Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

In 1775, Carl Linnaeus, the founder of the modern system of biological classification, listed three existing human species: Homo sapiens, Homo troglodytes (cave man), and Homo ferus (wild man). Although Linnaeus knew the latter two species only from travelers’ reports and other secondary sources of information, he still included them within his Systema Naturae (Shackley 1983, p. 10).

Since 1775, much more evidence for the existence of living apelike wildmen has come to light. Professional scientists have (1) observed wildmen in natural surroundings, (2) observed live captured specimens, (3) observed dead specimens, and (4) collected physical evidence for wildmen, including hundreds of footprints. They have also interviewed nonscientist informants and investigated the vast amount of wildman lore contained in ancient literatures and traditions.

Despite this, no zoo or museum in a civilized nation has in its collection a wildman specimen, alive or dead. Many will say that all the wildman evidence mentioned above exists simply in reports, and that reports alone, even those given by scientists, are not sufficient to establish the existence of wildmen. Hard evidence, available now, to anyone who wants to see it and touch it, is required.

But what is the real status of hard evidence? Can a physical object in and of itself confirm a certain idea about some aspect of human origins? The answer to that question is no. In paleoanthropology, as in many areas of science, evidence exists primarily in the form of reports.

The most important feature of an artifact or a fossil hominid bone, as far as paleoanthropologists are concerned, is its age. As we show in Appendix 1, radiometric and chemical methods are not very reliable age indicators. Therefore the best age indicator is stratigraphic position. Once a bone or artifact is taken out of the ground, evidence of its original stratigraphic position lies principally in the reports of its discovery.

For example, one afternoon in the early 1970s, Donald Johanson, the discoverer of “Lucy” (the most famous specimen of Australopithecus afarensis), found some fossilized bones lying on the surface, near his base camp in the Afar region of Ethiopia. At the very moment his fingers grasped one of those bones, lying upon Pliocene sediments, Johanson was, one might say, in touch with some hard evidence. But Johanson’s discovery of those bones had no real scientific meaning until it was reported to other scientists. And from that time on, the discovery has existed, as far as the world of science is concerned, only in reports.

Were the bones discovered in the exact manner described in the reports? The answer to that question depends upon how much faith one places in the reporter and the reporting process.

One might take some comfort in the fact that the “actual” bones—the real hard evidence—are still present in a museum in Ethiopia. Of course, it is not so easy to obtain direct access to rare fossil specimens. But say you did have the proper scientific credentials and were able to go to Ethiopia and inspect the actual bones of Lucy. How would you know for certain that those were the bones picked up years ago by Johanson? You might compare them with the photographs and descriptions in the published reports. But here we go again—everything depends upon how much faith one places in the reports.

In some cases, the bones themselves are not available for inspection. For example, during World War II almost the whole collection of Beijing man (Homo erectus) fossils was lost during the Japanese occupation of China. The Beijing man fossils now exist only in the form of old written reports, photographs, and casts. And no one doubts that the originals did in fact exist.

But what about reports by scientists who claim they saw and examined dead specimens of wildmen, the corpses of which were not preserved? Most scientists will grant no credibility at all to such reports.

Here and in the case of Beijing man, the actual physical evidence is no longer available for inspection. Yet in one case the reports are believed, and in the other they are not. Why? We propose that reports about evidence conforming to the standard view of human evolution generally receive greater credibility than reports about nonconforming evidence. Thus deeply held beliefs, rather than purely objective standards, may become the determining factor in the acceptance and rejection of reports about controversial evidence.

10.2 Cryptozoology