Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Coles (1968, p. 29) said that his last test specimen (Figure 3.19) “was found at the base of the Red Crag at Bramford in Suffolk and its stratigraphical horizon is not in doubt.” He added: “It lay in the Detritus Bed in London Clay and was sealed by Crag sands. It is reminiscent of Chellean axes with triangular sections, but is considerably rolled; although it bears some 25 flake scars, and has lost all its cortex, the irregular nature of the object itself is not convincing.”

In another description of the same piece, Coles (1968, p. 24) stated that it was “superficially of handaxe form, with thirteen flake scars upon one face, and twelve upon the other.” He added: “These scars appear to have been directed from a multiplicity of positions on the edges, and are sufficiently elongated to overlap at the center of one face, producing thereby a triangular sectioned ‘tool’” (Coles 1968, p. 24).

The position of this specimen in the detritus bed beneath the Red Crag means that it is at least Pliocene in age (2–5 million years old). But because the detritus bed contains materials from land surfaces dating back as far as the Eocene, the handaxe could be as much as 55 million years old.

Figure 3.19. Handaxe from below the Red Crag at Bramford, England (Moir 1935, p. 364). It could be anywhere from 2 million to 55 million years old.

All in all, Coles, in spite of his negative conclusions, can be commended for his willingness to discuss Moir’s discoveries. At the end of his review, he stated: “A fair comment on the East Anglian material would, I think, be concerned to point out that the typology of the claimed implements was not necessarily outside the range of variation known from humanly worked industries in Europe and Africa, but that we have very little information about the natural flaking processes available in East Anglia in early Pleistocene times, some of which might well have been capable of producing flaked flints including bifacially-worked ‘handaxes’; no natural sources are known today which could do this under observation. Our greatly augmented evidence about the chronology of early tool-making in other parts of the world continues, however, to suggest how extraordinary it would be if the East Anglian Crag industries were of human manufacture” (Coles 1968, p. 30). This is an incredible line of reasoning. No natural forces known to today’s scientists can account for the production of the handaxes and other flaked implements. Nevertheless, Coles hesitates to accept them as the product of intentional human work.

It may be that in terms of the “greatly augmented evidence” available to Coles, human manufacture of the East Anglia specimens would seem extraordinary in terms of “chronology,” that is to say, their unexpected age. But in terms of the even more greatly augmented evidence presented in this book, human manufacture of the East Anglia implements during the late Tertiary and earliest Pleistocene would seem quite within the bounds of the ordinary.

In this regard, a modern authority, Gowlett (1984, p. 76), reported that four flakes and five pebble choppers were found at Le Vallonet, southern France, in old beach sediments dated 1–2 million years old. If we assign these eolithlike stone tools to the oldest part of their probable date range, they would be roughly contemporary with some of the East Anglia specimens, such as those from Foxhall. Gowlett called the Le Vallonet specimens doubtful, yet he mentioned them in his book. He did not, however, mention Moir’s discoveries.

3.3.13 Positive References to Moir’s Finds

We shall now consider some isolated examples of positive scientific reporting on J. Reid Moir’s discoveries from the latter half of the twentieth century. Cambridge University archeologist and anthropologist, M. C. Burkitt, who served on the international commission that examined Moir’s implements in the 1920s, gave favorable treatment to them in his book The Old Stone Age, published in 1956.