Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

The term “secondary edge-flaking” appears to refer to flakes removed from the edge of a selected piece of naturally broken flint in order to fashion it into an implement. Although one cannot say so with absolute certainty, the angle of this secondary edge flaking apparently corresponds to the “angle platform-scar” of Barnes. Moir (1935, p. 355) noted “Professor A. S. Barnes was the first to draw attention to the significance of such measurements of flint implements.”

Moir (1935, pp. 355–356) then gave the results of his study: “A quantity of pre-Crag implements to the number of 181, composed of 55 specimens of Group No. 1, 55 specimens of Group No. 2, 13 specimens of Group No. 3, 55 specimens of Group No. 4, and 3 specimens of Group No. 5, were measured with the following results. It was found that the average angle of edge-flaking of Group No.1 was 88½ degrees, of Group No. 2, 75½ degrees, of Group No. 3, 82 degrees, of Group No. 4, 79 degrees and of Group No. 5, 69 degrees.”

From these average figures alone we cannot verify that Moir’s samples met Barnes’s statistical requirement that at most 25 percent of the measured angles in each group exceed 90 degrees. But the angles Moir measured clearly tended to be acute, and he believed his tools satisfied Barnes’s requirement.

Nevertheless, Barnes believed he had demolished, in his brief 1939 report, every anomalously old stone tool industry found by scientists over the previous 75 years. For Barnes, and almost everyone else in the scientific community, the controversy was over. But factually speaking, Barnes was beating a dead horse, because the controversy about the eoliths and other Tertiary stone tool industries had long since ceased to be a burning issue. With the discoveries of Java man and Peking man, the scientific community had become increasingly convinced that the key transition from apelike precursors to toolmaking humans (or protohumans) had taken place in the Early to Middle Pleistocene, thus making the lithic evidence for Tertiary humans a sideshow topic of little serious concern. Barnes, however, could be seen as performing the valuable, if menial task, of sweeping away some useless remnants of irrelevant evidence. Thereafter, whenever the topic of very old stone tool industries happened to come up, as it still does from time to time, scientists could conveniently cite Barnes’s report. Even today scientists studying stone tools apply the Barnes method.

Barnes’s 1939 paper is typical of the definitive debunking report, which can be conveniently cited again and again to completely resolve a controversial question, making any further consideration of the matter superfluous. But on close examination, it appears that Barnes’s definitive debunking report may be in need of some debunking itself.

Alan Lyle Bryan, a Canadian anthropologist, recently wrote (1986, p. 6): “The question of how to distinguish naturefacts from artifacts is far from being resolved and demands more research. The way the problem was resolved in England, by application of the Barnes’ statistical method of measuring the angles of platform scar, is not generally applicable to all problems of differentiating naturefacts from artifacts.” During a phone conversation with one of us on May 28, 1987, Bryan stated that application of the Barnes criterion would, for example, eliminate any blade tools struck from polyhedral cores. He also expressed a cautious belief that Barnes may have gone too far in trying to eliminate all of the anomalous European stone tool industries. Giving attention to more recent discoveries, Bryan said that Peter White has shown there are Late Pleistocene Australian tools that do not conform to Barnes’s specifications.

An example of an industry that apparently does not conform with the Barnes criterion is the Oldowan, from the lower levels of the Olduvai Gorge. At site DK at the bottom of Bed I, 242 whole flakes were recovered. A striking platform angle could be measured on 132 of these. Mary Leakey (1971, p. 39) recorded the following results:

70–89° 90–109° 110–129° 130°+4.6% 47.7% 46.2% 1.5%

As can be seen, over 95 percent of the angles are obtuse. However, it is not clear from Leakey’s report exactly which angle was being measured. We discussed this with Ruth D. Simpson and her colleagues at the San Bernardino County Museum of Natural History, near Redlands, California. They were also unable to tell from Mary Leakey’s report exactly what angle was being measured. This is a general problem that we have encountered in our review of angle studies on stone tool industries. The vagueness of the descriptions of the angles being measured by various investigators makes it difficult to compare findings and calls into question the scientific usefulness of such reporting.