the Red Crag and

could be anywhere from 2.5 to 55 million years old.

Moir's finds won support from one of the most vocal critics of eoliths, Henri Breuil, then regarded as one of the

world's preeminent authorities on stone tools. Another supporter was paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, of the

American Museum of Natural History in New York. And in 1923, an international commission of scientists

journeyed to England to investigate

Moir's principal discoveries and pronounced them genuine.

But in 1939, A. S. Barnes published an influential paper, in which he analyzed the eoliths found by Moir and others

in terms of the angle of flaking observed on them. Barnes claimed his method could distinguish human flaking from

flaking by natural causes. On this basis, he dismissed all the eoliths he studied, including Moir's, as the product of

natural forces. Since then, scientists have used Barnes's method to deny the human manufacture of other stone tool

industries. But in recent years,

authorities on stone tools such as George F. Carter, Leland W. Patterson, and A. L. Bryan have disputed Barnes's

methodology and its blanket application. This suggests the need for a reexamination of the European eoliths.

Significantly, early stone tools from Africa, such as those from the lower levels of Olduvai Gorge, appear identical

to the rejected European eoliths. Yet they are accepted by the scientific community without question. This is

probably because they fall within, and help support, the conventional spatio- temporal framework of human

evolution.

But other Eolithic industries of unexpected antiquity continue to encounter strong opposition. For example, in the

1950s, Louis Leakey found stone tools over 200,000 years old at Calico in southern California. According to tandard

views, humans did not enter the subarctic regions of the New World until about 12,000 years ago. Mainstream

scientists responded to Calico

with predictable claims that the objects found there were natural products or that they were not really 200,000 years

old. But there is sufficient reason to conclude that the Calico finds are genuinely old human artifcts. Although most

of the Calico implements are crude, some, including a beaked graver, are more advanced.

In Chapter 4, we discuss a category of implements that we call crude paleoliths. In the case of eoliths, chipping is

confined to the working edge of a naturally broken piece of stone. But the makers of the crude paleoliths

deliberately struck flakes from stone cores and then shaped them into more recognizable types of tools. In some

cases, the cores themselves were shaped into tools. As we have seen, crude paleoliths also turn up along with eoliths.

But at the sites discussed in Chapter 4, the paleoliths

are more dominant in the assemblages.

In the category of crude paleoliths, we include Miocene tools (5-25 million years old) found in the late nineteenth

century by Carlos Ribeiro, head of the Geological Survey of Portugal. At an international conference of

archeologists and anthropologists held in Lisbon, a committee of scientists investigated one of the sites where

Ribeiro had found implements. One of the scientists found a stone tool even more advanced than the better of

Ribeiro's specimens. Comparable to accepted Late Pleistocene tools of the Mousterian type, it was firmly embedded

in a Miocene conglomerate, in circumstances confirming its Miocene antiquity.

Crude paleoliths were also found in Miocene formations at Thenay, France. S. Laing, an English science writer,

noted: "On the whole, the evidence for these Miocene implements seems to be very conclusive, and the objections to

have hardly any other ground than the reluctance to admit the great antiquity of man."

Scientists also found crude paleoliths of Miocene age at Aurillac, France. And at Boncelles, Belgium, A. Rutot

uncovered an extensive collection of paleoliths of Oligocene age (25 to 38 million years old).

In Chapter 5, we examine very advanced stone implements found in unexpectedly old geological contexts. Whereas

the implements discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 could conceivably be the work of human precursors such as Homo

erectus or Homo habilis, given current estimates of their capabilities, the implements of Chapter 5 are

unquestionably the work of anatomically modern humans.

Florentino Ameghino, a respected Argentine paleontologist, found stone tools, signs of fire, broken mammal bones,

and a human vertebra in a Pliocene formation at Monte Hermoso, Argentina. Ameghino made numerous similar

discoveries in Argentina, attracting the attention of scientists around the world. Despite Ameghino's unique theories

about a South American

origin for the hominids, his actual discoveries are still worth considering.

In 1912, Ales Hrdlicka, of the Smithsonian Institution, published a lengthy, but not very reasonable, attack on

Ameghino's work. Hrdlicka asserted that all of Ameghino's finds were from recent Indian settlements.

In response, Carlos Ameghino, brother of Florentino Ameghino, carried out new investigations at Miramar, on the

Argentine coast south of Buenos Aires. There he found a series of stone implements, including bolas, and signs of

fire. A commission of geologists confirmed the implements' position in the Chapadmalalan formation, which

modern geologists say is 3-5 million years old. Carlos Ameghino also found at Miramar a stone arrowhead firmly

embedded in the femur of a Pliocene species of Toxodon, an extinct South American mammal.

Ethnographer Eric Boman disputed Carlos Ameghino's discoveries but also unintentionally helped confirm them. In

1920, Carlos Ameghino's collector, Lorenzo Parodi, found a stone implement in the Pliocene seaside barranca (cliff)

at Miramar and left it in place. Boman was one of several scientists invited by Ameghino to witness the implement's

extraction. After the implement (a bola stone) was photographed and removed, another discovery was made. "At my

direction," wrote Boman, "Parodi continued to attack the barranca with a pick at the same point where the bola stone

was discovered, when suddenly and unexpectedly, there appeared a second stone ball. . . . It is more like grinding

stone than a bola." Boman found yet another implement 200 yards away. Confounded, Boman could only hint in his

written report that the implements had been planted by Parodi. While this might conceivably have been true of the

first implement, it is hard to explain the other two in this way. In any case, Boman produced no evidence whatsoever

that Parodi, a longtime employee of the Buenos Aires Museum of Natural History, had ever behaved fraudulently.

The kinds of implements found by Carlos Ameghino at Miramar (arrowheads and bolas) are usually considered the

work of Homo sapiens sapiens. Taken at face value, the Miramar finds therefore demonstrate the presence of

anatomically modern humans in South America over 3 million years ago. Interestingly enough, in 1921 M. A.

Vignati discovered in the Late Pliocene

Chapadmalalan formation at Miramar a fully human fossil jaw fragment.

In the early 1950s, Thomas E. Lee of the National Museum of Canada found advanced stone tools in glacial deposits

at Sheguiandah, on Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron. Geologist John Sanford of Wayne State University

argued that the oldest Sheguiandah tools were at least 65,000 years old and might be as much as 125,000 years old.

For those adhering to

standard views on North American prehistory, such ages were unacceptable.

Thomas E. Lee complained: "The site's discoverer [Lee] was hounded from his Civil Service position into prolonged

unemployment; publication outlets were cut off; the evidence was misrepresented by several prominent authors . . . ;

the tons of artifacts vanished into storage bins of the National Museum of Canada; for refusing to fire the discoverer,

the Director of the

National Museum, who had proposed having a monograph on the site published, was himself fired and driven into

exile; official positions of prestige and power were exercised in an effort to gain control over just six Sheguiandah

specimens that had not gone under cover; and the site has been turned into a tourist resort. . . . Sheguiandah would

have forced embarrassing

admissions that the Brahmins did not know everything. It would have forced the rewriting of almost every book in

the business. It had to be killed. It was killed."

The treatment received by Lee is not an isolated case. In the 1960s, anthropologists uncovered advanced stone tools

at Hueyatlaco, Mexico. Geologist Virginia Steen-McIntyre and other members of a U.S. Geological Survey team

obtained an age of about 250,000 years for the sites implement-bearing layers. This challenged not only standard

views of New World anthropology but also the whole standard picture of human origins. Humans capable of making

the kind of tools found at Hueyatlaco are not thought to have come into existence until around 100,000 years ago in

Africa.

Virginia Steen-McIntyre experienced difficulty in getting her dating study on Hueyatlaco published. "The problem

as I see it is much bigger than Hueyatlaco," she wrote to Estella Leopold, associate editor of Quaternary Research.

"It concerns the manipulation of scientific thought through the suppression of 'Enigmatic Data,' data that challenges

the prevailing mode

of thinking. Hueyatlaco certainly does that! Not being an anthropologist, I didn't realize the full significance of our

dates back in 1973, nor how deeply woven into our thought the current theory of human evolution has become. Our

work at Hueyatlaco has been rejected by most archaeologists because it contradicts that theory, period."

This pattern of data suppression has a long history. In 1880, J. D. Whitney, the state geologist of California,

published a lengthy review of advanced stone tools found in California gold mines. The implements, including spear

points and stone mortars and pestles, were found deep in mine shafts, underneath thick, undisturbed layers of lava,

in formations that geologists now say are from 9 million to over 55 million years old. W. H. Holmes of the

Smithsonian Institution, one of the most vocal nineteenth-

century critics of the California finds, wrote: "Perhaps if Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human

evoution as it is understood today, he would have hesitated to announce the conclusions formulated [that humans

existed in very ancient times in North America], notwithstanding the imposing array of testimony with which he was

confronted." In other words, if the facts do not agree with the favored theory, then such facts, even an imposing

array of them, must be discarded.

In Chapter 6, we review discoveries of anomalously old skeletal remains of the anatomically modern human type.

Perhaps the most interesting case is that of Castenedolo, Italy, where in the 1880s, G. Ragazzoni, a geologist, found

fossil bones of several Homo sapiens sapiens individuals in layers of Pliocene sediment 3 to 4 million years old.

Critics typically respond that the bones must have been placed into these Pliocene layers fairly recently by human

burial. But Ragazzoni was alert to this possibility and carefully inspected the overlying layers. He found them

undisturbed, with absolutely no sign of burial.

Modern scientists have used radiometric and chemical tests to attach recent ages to the Castenedolo bones and other

anomalously old human skeletal remains. But, as we show in Appendix 1, these tests can be quite unreliable. The

carbon 14 test is especially unreliable when applied to bones (such as the Castenedolo bones) that have lain in

museums for decades. Under these circumstances, bones are exposed to contamination that could cause the carbon

14 test to yield abnormally young dates. Rigorous purification techniques are required to remove such

contamination. Scientists did not employ these techniques in the 1969 carbon 14 testing of some of the Castenedolo

bones, which yielded an age of less than a thousand years.

Although the carbon 14 date for the Castenedolo material is suspect, it must still be considered as relevant evidence.

But it should be weighed along with the other evidence, including the original stratigraphic observations of

Ragazzoni, a professional geologist. In this case, the stratigraphic evidence appears to be more conclusive.

Opposition, on theoretical grounds, to a human presence in the Pliocene is not a new phenomenon. Speaking of the

Castenedolo finds and others of similar antiquity, the Italian scientist G. Sergi wrote in 1884: "By means of a

despotic scientific prejudice, call it what you will, every discovery of human remains in the Pliocene has been

discredited."

A good example of such prejudice is provided by R. A. S. Macalister, who in 1921 wrote about the Castenedolo

finds in a textbook on archeology: "There must be something wrong somewhere." Noting that the Castenedolo bones

were anatomically modern, Macalister concluded: "If they really belonged to the stratum in which they were found,

this would imply an xtraordinarily long standstill for evolution. It is much more likely that there is something amiss

with the observations." He further stated: "The acceptance of a Pliocene date for the Castenedolo skeletons would

create so many insoluble problems that we can hardly hesitate in choosing between the alternatives of adopting or

rejecting their authenticity." This supports the primary

point we are trying to make in Forbidden Archeology, namely, that there exists in the scientific community a

knowledge filter that screens out unwelcome evidence. This process of knowledge filtration has been going on for

well over a century and continues right up to the present day.

Our discussion of anomalously old human skeletal remains brings us to the end of Part I, our catalog of controversial

evidence. In Part II of Forbidden Archeology, we survey the body of accepted evidence that is generally used to

support the now-dominant ideas about human evolution.

Chapter 7 focuses on the discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus by Eugene Dubois in Java during the last decade of

the nineteenth century. Historically, the Java man discovery marks a turning point. Until then, there was no clear

picture of human evolution to be upheld and defended. Therefore, a good number of scientists, most of them

evolutionists, were actively considering a substantial body of evidene (cataloged in Part I) indicating that

anatomically modern humans existed in the Pliocene and earlier. With the discovery of Java man, now classified as

Homo erectus, the long-awaited missing link turned up in the Middle Pleistocene. As the Java man find won

acceptance among evolutionists, the body of evidence for a human presence in more ancient times gradually slid

into disrepute.

This evidence was not conclusively invalidated. Instead, at a certain point, scientists stopped talking and writing

about it. It was incompatible with the idea that apelike Java man was a genuine human ancestor.

As an example of how the Java man discovery was used to suppress evidence for a human presence in the Pliocene

and earlier, the following statement made by W. H. Holmes about the California finds reported by J. D. Whitney is

instructive. After asserting that Whitney's evidence "stands absolutely alone," Holmes complained that "it implies a

human race older by at least

one-half than Pithecanthropus erectus, which may be regarded as an incipient form of human creature only."

Therefore, despite the good quality of Whitney's evidence, it had to be dismissed.

Interestingly enough, modern researchers have reinterpreted the original Java Homo erectus fossils. The famous

bones reported by Dubois were a skullcap and femur. Although the two bones were found over 45 feet apart, in a

deposit filled with bones of many other species, Dubois said they belonged to the same individual. But in 1973, M.

H. Day and T. I. Molleson determined that the femur found by Dubois is different from other Homo erectus femurs

and is in fact indistinguishable from anatomically modern human femurs. This caused Day and Molleson to propose

that the femur was not connected with the Java man skull.

As far as we can see, this means that we now have an anatomically modern human femur and a Homo erectus skull

in a Middle Pleistocene stratum that is considered to be 800,000 years old. This provides further evidence that

anatomically modern humans coexisted with more apelike creatures in unexpectedly remote times. According to

standard views, anatomically modern humans arose just 100,000 years ago in Africa. Of course, one can always

propose that the anatomically modern human femur somehow got buried quite recently into the Middle Pleistocene

beds at Trinil. But the same could also be said of the skull.

In Chapter 7, we also consider the many Java Homo erectus discoveries reported by G. H. R. von Koenigswald and

other researchers. Almost all of these bones were surface finds, the true age of which is doubtful. Nevertheless,

scientists have assigned them Middle and Early Pleistocene dates obtained by the potassium-argon method. The

potassium-argon method is

used to date layers of volcanic material, not bones. Because the Java Homo erectus fossils were found on the surface

and not below the intact volcanic layers, it is misleading to assign them potassium-argon dates obtained from the

volcanic layers.

The infamous Piltdown hoax is the subject of Chapter 8. Early in this century, Charles Dawson, an amateur

collector, found pieces of a human skull near Piltdown. Subsequently, scientists such as Sir Arthur Smith Woodward

of the British Museum and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin participated with Dawson in excavations that uncovered an

apelike jaw, along with several mammalian fossils of appropriate antiquity. Dawson and Woodward, believing the

combination of humanlike skull and apelike jaw represented a human ancestor from the Early Pleistocene or Late

Pliocene, announced their discovery to the scientific world. For the next four decades, Piltdown man was accepted

as a genuine discovery and was integrated into the human

evolutionary lineage.

In the 1950s, J. S. Weiner, K. P. Oakley, and other British scientists exposed Piltdown man as an exceedingly clever

hoax, carried out by someone with great scientific expertise. Some blamed Dawson or Teilhard de Chardin, but

others have accused Sir Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum, Sir Arthur Keith of the Hunterian Museum

of the Royal Collee of Surgeons, William Sollas of the geology department at Cambridge, and Sir Grafton Eliot

Smith, a famous anatomist.

J. S. Weiner himself noted: "Behind it all we sense, therefore, a strong and impelling motive. . . . There could have

been a mad desire to assist the doctrine of human evolution by furnishing the 'requisite' 'missing link'. . . . Piltdown

might have offered irresistible attraction to some fanatical biologist."

Piltdown is significant in that it shows that there are instances of deliberate fraud in paleoanthropology, in addition

to the general process of knowledge filtration.

Finally, there is substantial, though not incontrovertible, evidence that the Piltdown skull, at least, was a genuine

fossil. The Piltdown gravels in which it was found are now thought to be 75,000 to 125,000 years old. An

anatomically modern human skull of this age in England would be considered anomalous.

Chapter 9 takes us to China, where in 1929 Davidson Black reported the discovery of Peking man fossils at

Zhoukoudian (formerly Choukoutien). Now classified as Homo erectus, the Peking man specimens were lost to

science during the Second World War. Traditionally, Peking man has been depicted as a cave dweller who had

mastered the arts of stone tool manufacturing, hunting, and building fires. But a certain number of influential

researchers regarded this view as mistaken. They saw Peking man as the prey of a more advanced hominid, whose

skeletal remains have not yet been discovered.

In 1983, Wu Rukang and Lin Shenglong published an article in Scientific American purporting to show an

evolutionary increase in brain size during the 230,000 years of the Homo erectus occupation of the Zhoukoudian

cave. But we show that this proposal was based on a misleading statistical presentation of the cranial evidence.

In addition to the famous Peking man discoveries, many more hominid finds have been made in China. These

include, say Chinese workers, australopithecines, various grades of Homo erectus, Neanderthaloids, early Homo

sapiens, and anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The dating of these hominids is problematic. They occur at sites

along with fossils of mammals broadly characteristic of the Pleistocene. In reading various reports, we noticed that

scientists routinely used the morphology of the hominid remains to date these sites more precisely.

For example, at Tongzi, South China, Homo sapiens fossils were found along with mammalian fossils. Qiu

Zhonglang said: "The fauna suggests a Middle-Upper Pleistocene range, but the archeological [i.e., human] evidence

is consistent with an Upper Pleistocene age." Qiu, using what we call morphological dating, therefore assigned the

site, and hence the human fossils, to the Upper Pleistocene. A more reasonable conclusion would be that the Homo

sapiens fossils could be as old as the Middle Pleistocene. Indeed, our examination of the Tongzi faunal evidence

shows mammalian species that became extinct at the end of the Middle Pleistocene. This indicates that the Tongzi

site, and the Homo sapiens fossils, are at least 100,000 years old. Additional faunal evidence suggests a maximum

age of about 600,000 years.

The practice of morphological dating substantially distorts the hominid fossil record. In effect, scientists simply

arrange the hominid fossils according to a favored evolutionary sequence, although the accompanying faunal

evidence does not dictate this. If one considers the true probable date ranges for the Chinese hominids, one finds that

various grades of Homo erectus and various grades of early Homo sapiens (including Neanderthaloids) may have

coexisted with anatomically modern Homo sapiens

in the middle Middle Pleistocene, during the time of the Zhoukoudian Homo erectus occupation.

In Chapter 10, we consider the possible coexistence of primitive hominids and anatomically modern humans not

only in the distant past but in the present. Over the past century, scientists have accumulated evidence suggesting

that humanlike ceatures resembling Gigantopithecus, Australopithecus, Homo erectus, and the Neanderthals are

living in various wilderness areas of the world. In North America, these creatures are known as Sasquatch. In

Central Asia, they are called Almas. In Africa, China,

Southeast Asia, Central America, and South America, they are known by other names. Some researchers use the

general term "wildmen" to include them all. Scientists and physicians have reported seeing live wildmen, dead

wildmen, and footprints. They have also catalogued thousands of reports from ordinary people who have seen

wildmen, as well as similar reports from

historical records.

Myra Shackley, a British anthropologist, wrote to us: "Opinions vary, but I guess the commonest would be that there

is indeed sufficient evidence to suggest at least the possibility of the existence of various unclassified manlike

creatures, but that in the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to comment on their significance in any

more detail. The position is further complicated by misquotes, hoaxing, and lunatic fringe activities, but a surprising

number of hard core anthropologists seem to be of the opinion that the matter is very worthwhile investigating."

Chapter 11 takes us to Africa. We describe in detail the cases mentioned in the first part of this introduction (Reck's

skeleton, the Laetoli footprints, etc.). These provide evidence for anatomically modern humans in the Early

Pleistocene and Late Pliocene.

We also examine the status of Australopithecus. Most anthropologists say Australopithecus was a human ancestor

with an apelike head, a humanlike body, and a humanlike bipedal stance and gait. But other researchers make a

convincing case for a radically different view of Australopithecus. Physical anthropologist C. E. Oxnard wrote in his

book Uniqueness and Diversity in Human Evolution (1975): "Pending further evidence we are left with the vision of

intermediately sized animals, at home in the trees, capable of climbing, performing degrees of acrobatics, and

perhaps of arm suspension." In a 1975 article in Nature, Oxnard found the australopithecines to be anatomically

similar to orangutans and said "it is rather unlikely that any of the Australopithecines . . . can have any direct

phylogenetic link with the genus Homo."

Oxnard's view is not new. Earlier in this century, when the first australopithecines were discovered, many

anthropologists, such as Sir Arthur Keith, declined to characterize them as human ancestors. But they were later

overruled. In his book The Order of Man (1984), Oxnard noted: "In the uproar, at the time, as to whether or not

these creatures were near ape or human, the opinion that they were human won the day. This may well have resulted

not only in the defeat of the contrary opinion but also the burying of that part of the evidence upon which the

contrary opinion was based. If this is so, it should be possible to unearth this other part of the evidence." And that, in

a more general way, is what we have done in Forbidden Archeology. We have unearthed buried evidence, evidence

which supports a view of human origins and antiquity quite different from that currently held.

In Appendix 1, we review chemical and radiometric dating techniques andtheir application to human fossil remains,

including some of those discussed in Chapter 6. In Appendix 2, we provide a limited selection of evidence for

ancient humans displaying a level of culture beyond that indicated by the stone tools discussed in Chapters 3-5. And

in Appendix 3, we provide a table listing almost all of the discoveries contained in Forbidden Archeology.

Some might question why we would put together a book like Forbidden Archeology, unless we had some underlying

purpose. Indeed, there is some underlying purpose.

Richard Thompson and I are members of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, a branch of the International Society for

Krishna Consciousness that studies the relationship between modern science and the world view expressed in the

Vedc literature. This institute was founded by our spiritual master, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Prabhupada, who encouraged us to critically examine the prevailing account of human origins and the methods by

which it was established. From the Vedic literature, we derive the idea that the human race is of great antiquity. To

conduct systematic research into the existing scientific literature on human antiquity, we expressed the Vedic idea in

the form of a theory that various humanlike and apelike beings have coexisted for a long time.

That our theoretical outlook is derived from the Vedic literature should not disqualify it. Theory selection can come

from many sources--a private inspiration, previous theories, a suggestion from a friend, a movie, and so on. What

really matters is not a theory's source but its ability to account for observations.

Our research program led to results we did not anticipate, and hence a book much larger than originally envisioned.

Because of this, we have not been able to develop in this volume our ideas about an alternative to current theories of

human origins. We are therefore planning a second volume relating our extensive research results in this area to our

Vedic source material.

Given their underlying purpose, Forbidden Archeology and its forthcoming companion volume may therefore be of

interest to cultural and cognitive anthropologists, scholars of religion, and others concerned with the interactions of

cultures in time and space.

At this point, I would like to say something about my collaboration with Richard Thompson. Richard is a scientist

by training, a mathematician who has published refereed articles and books in the fields of mathematical biology,

remote sensing from satellites, geology, and physics. I am not a scientist by training. Since 1977, I have been a

writer and editor for books and magazines published by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.

In 1984, Richard asked his assistant Stephen Bernath to begin collecting material on human origins and antiquity. In

1986, Richard asked me to take that material and organize it into a book.

As I reviewed the material provided to me by Stephen, I was struck by the very small number of reports from 1859,

when Darwin published The Origin of Species, until 1894, when Dubois published his report on Java man. Curious

about this, I asked Stephen to obtain some anthropology books from the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries. In these books, including an early edition of Boule's Fossil Men, I found highly negative reviews of

numerous reports from the period in question. By tracing out footnotes, we dug up a few samples of these reports.

Most of them, by nineteenth-century

scientists, described incised bones, stone tools, and anatomically modern skeletal remains encountered in

unexpectedly old geological contexts. The reports were of high quality, answering many possible objections. This

encouraged me to make a more systematic search. Digging up this buried literary evidence required another three

years. Stephen Bernath and I obtained rare conference volumes and journals from around the world, and together we

translated the material into English. The results of this labor provided the basis for Chapters 2-6 in Forbidden

Archeology.

After I reviewed the material Stephen gave me about the Peking man discoveries, I decided we should also look at

recent hominid finds in China. While going through dozens of technical books and papers, I noticed the

phenomenon of morphological dating. And when I reviewed our African material, I encountered hints of the

dissenting view regarding Australopithecus. My curiosity about these two areas also led to a fruitful extension of our

original research program.

Writing the manuscript from the assembled material took another couple of years. Throughout the entire period of

research and writing, I had almost daily discussions with Richard about the significance of the material and how best

to present it. Richard himself contributed most of Appendix 1, the discussion of the uranium series dating of the

Hueyatlac tools in Chapter 5, and the discussion of epistemological considerations in Chapter 1. The remainder of

the book was written by me, although I relied heavily on research reports supplied by Stephen Bernath for Chapter 7

and the first part of Chapter 9, as well as Appendix 2. Stephen obtained much of the material in Appendix 2 from

Ron Calais, who kindly sent us many Xeroxes of original reports from his archives.

In this second printing of the first edition of Forbidden Archeology, we have corrected several small errors in the

original text, mostly typographical. The account of a wildman sighting by Anthony B. Wooldridge, originally

included in Chapter 10, has been deleted because we have since learned that the author has retracted his statements.

Richard and I are grateful to our Bhaktivedanta Institute colleagues and the other reviewers who read all or part of

the manuscript of Forbidden Archeology. We have incorporated many, but not all, of their suggestions. Full

responsibility for the content and manner of presentation lies with us.

Virginia Steen-McIntyre was kind enough to supply us with her correspondence on the dating of the Hueyatlaco,

Mexico, site. We also had useful discussions about stone tools with Ruth D. Simpson of the San Bernardino County

Museum and about shark teeth marks on bone with Thomas A. Demere of the San Diego Natural History Museum.

I am indebted to my friend Pierce Julius Flynn for the continuing interest he has displayed in the writing and

publication of Forbidden Archeology. It is through him that I have learned much of what I know about current

developments in the social sciences, particularly semiotics, the sociology of knowledge, and postmodern

anthropology.

This book could not have been completed without the varied services of Christopher Beetle, a computer science

graduate of Brown University, who came to the Bhaktivedanta Institute in San Diego in 1988. He typeset almost all

of the book, going through several revisions. He also made most of the tables, processed most of the illustrations,

and served as a proofreader.

He made many helpful suggestions on the text and illustrations, and he also helped arranged the printing.

For overseeing the design and layout, Richard and I thank Robert Wintermute. The illustrations opposite the first

page of the introduction and in Figure 11.11 are the much-appreciated work of Miles Triplett. The cover painting is

by Hans Olson. David Smith, Sigalit Binyaminy, Susan Fritz, Barbara Cantatore, and Michael Best also helped in

the production of this book.

Richard and I would especially like to thank the international trustees of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, past and

present, for their generous support for the research, writing, and publication of this book. Michael Crabtree also

contributed toward the printing cost of this book.

Finally, we encourage readers to bring to our attention any additional evidence that may be of interest, especially for

inclusion in future editions of this book. We are also available for interviews and speaking engagements.

Michael A. Cremo

Alachua, Florida

April 24, 1995

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MEDIA EVENTS

Forbidden Archeology *************** News FLASH

NEWS RELEASE

Recent Indian Archeological Find Could Rewrite History:

Mysterious Sunken City Found Near Surat

WARANGAL, India – Could the recent discovery of a sunken city off the Northwest Coast of India near Surat

revolutionize our concept of history? Michael A. Cremo, historian of archeology and author of Forbidden

Archeology, claims that all the history textbooks would have to be rewritten if this ancient find proves to be of

Vedic origin. He recently attended a meeting of ranking Indian governmental officials at which Murli Monohar

Joshi, Minister for Science and Technology, confirmed the archeological find by an Indian oceanographic survey

team. Radiocarbon testing of a piece of wood from the underwater site yielded an age of 9,500 years, making it four

thousand years older than earliest cities now recognized.

According to Cremo, “The ancient Sanskrit writings of India speak of cities existing on the Indian subcontinent in

very primeval times. Although historians tend to dismiss such accounts as mythological, these new discoveries

promise to confirm the old literary accounts.” A leading authority on anomalous archeological evidence, Michael

Cremo is currently touring Indian universities and cultural institutions to promote the release of The Hidden History

of the Human Race, the abridged Indian edition of Forbidden Archeology (Torchlight Publishing 1993). Asserting

the recent find may be just the first step, he says, “It is likely that even older discoveries will follow.”

The cultural identity of the people who inhabited the underwater city is as yet unknown. Most historians believe

that Sanskrit-speaking people entered the Indian subcontinent about 3,500 years ago, from Central Asia. Other

historians accept India itself as the original home of Sanskrit-speaking people, whose lifestyle is termed Vedic

culture because their lives were regulated by a body of literature called the Vedas.

The case of the mysterious sunken city near Surat may offer further definitive proof to support the ancient origins of

man described in Cremo’s controversial bestseller Forbidden Archeology. With over 200,000 copies in print in a

dozen languages, Forbidden Archeology documents scientific evidence suggesting that modern man has existed for

millions of years.

- END -

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Linda Moulton Howe Interview With Michael Cremo On Indian Archeological Find

Linda Moulton Howe interviewed Michael Cremo in India about the archeological discovery off the coast of Surat,

India. This interview was broadcast on her news segment featured on Whitley Strieber's Dreamland on Saturday,

February 16, 2002. Go to Linda's Earthfiles website to hear the audio archive and read the transcript of this amazing

interview:

http://www.earthfiles.com/earth322.htm

****************************************************************

Forbidden Archeologist storms Czech Republic

November 6-17, 2001. Michael Cremo toured the Czech Republic promoting the latest Czech edition of The Hidden

History of the Human Race (Volvox Globator, 2001). Opening with a Press Conference in Prague, he lectured

before packed auditoriums at festivals, bookstores, and universities, including Charles University, one of the

oldest universities In Europe. He confronted evolution scientists three times on Czech National television and

interviewed

extensively on radio, magazines, newspapers, plus an Internet web chat. A Czech Television filmmaker

accompanied

Michael on his media tour, shooting for a documentary he hopes to present on Czech TV. Pictures and complete

details coming soon at: http://www.mcremo.com/darwin.htm

***********************************************************************************

Michael Cremo lectures on Aimé Rutot in Liege, Belgium

September 2-8, 2001. Michael Cremo presented a paper at the XXIVth Congress of the International Union of

Prehistoric

and Protohistoric Sciences entitled “The Discoveries of Belgian Geologist Aimé Louis Rutot at Boncelles, Belgium:

An

Archeological Controversy from the Early Twentieth Century.”

***********************************************************************************

New: Video and Audiotapes of Michael Cremo lecture in Berkeley

Video and audiotapes of Michael Cremo's lecture on Forbidden Archeology at the New Science and Ancient

Wisdom Conference (Berkeley Nov. 2001) are now available from the Bay Area Conscoiusness Network:

http://www.bacn.org/tape01.html

*********************************************************************************

New Release: Origins of the Human Species by Dennis Bonnette

Editions Rodopi presents Origins of the Human Species, an interdisciplinary book by Dennis Bonnette contrasting

scientific creationism with materialistic evolution. It critically evaluates the best arguments supporting and

opposing biological evolution, while extensively analyzing the philosophical possibility of inter-specific evolution.

Go to http://www.amazon.com for complete information.

*********************************************************************************************

**

Interviews Lectures

*************************************************************

Michael Cremo makes worldwide headlines

*********************************************************************************

Reactions to Forbidden Archeology range from glowing praise…

"One of the landmark intellectual achievements of the late 20th century"

Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods

…to caustic ridicule

"Your book is pure humbug and does not deserve to be taken seriously by anyone but a fool"

Richard Leakey, Anthropologist

Mr. Cremo's book has certainly turned the heads of the Scientific Establishment. After NBC’s Mysterious Origins

of Man television special aired in 1995, Academia exploded in protest, lobbying the FCC to ban NBC and its

sponsors from the airwaves. However, it is significant that censorship attempts failed to prevent the first program of

its kind from broadcasting alternative views on human evolution via a major television network.

World renowned as a ‘truth in science advocate' and leading authority on anomalous archeological evidence relating

to the origin of the human race, Michael Cremo has also received numerous favorable academic reviews from

mainstream scholars in publications such as British Journal for the History of Science, Journal of Field Archeology,

Social Studies of Science, Antiquity, and others.

*********************************************************************************************

**

REVIEWS

"Atlantis Rising" review of Forbidden Archeology's Impact - November 1998

"Internet Bookwatch" review of Forbidden Archeology's Impact- August 1998

"Public Understanding of Science" review of Forbidden Archeology's Impact - January 1999

"ISIS"review of Forbidden Archeology's Impact - September 1999

*********************************************************************************************

**

Controversial Findings Excavated by the Authors of Forbidden Archeology

*We did not evolve from apes

*Abundant evidence against human evolution has been ignored

*Scientists cheat on a massive scale

*Museum displays use propaganda in promoting falacious ideas to the public

*Human beings were around before the time of the dinosaurs

*Signs of civilization have been found that are millions of years old

*Textbooks are inaccurate

ABOUT TORCHLIGHT PUBLISHING

BACK TO HOME PAGE

Forbidden Archeology

This work is the intellectual property of the Authors

Michael Cremo and Richard L. Thompson

For a more in-depth study of this work

please visit http://www.mcremo.com

All material copyright 2000 Unlimited Resources/BBT Science Books

Reprinted with Permission

Modern science tells us that anatomically modern man has been around for only about 100,000 years. The Vedic

writings say he has been here a lot longer. Now a book from the Bhaktivedanta Institute takes a new look at the

scientific evidence. That evidence, says the book, has been fudged.

The authors are Michael Cremo (Drutakarma Dasa) and Richard L. Thompson (Sadaputa Dasa), both regular

contributors to BTG, and Stephen Bernath (Madhavendra Puri Dasa). Their book uncovers a startling picture not

only of what the evidence is and what it means but also of how science reached its story.

We present here, in condensed form, the Introduction.

Table Of Contents

Drastic Revision Needed

The Knowledge Filter

Crude Human Artifacts

Dawn Stones

More Recognizable Tools

Implements of Modern Man

If You Can't Bear the Evidence, Kill It

Skeletons that Cause Problems

Java Man

The Piltdown Hoax

Evidence from China

Extinct Men Still Alive?

Australopithecus

IN 1979, RESEARCHERS at Laetoli, Tanzania, in East Africa discovered footprints in deposits of volcanic ash

more than 3.6 million years old. The prints were indistinguishable from those of modern human beings, said Mary

Leakey and other scientists. To them this meant only that 3.6 million years ago our human ancestors had remarkably

modern feet.

But other scientists disagreed. One such scientist was R. H. Tuttle, a physical anthropologist at the University of

Chicago. Fossil bones show, he said, that the known human beings back then - the australopithecines - had feet that

were distinctly ape like. So the Laetoli prints don't fit. In the March 1990 issue of Natural History Tuttle confessed,

"We are left with somewhat of a mystery."

It seems permissible, therefore, to consider a possibility neither Tuttle nor Leakey mentioned - that creatures with

modern human bodies to match their modern human feet lived in East Africa some 3.6 million years ago. Perhaps,

as suggested in the illustration on the opposite page, they coexisted with more ape like creatures.

As intriguing as this possibility may be, current ideas about human evolution forbid it. Knowledgeable persons will

warn against suggesting that anatomically modern human beings existed millions of years ago. The evidence of the

Laetoli footprints is too slim.

But there is further evidence. Over the past few decades, scientists in Africa have uncovered fossil bones -

apparently millions of years old - that look remarkably human.

At Kanapoi, Kenya, in 1965, Bryan Patterson and W. W. Howells found a surprisingly modern humorous (upper

arm bone). Scientists judged it more than 4 million years old. Henry M. McHenry and Robert S. Corruccini of the

University of California said the Kanapoi humerus was "barely distinguishable" from that of modern man.

Then there is the ER 1481 femur - a thighbone found in 1972 in Lake Turkana, Kenya. Scientists normally assign it

an age of about 2 million years and say it belonged to the prehuman Homo habilis. But Richard Leakey said the

femur matches those of modern humans. And since the femur was found by itself, one cannot rule out the possibility

that the rest or the skeleton was also anatomically modern.

Geological eras and periods:

Era: Period: Start in Millions

of Years Ago

---------------------------------------------

Cenozoic Holocene .01

Pleistocene 2

Pliocene 6

Miocene 25

Oligocene 38

Eocene 55

Paleocene 65

Mesozoic Cretaceous 144

Jurassic 213

Triassic 248

Paleozoic Permian 286

Carboniferous 360

Devonian 408

Silurian 438

Ordovician 505

Camrian 590

In 1913 at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, the German scientist Hans Reck found a complete human skeleton -

anatomically modern - in strata more than 1 million years old. The find has inspired decades of controversy.

Here again, some will caution us not to set a few isolated and controversial examples against the overwhelming

amount of clear evidence. That evidence shows how modern humans came on the scene: In Africa (and, some say,

in other parts of the world) they evolved from more apelike creatures fairly recently - about 100,000 years ago.

But it turns out that the Laetoli footprints, the Kanapoi humerus, and the ER 1481 femur do not exhaust our stock of

unusual finds. Over the past eight years, Richard Thompson and I, aided by our researcher Stephen Bernath, have

uncovered extensive evidence that calls current theories of how humansgot the way they are into question. Some of

this evidence, like the Laetoli footprints, is fairly recent. But much of it was reported by scientists in the nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries.

Without even looking at this older body of evidence, some will assume there must be something wrong with it.

Scientists must have properly disposed of it long ago, and for very good reasons. But Richard and I have looked

deeply into that possibility. We have found that the quality of the controversial evidence is no better or worse than

the supposedly noncontroversial.

Drastic Revision Needed

Before us. one of the last authors to discuss the kind of reports found in Forbidden Archeology was Marcellin Boule.

In his book Fossil Men (1957), Boule gave the reports a decidedly negative review. But when we looked into the

original reports, we found poor grounds for Boule's extreme skepticism. In Forbidden Archeoloy. we give primary

source material that will let you form your own opinion about the evidence Boule dismissed. We also introduce a

great many cases that Boule neglected to mention.

From the evidence we have gathered we conclude, sometimes in language devoid of ritual tentativeness, that the

now dominant assumptions about human origins need drastic revision. We also find that a process of "knowledge

filtration" has left current scientific workers with a radically thinned-out collection of facts.

We expect that many such workers will take Forbidden Archeology as an invitation to productive discourse on (1)

the nature and treatment of evidence about human origins and (2) the conclusions to which that evide nce most

reasonably leads.

The Knowledge Filter

Carved shell from the Late Pliocene Red Cragfonnation, England

As we begin Part I of Forbidden Archeology, we survey the history and current state of scientific idcas about human

evolution. Mainly we are concerned with a double standard in how evidence is treated.

We identify two main bodies of evidence. The first (A) is controvcrsial evidence that points to thc existence of

anatomically modern humans in the uncomfortably distant past. The sccond (B) is evidence that can be taken to

Pointed implemented from below the Red Crag. This specimen is over 2.5 million years old.

support the now dominant vicw that modern humans evolved. in Africa and perhaps elsewhere, fairly recently, about

100,000 years ago.

After detailed study. we find that if the same standards for judging evidence are applied equally to A and B, we must

either accept both A and B or reject them both. If we accept them both, we have evidence placing anatomically

modern human beings millions of years in the past, coexisting with more apelike hominids. If we reject them both,

we deprive ourselves of the evidential grounds for saying anything at all about human origins and antiquity.

Historically, many scientists once accepted the evidence in category A. But a more influential group of scientists

applied standards of evidence more strictly to A than to B. So A was rejected and B preserved. This differing

application of standards set up aknowledge filter" that obscures the real picture of human origins and antiquity.

In the main body of Part I (Chapters 2-6), we look closely at the vast amount of evidence that runs against current

ideas on human evolution. We tell in detail how this evidence has been suppressed, ignored, or forgotten. even

though it is as good in quality (and quantity) as the evidence for currently accepted views. When we speak of

suppression of evidence. we are not referring to a satanic plot by scientific conspirators bent on deceiving the public.

Instead. we are talking about an ongoing social process of knowledge filtration . Certain categories of evidence

simply disappear.

Crude Human Artifacts

Chapter 2 deals with anomalously old bones and shells showing cut marks and signs of intentional breakage. To this

day. scientists regard bones and shells as an important category of evidence, and many archeological sites are valued

for this kind of evidence alone.

In the decades after Darwin introduced his theory. many scientists discovered incised and broken animal bones and

shells suggesting that tool- using humans or near-humans lived in the Pliocene Era (2 to 5 million years ago). the

Miocene (5 to 25 million years ago).andevenearlier.lnanalyzingthese cut and broken bones and shells, the

discoverers carefully weighed and ruled out alternative explanationsÑsuch as geological pressure or the work of

animals Ñbefore concluding that humans were responsible.

A striking example is a shell with a crude yet recognizably human face carved on its outer surface. The shell was

reported by geologist H. Stopes to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1881. According to

standard views, humans capable of the artistrv the shell displays did not arrive in Europe until 30,000 or 40,000

years ago. And even in their African homeland they are not supposed to have shown up until some 100'000 years

ago. Yet the shell came from the Pliocene Red Crag formation in England, a formation considered more than 2

million years old.

Concerning evidence of the kind reported by Stopes. anthropologist Armand de Quatrefages wrote in his book

Hommes Fossiles et Hommes Saud vages (1884): "The objections made to the existence of man in the Pliocene and

Miocene seem habitually more related to theoretical considerations than to direct observation."

Dawn Stones

The most rudimentary stone tools, the eoliths ("dawn stones"), are the subject of Chapter 3.These implements, found

in unexpectedly old geological contexts, inspired protracted debate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries.

Left: Dorsal and ventral views of a stone tool recovered in Portugal from a Tertiary forma- tion, over 2 million years

old. Right: Anaccepted stonetool; lessthan 100,000 years old, from the Mousterian cultural stage of the European

Late Pleistocene. Both implements clearly display the following features of intentional humanwork: (1)striking

platforms, (2) eraillures, (3) bulbs of percussion, and (4) parallelflake removal.

For some, eoliths were not always easily recognizable as tools. Eoliths are not symmetrical implements. Rather, they

are natural stone flakes with an edge chipped to make them suitable for a particular task, such as scraping, cutting, or

chopping. Often. the working edge bears signs of use.

Critics said eoliths resulted from natural forces. Iike tumbling in stream beds. But defenders of eoliths countered that

natural forces could not have made one-way chipping on just one side of a working edge.

These implements from the Kent Chalk Plateau were characterized as paleoliths by Sir John Prestwich. Prestwich

called the one on the left, from Bower Lane, "a roughly made imp/enlent of the spearhead type."

In the late nineteenth century, Benjamin Harrison, an amateur archeologist, found eoliths on the Kent Plateau in

southeastern England. Ceological evidence suggests that these eoliths were made in the Middle or Late Pliocene.

about 2 to 4 million ago. Among the supporters of Harrison's eoliths were Sir John Prestwich, one of England's most

eminent geologists; Ray E. Lankester, a director of the British Museum (Natural History); and Alfred Russell

Wallace, co-founder with Darwin of the natural-selection theory of evolution.

An eolith from the Kent Plateau.

Although Harrison found most of his eoliths in surface deposits of Pliocene gravel, he also found many below

ground level. He also found more advanced stone tools (paleoliths). Again. geological evidence suggests that these

were of similar Pliocene antiquity.

In the early part of the twentieth century, J . Reid Moir found eoliths (and more advanced stone tools) in England 's

Red Crag formation. Moir was a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and president of the Prehistoric

Society of East Anglia. The strata in which he found the tools are dated at 2 to 2.5 million years old. Moir found

somc of the tools in the detritus beds beneath the Red Crag. This indicates that they could have been made from 2.5

to 55 million years ago.

Moir's finds won support from a most vocal critic of eoliths, Henri Breuil, then regarded as a preeminent authority

on stone tools. Another supporter was paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, of the American Museum of Natural

History in New York. In 1923, an international commission of scientists journeyed to England to investigate Moir's

main discoveries. The commission pronounced them genuine. But in 1939, A. S. Barnes published an influential

paper in which he analyzed the angle of flaking on Moir's eoliths. Barnes claimed his method could tell between

human handiwork and flaking from natural causes. On this basis, he dismissed all the eoliths he studied, including

Moir's, as products of natural forces. Since then, scientists have used Barnes's method to deny the human

manufacture of many other stone tools. But in recent years, stone-tool authorities have disputed Barnes's method and

its blanket use. This suggests that the European eoliths need to be looked at again.

Significantly, early stone tools from Africa, such as those from the lower levels of Olduvai Gorge, appear identical

to the rejected European eoliths. Yet the scientific communitv accents the Olduvai tools without question.

Quartzite bifaces from the lower glacial till (Level V) at Sheguiandah. Geologist John Sanford (1971) argued these

tools were at least 65,000 years old.

Those tools, of course, fall within, and help support, the conventional places and times for human evolution.

But other eoliths of unexpected antiquity run into strong opposition. Here is another example. In the 1950s, at Calico

in southern California, Louis Leakey found stone tools in strata dated more than 200,000 years old. According to

standard views, humans did not enter such sub-Arctic regions of the New World until about 12,000 years ago. So

mainstream scientists responded to Calico predictably: the objects found there were natural products or not really

200,000 years old, they said. But there the strata are, still dated at 200,000 years. And though most of the Calico

implements are crude, some, including a beaked graver, are more advanced. They look for all the world like genuine

human artifacts.

More Recognizable Tools

In Chapter 4 we look at a category of implements we call "crude paleoliths." In eoliths, chipping is confined to the

working edge of a naturally broken stone. But the makers of crude paleoliths deliberately struck flakes from stone

cores and then shaped the flakes (and sometimes the cores) into more recognizable tools.

Among the crude paleoliths we look at are the tools found in the late nineteenth century by Carlos Ribeiro, head of

the Geological Survey of Portugal. Ribeiro found these tools in Miocene strata, 5 to 25 million years old. At an

international conference of archeologists and anthropologists held in Lisbon, a committee of scientists investigated

one of the sites where Ribeiro had found these implements. One scientist from the conference then found a stone

tool even more advanced than the better of Ribeiro's specimens. It matched accepted Late Pleistocene tools, yet it

was firmly embedded in a Miocene conglomerate, in circumstances confirming its Miocene antiquity.

Crude paleoliths were also found in Miocene formations at Thenay, France. S. Laing, an English science writer,

noted: "On the whole, the evidence for these Miocene implements seems to be very conclusive, and the objections to

them have hardly any other ground than the reluctance to admit the great antiquity of man."

At Aurillac, France, scientists also found crude paleoliths, apparently of Miocene age. And at Boncelles, Belgium,

A. Rutot uncovered a large collection of paleoliths in Oligocene strata (25 to 38 million years old).

Implements of Modern Man

In Chapter 5 we examine advanced stone implements found in unexpectedly old geologicai contexts. Given current

estimates of what Homo erecus or Homo habilis could do, the tools discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 could conceivably

be their work. But the implements of Chapter 5 are certainly the work of anatomically modern humans.

Florentino Ameghino, a respected Argentine paleontologist, found stone tools, broken mammal bones, a human

vertebra, and signs of fire in a Pliocene formation at Monte Hermoso, Argentina, in 1887. He made numerous

similar discoveries, attracting the eyes of scientists around the world.

Left: A flint implement from an Early Miocene formation at Thenay France. Right: An accepted implement from the

lower middle part of Bed II Oldulvai Gorge, Africa. The lower edges of both specimens show roughly parallel flake

scars satisfying yhe requirements of L. Patterson (1983) for recognition as objects of human manufacture.

In 1912, Ales Hrdlicka, of the Smithsonian Institution, pub!ished a lengthy but not very reasonable attack on

Ameghino's work. Hrdlicka asserted that all of Ameghino's finds were from recent Indian settlements.

In response, Carlos Ameghino, Florentino's brother, carried out new investigations at Miramar, south of Buenos

Aires. There he found a series of stone implements, including bolas, and signs of fire. A commission of geologists

confirmed the position of the implements in the Chapadmalalan formation, which modern geologists say is 3 to 5

million years old. Carlos also found at Miramar a stone arrowhead firmly lodged in the femur of a Pliocene species

of Toxodon, an extinct South American mammal.

Ethnographer Eric Boman disputed Carlos Ameghino's finds but also unintentionally helped confirm them. In 1920,

Carlos Ameghino 's collector, Lorenzo Parodi, found a stone implemen in the Pliocene seaside barranca (cliff) at

Miramar and left it in place. Bomar was one of several scientists Ameghino invited to witness the implement's

extraction. After the implement (a bola stone) was photographed and removed, another discovery was made.

"At my direction," wrote Boman, "Parodi continued to attack the barranca with a pick at the same point where the

bola stone was discovered, when suddenly and unexpectedly, there appeared a second stone ball.... It is more like a

grinding stone than a bola." Boman found yet another implement 200 yards away. Confounded. Boman could only

hint in his written report that the implements had been planted by Parodi. While this might conceivably have been

true of the first implement, it is hard to explain the other two in this way. In any case, Boman produced no evidence

at all that Parodi, a long-time employee of the Buenos Aires Museum of Natural History, had ever behaved

fraudulently.

Arrowheads and bolas, the kinds of implements found by Carlos Ameghino at Miramar, are usually considered the

work of modern man, Homo sapiens s apiens. The Miramar finds, therefore, taken at face value, show the presence

of anatomically modern man in South America over 3 million years ago. Interesting? In 1921 M. A. Vignati

discovered in the same Late Pliocene formation the fossil of a jaw fragment, fully human.

If You Can't Bear the Evidence, Kill It

These stone bolas were extracted from the Late Pliocene Chapadmalalan formation at Miramar, Argentina, in the

presence of ethnographer Eric Boman.

In the early 1950s, Thomas E. Lee of the National Museum of Canada found advanced stone tools in glacial deposits

at Sheguiandah, on Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron. GeologistJohn Sanford of Wayne State University

proposed that the oldest of these Sheguiandah tools were at least 65,000 years old and might be as much as 125,000.

For those adhering to standard views on North American prehistory, such ages were unacceptable.

Stone tools found at Hueyatlaco, Mexico, a site dated at about 250,000 years by a team from the United States

Ceological Survey.

Thomas E. Lee tells what happened next: "The site's discoverer [Lee] was hounded from his Civil Service position

into prolonged unemployment; publication outlets were cut off; the evidence was misrepresented by several

prominent authors . . .; the tons of artifacts vanished into storage bins of the National Museum of Canada; for

refusing to fire the discoverer, the Director of the National Museum, who had proposed having a monograph on the

site published, was himself fired and driven into exile; official positions of prestige and power were exercised in an

effort to gain control over just six Sheguiandah specimens that had not gone under cover; and the site has been

turned into a tourist resort.... Sheguiandah would have forced embarrassing admissions that the Brahmins did not

know everything. It would have forced the rewriting of almost every book in the business. It had to be killed. It was

killed."

In the 1960s, anthropologists uncovered advanced stone tools at Hueyatlaco, Mexico. Geologist Virginia Steen

McIntyre and other members of a team from the U.S. Geological Survey obtained for the site's implement-bearing

layers an age of about 250,000 years. This challenges the whole standard picture of human origins. Men capable of

making the kind of tools found at Hueyatlaco are not thought to have come into existence until some 100,000 years

ago, in Africa.

Virginia Steen-Mclntyre had a hard time getting her dating study on Hueyatlaco published. "The problem as I see it

is much bigger than Hueyatlaco," she wrote to Estella Leopold, associate editor of Quaternary Research. "It

concerns the manipulation of scientific thought through the suppression of 'Enigmatic Data,' data that challenges the

prevailing mode of thinking. Hueyatlaco certainly does that! Not being an anthropologist, I didn't realize the full

significance of our dates back in 1973, nor how deeply woven into our thought the current theory of human

evolution has become. Our work at Hueyatlaco has been rejected by most archaeologists because it contradicts that

theory, period."

Such patterns of data suppression have a long history. In 1880, J. D. Whitney, the state geologist of California,

published a lengthy review of advanced stone tools found in California gold mines. The implements included spear

points and stone mortars and pestles. They were found deep in mine shafts, beneath thick undisturbed layers of lava,

informations that geologists now say are from 9 million to more than 55 million years old. The finds, Whitney

wrote, pointed to the existence of human beings in North America in very ancient times.

This mortar and pestle were found by J. H. Neale, who removed them from a mine tunnel penetrating Tertiary

deposits (33-55 million years old) under Table Mountain, Tuolumne County, California.

W. H. Holmes of the Smithsonian Institution, one of the most vocal nineteenth-century critics of the California

finds, responded: "Perhaps if Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human evolution as it is

understood today, he would have hesitated to announce the conclusions formulated, not with standing the imposing

array of [supporting] testimony with which he was confronted." In other words, if facts disagree with the favored

theory, then those facts, even an imposing array of them, must be discarded.

Skeletons that Cause Problems

In Chapter 6 we review discoveries of anomalously old skeletal remains, anatomically modern human. Perhaps the

most interesting case comes from Castenedolo, Italy. There in the 1880s, G. Ragazzoni, a geologist, found fossil

bones of several Homo sapiens sapiens in layers of Pliocene sediment 3 to 4 million years old. Critics typically

respond that the bones must have been placed into those Pliocene layers by fairly recent human burial. But

Ragazzoni, alert to this possibility, had carefully inspected the overlying layers. He had found them undisturbed,

with absolutely no sign of burial.

A beaked graver . . . a stone tool from Calico in southern California, dated at about 200,000 years.

Modern scientists have used radiometric and chemical tests to attach recent ages to the Castenedolo bones and other

anomalously old human skeletal remains. But these tests can be quite unreliable. The carbon 14 test is especially

shaky when applied to bones (such as those from Castenedolo) that have lain in museums for decades. Such bones

are exposed to contamination that could make the test yield abnormally young dates. To remove such contamination

requires rigorous purification techniques. Scientists failed to use those techniques when, in 1969, they tested some

Castenedolo bones and found an age of less than a thousand years.

This toxodon tighbone (femur), with a stone projectile point embedded in it, was discovered in a Pliocene formation

at Miramar, Argentina.

Although the carbon 14 date for the Castenedolo material is suspect, it must still be considered relevant evidence.

But it should be weighed with the other evidence, including the original stratigraphic observations of Ragazzoni, a

professional geologist. In this case, the stratigraphic evidence appears more persuasive.

Opposition on theoretical grounds to a human presence in the Pliocene is not new. Speaking of the Castenedolo

finds and others of similar antiquity, the Italian scientist G. Sergi wrote in 1884: "By means of a despotic scientific

prejudice, call it what you will, every discovery of human remains in the Pliocene has been discredited."

A good example of such prejudice is provided by R. A. S. Macalister. In 1921, in a textbook on archeology, he

wrote: "The acceptance of a Pliocene date for the Castenedolo skeletons would create so many insoluble problems

that we can hardly hesitate in choosing between the alternatives of adopting or rejecting their authenticity."

This supports the main point we are making in Forbidden Archeology: the scientific community has a knowledge

filter that screens out unwelcome evidence. This process of knowledge filtration has been going on for well over a

century, and it continues right up to the present day.

Java Man

In Part 11 of Forbidden Archeology, we survey the body of accepted evidence generally used to support the now-

dominant ideas about human evolution.

Chapter 7 focuses on the discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus by Eugene Dubois in Java during the last decade of

the nineteenth century. Historically, the Java man discovery marks a turning point. Until then, there was no clear

picture of human evolution to be upheld and defended. So a good number of scientists, most of them evolutionists,

were actively considering the evidence that anatomically modern humans lived in the Pliocene and earlier. But with

the discovery of Java man, now classified as Homo erectus, the long-awaited missing link turned up in the Middle

Pleistocene, only 800,000 years ago. As Java man won acceptance, the evidence for a human presence in more

ancient times slid into disrepute.

This anatomically modern human skull was found in 1880, at Castened olo, Italy. The stratum from which it was

taken is assigned to the Astian stage of the Pliocene. According to modern authorities the Astian belongs to the

Middle Pliocene, which would give the skull an age of 3-4 million years.

This evidence was not conclusively tossed out. Instead, scientists stopped talking and writing about it. It didn't fit

with the idea that apelike Java man was a genuine human ancestor.

Interestingly enough, modern researchers have reinterpreted the original Java man fossils. The famous bones

reported by Dubois were a skullcap and femur. Though they were found more than 45 feet apart, in a deposit filled

with bones of many other species, Dubois said they belonged to the same individual. But in 1973, M. H. Day and T.

I. Molleson determined that the femur found by Dubois is different from other Homo erectus femurs and in fact

matches anatomically modern human femurs. This led Day and Molleson to propose that the femur was not

connected with the Java man skull.

Pilhecanlhropus skullcap discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1891 in Java.

As far as we can see. this means we now have an anatomically modern human femur and a Homo erectus skull in a

Middle Pleistocene layer considered 800,000 years old. This gives further evidence that anatomically modern

humans coexisted with more apelike creatures in unexpectedly remote times. According to standard views,

anatomically modern man arose just 100,000 years ago in Africa. Of course, one can always propose that the

modern human femur somehow got buried recently into the Middle Pleistocene beds. But the same could also be

said of the skull.

In Chapter 7 we consider the many discoveries of Java Homo erectus reported by G. H. R. von Koenigswald and

other researchers. Almost all these bones were surface finds, their true age doubtful. Nevertheless, scientists have

assigned them Middle and Early Pleistocene dates obtained by the potassium-argon method. The potassium-argon

method is used to date layers of volcanic rock, not bones. Because the Java Honlo erectus fossils were found on the

surface and not below intact volcanic layers, assigning them potassium-argon dates is misleading.

The Piltdown Hoax

The subject of Chapter 8 is the infamous Piltdown hoax. Early in this century, Charles Dawson, an amateur

collector, found pieces of a human skull near Piltdown, England. Scientists such as Sir Arthur Smith Woodward of

the British Museum and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin later took part with Dawson in excavations that uncovered an

apelike jaw, along with several mammalian fossils of appropriate antiquity. Dawson and Woodward, believing that

the human like skull and apelike jaw came from a human ancestor in the Early Pleistocene or Late Pliocene,

announced their discovery to the scientific world. For the next four decades, Piltdown man was accepted as genuine

and was integrated into the human evolutionary lineage.

In the 1950s, J. S. Weiner, K. P. Oakley, and other British scientists exposed Piltdown man as an exceedingly clever

hoax, carried out by someone with great scientific expertise. Some blamed Dawson, Teilhard de Chardin, or Sir

Arthur Smith Woodward. Others have accused Sir Grafton Eliot Smith, a famous anatomist; William Sollas of the

geology department at Cambridge; and Sir Arthur Keith of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of

Surgeons.

J. S. Weiner himself noted: "Behind it all we sense, therefore, a strong and impelling motive.... There could have

been a mad desire to assist the doctrine of human evolution by furnishing the 'requisite' 'missing link.' "

Piltdown shows that in addition to the general process of knowledge filtra- tion in paleoanthropology, there are

instances of deliberate fraud.

Finally, there is substantial, though not incontrovertible, evidence that the Piltdown skull, at least, was a genuine

fossil. The Piltdown gravels in which it was found are now thought to be 75,000 to 125,000 years old. An

anatomically modern human skull of this age in England would be considered anomalous.

Evidence from China

Chapter 9 takes us to China. There in 1929 Davidson Black reported the discovery at Zhoukoudian (formerly

Choukoutien) of the Peking man fossils. These specimens of Peking man, now classified as Homo erecus, were lost

to science during the Second World War.

Thighbone found by Eugene Dubois at Trinil, Java. Dubois attributed it to Pithecanthropus erectus.

In addition to Peking man, many more hominid finds have been made in China. The dating of these hominids is

problematic. They occur at sites along with fossils of mammals broadly typical of the Pleistocene. In reading various

reports, we noticed that to date these sites more precisely, scientists routinely used the morphology of the human

remains.

For example,at Tongzi, South China, Homo sapiens fossils were found with fossils of mammals. Paleontologist Qiu

Zhonglang said: "The fauna suggests a Middle-Upper Pleistocene range, but the archeological [i.e., human] evidence

is consistent with an Upper Pleistocene age." Therefore, using what we call morphological dating, Qiu assigned the

site to the Upper Pleistocene - and the human fossils with it. But our review of the Tongzi faunal evidence shows

species of mammals that became extinct thousands of years earlier, at the end of the Middle Pleistocene. This

indicates that the Tongzi site, and the human fossils, are at least 100,000 years old. Additional faunal evidence

suggests a maximum age of about 600,000 years.

Restoration of the Piltdown skull and jaw by Dawson and Woodward.

The practice of morphological dating distorts the fossil record. In effect, scientists simply arrange human fossils to

fit a favored evolutionary sequence, setting the evidence of other species aside. If one goes by the true probable date

ranges for the Chinese hominids, one finds that various grades of Homo erectus and early Homo sapiens may have

coexisted with anatomically modern man in the middle Middle Pleistocene, during the time of Peking man.

Extinct Men Still Alive?

In Chapter 10 we consider the possible coexistence of primitive hominids and anatomically modern humans not only

in the distant past but in the present. Over the past century, scientists have gathered evidence suggesting that

humanlike creatures resembling supposedly extinct ancestral species of man are living in various wilderness areas of

the world. In North America these creatures are known as Sasquatch. In Central Asia they are called Almas. In

Africa, China, Southeast Asia, Central America, and South America, they are known by other names. Some

researchers use the general term "wild-men" to include them all. Scientists and physicians have reported seeing live

wildmen, dead wildmen, and footprints. They have also catalogued thousands of reports from historical records and

from ordinary people who say they have seen wildmen.

Myra Shackley, a British anthropologist, wrote to us: "Opinions vary, but I guess the commonest would be that there

is indeed sufficient evidence to suggest at least the possibility of the existence of various unclassified manlike

creatures, but that in the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to comment on their significance in any

more detail. The position is furthercomplicated by misquotes, hoaxing, and lunatic fringe activities. but a surprising

number of hard-core anthropologists seem to be of the opinion that the matter is very worthwhile investigating."

Australopithecus

Chapter 11 takes us to Africa. We describe in detail the cases mentioned in the first part of this introduction (Reck's

skeleton, the Laetoli footprints, and so on). These provide evidence for anatomically modern humans in the Early

Pleistocene and Late Pliocene.

We also examine the status of Australopithecus. Mostanthropologists say Australopithecus was a human ancestor

with an apelike head, a humanlike body, and a humanlike bipedal stance and gait. But other researchers make a

convincing case for a radically differentviewofAustralopithecus. Physical anthropologist C. E. Oxnard wrote in his

book Uniqueness and Diversity in Human Evolution (1975): "Pendingfurther evidence we are left with the vision of

intermediately sized animals, at home in the trees, capable of climbing, performing degrees of acrobatics, and

perhaps of arm suspension." In a 1975 article in Nature, Oxnard found the australopithecines to be anatomically

similar to orangutans and said, "It is rather unlikely that any of the Australopithecines . . . can have any direct

phylogenetic link with the genus Homo."

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