Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Others have arrived at different quantitative dates for St. Prest. Tage Nilsson (1983, p. 158) stated that two sites in the Central Massif region of France, Sainzelles and Le Coupet, yielded potassium-argon dates of 1.3–1.9 million years. Nilsson (1983, p. 158) then said: “St. Prest, near Chartres in northern France, is held to be closely related.” Nilsson considered the three sites Late Villafranchian, or Early Pleistocene.

Let us now consider some of the species that were listed as present at St. Prest. Elephas meridionalis (sometimes called Mammuthus meridionalis) is said by modern authorities ( Maglio 1973, p. 79) to have existed in Europe from about 1.2 million to 3.5 million years ago. Osborn (1910, p. 313) places Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus) leptorhinus in the Plaisancian (or Piacenzian) age of the Pliocene. Osborn placed the Plaisancian age in the Early Pliocene, but Romer (1966, p. 334) places the Plaisancian in the Late Pliocene. Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus) etruscus, according to Nilsson (1983, p. 475), occurs in Europe from the Villafranchian, which begins in the Late Pliocene, to the early Middle Pleistocene. But Savage and Russell (1983, p. 339) list occurrences of Dicerorhinus etruscus as early as the Ruscinian age of the Early Pliocene. According to Osborn (1910, p. 313), Hippopotamus major, a larger version of the modern hippopotamus, is found in the Late Pliocene and throughout the Pleistocene in Europe. Hippopotamus major is sometimes referred to as Hippopotamus amphibius antiquus. This species is listed by Savage and Russell (1983, p. 351) as part of the Pliocene Villafranchian fauna of Europe. Trogontherium cuvieri, the giant extinct beaver, is found in Pliocene faunal lists (Savage and Russell 1983, p. 352) and persisted until the Mosbachian age of the early Middle Pleistocene (Osborn 1910, p. 403). Thus all the above species were in existence during the Pliocene period.

Add it all up, and it can be seen that a Late Pliocene date for St. Prest is not out of the question. And, as noted previously, some twentieth-century scientists (Pinchemel and Deperet) have in fact assigned St. Prest to this period. That would place toolmaking hominids in Europe at over 2 million years ago.

How recent could St. Prest possibly be? The presence of Elephas meridionalis, which survived in Europe until 1.2 million years ago (Maglio 1973, p. 79) would appear to impose a late Early Pleistocene limit. The potassiumargon dates of 1.3–1.9 million years for French sites having a fauna similar to that of St. Prest (Nilsson 1983, p. 158) offer another guidepost. Kurtén (1968, p. 24), like Boudier (1965), assigns St. Prest to the Waalian temperate stage of the Early Pleistocene. Some authorities place the Waalian stage at about 1.1–1.2 million years (Nilsson 1983, p. 144). But Senéze, a French site tentatively attributed to the Waalian temperate stage, is estimated to be about 1.6 million years old (Nilsson 1983, p. 158). From all this, one could conclude that the St. Prest site, at the more recent end of its probable date range, might be just 1.2–1.6 million years old. Even at this date, incised bones would still be anomalous. The oldest undisputed evidence for the presence of Homo erectus in Europe dates back only about 700,000 years (Gowlett 1984, p. 76). Also, the oldest occurrences of Homo erectus in Africa have dates of about 1.5 million years.

Even in the nineteenth century, Desnoyers’s discoveries of incised bones at St. Prest provoked controversy. Professor Bayle, a paleontologist at the School of Mines, responded to Desnoyers’s report by claiming that it was he, with his own instruments, who had incised and otherwise marked the bones of St. Prest during the process of cleaning them. Dr. Eugene Robert accepted this explanation and communicated it to the French Academy of Sciences.