Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

The majority of the Oldowan tools were classified as “choppers,” made of volcanic cobblestone and also of quartz and quartzite. Leakey stated: “These are essentially jagged and lack secondary trimming, although utilisation has often resulted in the edges having been chipped and blunted” (M. Leakey 1971, p. 1). In other words, these are even cruder than the eoliths of the Kent Plateau, most of which display some form of intentional secondary trimming. Careful searching, however, has failed to reveal a single published challenge to the authenticity of the Oldowan specimens as genuine human artifacts.

One might argue that hominid fossils have been recovered at Olduvai Gorge, while none were found on the Kent Plateau. It should, however, be noted that crude stone tools were being excavated at Olduvai Gorge by Louis and Mary Leakey for decades before any currently accepted hominid fossil remains were recovered. In 1959, the Leakeys discovered the first fossil bones of a new primitive apelike hominid, which they regarded as humanlike and named Zinjanthropus (Section 11.4.1). They initially attributed the stone tools of Olduvai Gorge to Zinjanthropus. Not long thereafter, however, the bones of a more advanced hominid, Homo habilis, were found nearby (Section 11.4.2). Zinjanthropus was demoted from his status as toolmaker, and Homo habilis replaced him.

But although the designation of the toolmaker was changed, the tools themselves remained unquestioned. The principal reason why the implements discovered in Olduvai Gorge have not been subjected to the same sorts of challenges directed at the eoliths discovered in Europe is hinted at in the following statement made by Mary Leakey (1971, p. 280): “evidence for the manufacture of tools by means of using one tool as an instrument to make another is one of the most important criteria in deciding whether any particular taxon has reached the status of man. . . . If evidence of toolmaking is not counted as a decisive factor for the human status it is difficult to see what alternative can be used for determining at what point it had been reached. Evolutionary changes must have been so gradual that it will never be possible for the threshold to be recognised on the evidence of fossil bones alone. This would be true even if a far more complete evolutionary sequence of material were available for study: with the scanty and often incomplete material that has survived it is clearly out of the question. An arbitrary definition based on cranial capacity is also of doubtful value, since the significance of cranial capacity is closely linked with stature or body size, of which we have little precise information in respect of early hominids.”

Scientists almost unanimously accept the idea that the genus Homo arose in Africa, developing from the australopithecine hominids around 2 million years ago. The strong need for stone tools as corroborating evidence of humanlike status may thus explain, at least in part, the extremely lenient treatment of the Oldowan industry. If they were not accepted as tools, that would greatly detract from the status of the African hominids as human ancestors.

In her report on Olduvai Gorge, Mary Leakey identified, besides the choppers previously mentioned, several other types of implements, which, from her descriptions, appear to correspond to the eoliths found in Europe. She described “various fragments of no particular form but generally angular, which bear a minimum of flaking and some evidence of utilisation” (M. Leakey 1971, p. 6).

Another category of Oldowan tools was scrapers of various types. Leakey described the heavy-duty scrapers of Bed II, which were fashioned from quartzite flakes, as follows: “Many of the heavy-duty scrapers are impossible to assign to any particular type and consist merely of amorphous pieces of lava, quartz, or quartzite, with at least one flat surface from which steep trimming has been carried out along one edge” (M. Leakey 1971, p. 6). About “discoidal scrapers,” Leakey wrote: “the tools are seldom entirely symmetrical and they are usually trimmed on only part of the circumference” (M. Leakey 1971, p. 6). These scrapers conform to the descriptions of the eoliths discovered on the Kent Plateau of England.