Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Here it should be noted that it would of course be possible to more briefly summarize and paraphrase reports such as these. There are two reasons for not doing so. The first is that paleoanthropological evidence mainly exists in the form of reports, some primary and others secondary. Very few individuals, even experts in the field, have the opportunity to engage in firsthand inspection of the fossils themselves, scattered in collections around the world. Even if one is able to do so, one is still not able to be sure about the exact circumstances of the discovery. This is critical, because the interpretation of the significance of a fossil depends as much on the exact position in which it was found as on the fossil itself. In most cases, for all investigators except the original discoverers, the real evidence is the reports themselves, which give the details of the discovery, and we shall therefore take the trouble to include many selections from such reports, the exact wording of which reveals much. Contemporary discussions of these original reports, both those which are positive and those which are negative, are also illuminating.

A second consideration is that the particular reports referred to in this chapter are extremely difficult to obtain. Almost no reference to them will be found in modern textbooks. Most of them come from rare nineteenth-century paleontological and anthropological books and journals, the majority in languages other than English. This being the case, translated excerpts of the original reports have been judged preferable to paraphrases and footnotes, and will serve as a unique introduction to a vast store of buried evidence.

A final consideration is that proponents of evolutionary theory often accuse authors who arrive at nonevolutionary conclusions of “quoting out of context.” It therefore becomes necessary to quote at length, in order to supply the needed context.

The controversy over the St. Prest finds was noted by S. Laing, a popular British nonfiction author of the late nineteenth century, whose well-researched books on scientific subjects, intended for the general public, reached a wide audience. After discussing the site at St. Prest, Laing (1893, p. 113) stated: “In these older gravels have been found stone implements, and bones of the Elephas Meridionalis with incisions evidently made by a flint knife worked by a human hand. This was disputed as long as possible, but Quatrefages, a very cautious and competent authority, states in his latest work, published in 1887, that it is now established beyond the possibility of doubt.”

2.2 A Modern example: Old Crow River, Canada (Late Pleistocene)

Before moving on to further examples of nineteenth-century discoveries that challenge modern ideas about human origins, let us consider a more recent investigation of intentionally modified bones. One of the most controversial questions confronting New World paleoanthropology is determining the time at which humans entered North America. The standard view is that bands of Asian hunter-gatherers crossed over the Bering land bridge about 12,000 years ago. Some authorities are willing to extend the date to about 30,000 years ago, while an increasing minority are reporting evidence for a human presence in the Americas at far earlier dates in the Pleistocene. We shall examine this question in greater detail in coming chapters (Sections 3.8, 4.8, 5.1, 5.2, 5.4, and 5.5). For now, however, we want only to consider the fossil bones uncovered at Old Crow River in the northern Yukon territory as a contemporary example of the type of evidence dealt with in this chapter.

In the 1970s, Richard E. Morlan of the Archeological Survey of Canada and the Canadian National Museum of Man, conducted studies of modified bones from the Old Crow River sites. Morlan concluded that many bones and antlers exhibited signs of intentional human work executed before the bones had become fossilized. The bones, which had undergone river transport, were recovered from an Early Wisconsin glacial floodplain dated at 80,000 years b.p. (before present).