Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Rutot’s own specimens were more sophisticated than Harrison’s eoliths. They were, nevertheless, sometimes called eoliths by authors who applied the term to almost any anomalously old and relatively unrefined tools. In the course of the debate about whether or not Rutot’s specimens were made by humans, the German scientist H. Hahne concluded they were distinct from machine-chipped rocks. In his book Human Origins: A Manual of Prehistory, George Grant MacCurdy, a professor of prehistoric anthropology at Yale University, wrote (1924a, pp. 91-92): “After a careful comparison of machine-made eoliths from both Mantes and Sassnitz with eoliths from Belgium, Hahne’s conclusions are as follows: (1) the chalk-mill flints are all scratched and otherwise marked by the iron teeth of the mill; (2) the sides of all the larger pieces are bedecked with scars from blows that were not properly placed to remove a flake; (3) almost every piece shows more or less of the original chalky crust of the nodule; (4) anything like a systematic chipping of an edge or margin is never found, except for a very short stretch, where one would expect it to be carried along the entire margin; this is quite different from the long retouched margins of most eoliths; (5) the same edge is often rechipped first on one side and then on the other, absolutely without meaning or purpose (the ‘reverse working’ of true eoliths is quite another thing); (6) in the mill product, coarse chipping alternates with fine retouches along the same margin, while on the eolith there is a regularity and orderly sequence of chipping; (7) the repeated rechipping of the same edge, while others are left untouched, does not occur in machine-made eoliths; (8) the chief difference is between the haphazard and meaningless on one hand, and the purposeful on the other. The most prominent and easily breakable parts suffer most in passing through the mill. They are often retained intact, or only slightly altered to serve as a handhold on the eolith, and there is a logical relationship between the worked and unworked portion.”

During the early decades of the twentieth century, the recurring cement-mill accusations were also leveled against the finds of J. Reid Moir in England. But M. C. Burkitt, a Cambridge archeologist and anthropologist, rejected the various attempts to account for the chipping on crude stone implements by reference to mechanical agencies. In 1905, Marcellin Boule had published a long article about cement-machine chipping that produced pieces of stone resembling eoliths. In his book The Old Stone Age, Burkitt (1956, p. 104) noted: “It is certainly true that specimens showing a remarkable series of chippings are produced by such machines, but no mechanical machine or natural force can chip a flint, dealing the blows from only two or three directions, more or less at right angles to one another.” Burkitt (1956, p. 104) believed that some of Moir’s flint specimens met that criterion and pointed out that “a number of serious students believe that the Kent specimens [of B. Harrison] are really the result of human workmanship.”

It therefore appears that in no case were opponents of anomalously old crude stone tool industries able to conclusively demonstrate that implements representative of these industries could be duplicated by the action of cement and chalk mills. Thus they failed to show that the implements were in fact the product of purely natural forces rather than intentional human work. Instead, various researchers, from the late nineteenth century to the present, have presented criteria by which crude stone implements can be distinguished from the products of random battering of lithic materials, and have shown that the stone tool industries under consideration satisfied these criteria.

3.6 Impact of the English Eolithic Industries on Modern Ideas of Human Evolution

If scientists were to resurrect the eoliths of the Kent Plateau and East Anglia, at least granting them some serious consideration, then how would they fit into the current scenario of human evolution?

3.6.1 Eoliths of the Kent Plateau