Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

The implements discovered by J. Reid Moir pose a similar set of problems, which were, interestingly enough, recognized by a modern researcher (Coles 1968). Some of Moir’s discoveries in the Cromer Forest Bed were referred to the Middle Pleistocene. Others, from the Red Crag, were referred to the Early Pleistocene or Late Pliocene. For the purposes of this discussion, we shall set aside implements from the detritus bed below the Red Crag, which could be dated anywhere from the Pliocene to the Eocene.

J. M. Coles (1968, p. 30) summarized his review of Moir’s East Anglian discoveries by stating: “in view of the evidence of early man in North Africa and in Southern Europe, there is nothing basically startling about the presence of human industries in East Anglia at the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene. The axe from Sidestrand, if it is, in fact, a paleolithic tool and not a neolithic roughout in an erosion pocket, suggests that man was present during the Cromerian interglacial period, or early in Mindel times. This would not be out of step with the evidence of man’s presence in Europe . . . during these periods, but the character of the handaxe is rather surprising. But even more surprising would be the existence of a handaxe tradition encompassing the Whitlingham axe in the Norwich Crag phase, or pre-Günzian age, which at the moment would seem radically out of step with our evidence for early man and early industries, in both Africa and Europe. The evidence for humanly-struck flints at Foxhall, certainly the most puzzling of all the East Anglian sites, if accepted, would extend back to the earliest Villafranchian, and would indicate that an enormous gap in our evidence for early man existed, if we were to maintain our belief in an African origin.”

In suggesting, however obliquely, that the belief in an African origin might be open to question, Coles is, in the light of the most widely accepted view, verging on heresy. The early Villafranchian stage, in which Coles placed the Foxhall tools, belongs to the Late Pliocene, extending from 2.0 to 3.5 million years ago (Section 1.7). According to our conservative estimate, the Foxhall site would most likely fall toward the latter part of the early Villafranchian stage, between 2.0 and 2.5 million years before the present (Section 3.3.4). One would not expect to find toolmaking humans present in England at that time. According to the African origins story, one should find during that period, in Africa alone, just apelike Australopithecus, who is not thought to have been a toolmaker.

In Coles we see a modern establishment scientist approaching the point of giving serious consideration to one of the conclusions warranted by the evidence presented in this book, namely, that an African origin for the Homo line is a myth. Coles found himself confronted with a spectrum of anomalous evidence. Some of it was mildly surprising to him, some of it more surprising. This is to be expected—that there should be, in the range of evidence ignored by the scientific establishment, a certain number of cases that approach the borderlines of acceptability. However, in light of the evidence we have thus far considered, and evidence we shall consider in coming chapters, it is clear that the Late Pliocene discoveries Coles found most surprising are just the tip of an iceberg of anomalous evidence that extends into the depths of the Tertiary and beyond.

We suggest it is the threatening nature of this vast body of anomalous evidence that might cause establishment science to steadfastly refuse to consider even the borderline evidence. One thing leads to another. If the borderline evidence is admitted, then the more surprising evidence comes one step closer to acceptance. And then what very quickly happens, as Coles hinted, is that the African origins hypothesis evaporates. And then where would paleoanthropology be? Lost in a raging sea of evidence suggesting all kinds of impossible things. A strong sense of vertigo is bound to arise, because there is a lot of evidence, every bit as good as Moir’s discoveries, that puts human beings back as far as the Miocene (Sections 4.1–3), Oligocene (Section 4.4), and Eocene (Section 5.5). At that point, not only the idea of an African origin but also the whole concept of an evolutionary origin of the human species becomes untenable. And if scientists are forced to give up an evolutionary explanation of human origins, what does that say about the whole theory of evolution?