Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Scientists have extended the argument to the molecular level, and have presented evidence showing that there is 99 percent agreement between the DNA sequences of human genes and the corresponding genes of chimpanzees. This certainly suggests a close relationship between humans and chimpanzees, and on a broader scale the shared biochemical mechanisms of living cells indicate a relationship between all living organisms. However, the mere existence of patterns of similarity does not tell us what this relationship is. From an a priori standpoint, it could be a relationship of descent by Darwinian evolution, or it could be something quite different. To actually show evolutionary descent, it is necessary to find physical evidence of transforming sequences of ancestors.

In a companion volume to this book, we will fully discuss the argument that the genealogical tree of human descent can be traced out using biomolecular studies involving mitochondrial DNA and other genetic material. For now, we shall simply point out that interpretation of patterns of molecular similarity in terms of genealogical trees presupposes (rather than proves) that the patterns came about by evolutionary processes. In addition, the assignment of ages to such patterns of relationships depends on archeological and paleoanthropological studies of ancient human or near human populations. Thus, in the end, all attempts to show the evolution of species (the human species in particular) must rely on the interpretation of fossils and other remains found in the earth’s strata.

By the time Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, some key finds relevant to human origins had already been made. About 15 years previously, Edouard Lartet had found in Miocene strata at Sansan in southern France the first fossils of Pliopithecus, an extinct primate thought to be ancestral to the modern gibbons. About this discovery Lartet wrote in 1845: “This corner of ground once supported a population of mammals of much higher degree than those here today. . . . Here are represented various degrees in the scale of animal life, up to and including the Ape. A higher type, that of the human kind, has not been found here; but we must not hastily conclude from its absence from these ancient formations that it did not exist” (Boule and Vallois 1957, pp. 17–18). Lartet was hinting that human beings might have existed in Miocene times, over 5 million years ago, an idea that would not win any support from today’s scientists.

In 1856, Lartet reported on Dryopithecus, a fossil ape discovered by Alfred Fontan near Sansan. This Miocene ape is thought to be anatomically related to the modern chimpanzees and gorillas. Although Pliopithecus and Dryopithecus provided Darwinists with possible distant ancestors for humans and modern apes, there were no fossils of intermediate beings connecting humans with these Miocene primates. However, in the same year Lartet reported on Dryopithecus, the first evidence that intermediate prehuman forms may have existed was found in the Neander valley in Germany.

1.2 The Neanderthals

In the latter part of the seventeenth century, a minor German religious poet and composer named Joachim Neumann sometimes wandered through the Dussel River valley, in solitary communion with nature. He used the pseudonym Neander, and after his death the local people called the valley the Neanderthal. Two centuries later, others came to the pleasant little valley of the Dussel not for peace of mind but to quarry limestone for the Prussian construction industry. One day in August of 1856, while excavating the Feldhofer cave high on a steep slope of the valley, some workmen discovered human fossils and gave them to Herr Beckershoff. Beckershoff later dispatched a skullcap and some other large bones to J. Carl Fuhlrott, a local schoolteacher with a well-known interest in natural history. Recognizing the fossils as possible evidence of humanity’s great antiquity, Fuhlrott in turn gave them to Herman Schaffhausen, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bonn.