Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Conchoidal fracturing is fracturing that results in elevations or depressions shaped like the curved inner surface of a shell. A positive (raised) bulb of percussion is found on the surface of a flake detached from a flint core. The core retains a negative impression of the bulb. Breuil held that the fracturing that produced these bulbs of percussion was the result of geological pressure. But what about the further signs of modification that normally are present on even the

crudest eoliths?

To account for this, Breuil also described a few flakes, found adjacent to parent blocks of flint, that had some chips removed from an edge. According to Breuil (1910, p. 403), geological pressure caused this apparent retouching. He proposed that as a flake was detached, it rotated, causing chips to be removed from its thinner edge as it scraped over the surface of the parent block of flint (Figure 3.21).

We shall give careful attention to Breuil’s arguments, because similar reasoning has been used in attempts to discredit many of the discoveries discussed in this book.

For example, Hugo Obermaier (1924, p. 4) observed in his book Fossil Man in Spain: “The controversy concerning Thenay [France did not subside until the year 1901, when L. Capitan and G. d’Ault du Mesnil showed how purely natural agencies might produce effects very similar to human handiwork, one of the most important being earth pressure above the brittle flint.”

Figure 3.21. (1) Parent block of flint, found in an Eocene formation at Clermont (Oise), France. (2) Flake, apparently removed by geological pressure, found in contact with parent block of flint. (3) Opposite side of flake, with one edge chipped, apparently by geological pressure (Breuil 1910, p. 406).

In his report on the flints found in the gravel pit at Belle-Assise, Breuil (1910, pp. 403–404) stated: “From the fact that the flakes found in connection bore signs of retouching, it can be concluded that retouching, bulbed flakes, and blocks with conchoidal flake scars were produced here exclusively by compression within the interior of the soil. . . . If one attempted to reproduce, on an intact block of flint, either the retouching or the flaking, one would have to employ the processes of percussion and vigorous compression used in working stone.”

This might lead one to wonder whether geological pressure was in fact the actual cause for the observed effects. A modern authority (L. Patterson 1983) stated that pressure flaking very rarely produces clearly marked bulbs of percussion. It is not apparent from Breuil’s drawings how well developed the bulbs of percussion are on his specimens. Breuil (1910, p. 388) himself described the bulbs of percussion as only “more or less” clearly present. But if the bulbs are well developed, this would, according to Patterson’s view, make it unlikely that they were produced by geological pressure.

In general, the bulb of percussion, as the name itself indicates, is taken as a sign of intentional percussive fracturing. But perhaps Breuil was correct in his supposition that geological pressure flaking could produce clear bulbs and retouching, like those found on implements made by humans. In that case, no crudely chipped stone object should be recognized as a genuine tool unless found directly in contact with other unambiguous evidence of human involvement. Applying this standard across the board, one would have to reject numerous conventionally accepted stone tools, such as the many crude Oldowan tools of East Africa that were not found in the immediate vicinity of hominid fossils.

As we shall see, Breuil (Section 3.4.2), like S. Hazzeldine Warren in England (Section 3.3.7), found Eocene objects resembling not only crude eoliths but advanced tools of the Late Stone Age. Breuil and Warren nevertheless believed that all of these toollike specimens—the most sophisticated as well as the crudest— were the product of natural geological forces. This implies that even specimens resembling very good Paleolithic implements should not be securely identified as tools unless found along with definite signs of human habitation. Of course, if geological pressure can produce very good “tools,” then even if such “tools” were found along with signs of human habitation, one could not tell if they were produced by nature or by humans. In order to satisfy skeptics like Breuil, it seems one would have to find even the best sort of implement clutched in the fossil fingers of a human hand.