Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

But perhaps Breuil was wrong to suppose that geological pressure caused the bulbs of percussion on the many specimens he found in the Eocene at BelleAssise. His only evidence was the few bulbed flakes he found directly in contact with parent blocks of flint. Here we can refer to J. Reid Moir’s explanation of the same phenomenon (Section 3.3.6). F. N. Haward had found flakes in contact with parent blocks of flint in the stone bed below the Norwich Crag. Haward said they were removed by geological pressure alone, but Moir suggested the following. Before the flints were covered by the deposit, intentional (presumably human) percussion caused the formation of incipient bulbed flakes, which were later completely removed from the parent blocks by geological pressure or heat.

In any case, taking Breuil’s specimens as examples of pressure flaking, there is yet another problem to consider. It can be safely assumed that the specimens pictured by Breuil are among the better examples of flints found with flakes in contact with the parent block. But in studying the illustrations (Figures 3.20, 3.21), it is readily apparent that the flaking and retouching are extremely crude, far more so than that manifest on the other specimens of cores and flakes selected by Breuil as examples of pseudoeoliths ( Figure 3.22).

Figure 3.22. These objects, from an Eocene formation at Clermont (Oise), France, were characterized by H. Breuil as “pseudoeoliths” (Breuil 1910, pp. 389, 392, 400, 401).

Figure 3.23. A stone object discovered in the Eocene strata at Clermont (Oise), France (Breuil 1910, p. 394). It was characterized by Breuil as a pseudoeolith, produced by geological pressure. As evidence Breuil cited the presence in the same formation of detached flakes lying very close to the parent blocks of flint (Figures 3.20, 3.21). But implementlike objects as sophisticated as the one pictured here were not found with detached flakes lying nearby. This raises serious doubts about the viability of Breuil’s geological pressure hypothesis.

It seems, therefore, unfair to insist that the numerous better looking “pseudoeoliths” from the Eocene at Clermont, such as those shown in Figure 3.22, must have been formed by the same process of natural geological pressure flaking that had produced the extremely crude flakes.

But that is just what Breuil did in his report: “By means of this simple mechanical process, which one is able to perceive quite literally, there have nevertheless resulted the fractures, cleavages, terminal and marginal retouchings that simulate with extreme perfection the action of a voluntary agent with the preconceived intention of producing various elementary industrial artifacts, and, in exceptional cases, pseudomorphs of definite implements, not only eoliths” (1910, pp. 403–404).

This assertion does not, however, very easily follow from the examples presented by Breuil. He would have been justified in making such a statement only if he could have pointed to examples of the better looking eoliths found in contact with the parent blocks. And this he did not do.

Also, some of the implementlike objects from the Eocene formation at Clermont were themselves whole pieces of flint, from which chips had been removed to form the working edge. The object depicted in Figure 3.23 provides a good example. The unidirectional chipping concentrated on the upper edge is typical of intentional human work. If Breuil had discovered the implement shown in Figure 3.23 with a dozen or more chips lying alongside the chipped edge, we might be less doubtful about his argument. But in the absence of such a demonstration, intentional human work remains a more viable explanation.

3.4.2 “Two Truly Exceptional Objects” (Eocene)

The unsatisfactory nature of Breuil’s geological pressure hypothesis becomes even clearer when we turn our consideration to what Breuil (1910, p. 402) called “two truly exceptional objects, of which the site of discovery, in the interior of the beds, is absolutely certain.”