Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Upon Reck’s return to Germany, his African discovery attracted immediate attention, both in the popular press and in scientific circles. A leading American anthropologist, George Grant MacCurdy (1924a, p. 423) of Yale University, considered Reck’s discovery to be genuine: “The human skeleton . . . came from the next to the lowest horizon (No. 2). . . . The skeleton was found some 3 or 4 meters (10 to 13 feet) below the rim of the Oldoway gorge, which here is about 40 meters [131 feet ] deep. The skeleton bore the same relation to the stratified beds as did the other mammalian remains, and was dug out of the hard clay tufa with hammer and chisel just as these were. In other words, the conditions of the find were such as to exclude the possibility of an interment. The human bones are therefore as old as the deposit (No. 2).” He also agreed that the skeleton was of modern type: “Judging from the photograph of the skeleton still in situ, the man of Oldoway gorge did not belong to the Neandertal, but rather to the Aurignacian type” (MacCurdy 1924a, p. 423). Aurignacian refers to Cro-Magnon man, the first representative of Homo sapiens sapiens in Europe.

11.1.2 Leakey’s conversion

Louis Leakey (1928, p. 499) examined Reck’s skeleton in Berlin, but he initially judged it more recent than Reck had claimed. Other scientists agreed.

In 1931, Leakey and Reck, attempting to settle the issue, visited the site where the skeleton had been found. Along with them were A. T. Hopwood of the British Museum of Natural History, Donald MacInnes, and geologist E. V. Fuchs. After studying the geology, Leakey and Hopwood were won over to Reck’s point of view. Leakey was also influenced by new discoveries of stone implements in Beds I and II of Olduvai Gorge. As we have seen, Reck originally reported that no cultural remains were found in Bed II, a fact that had caused Leakey to judge the skeleton not very old (Goodman 1983, p. 107).

In a letter published in Nature, the prestigious British science review, Leakey, Hopwood, and Reck confirmed that the skeleton was not buried from Bed IV, as Leakey had suggested in his book The Stone Age Cultures of Kenya Colony (1931), but was native to Bed II, as originally reported by Reck. They concluded that the skeletal remains belonged to an anatomically modern Homo sapiens who had lived during Africa’s Upper Kamasian pluvial (rainy) period (L. Leakey et al. 1931), equivalent to the Mindel glacial period of the European middle Middle Pleistocene. This made Reck’s skeleton roughly contemporary with Beijing man and Java man, both from the Middle Pleistocene. But, as previously mentioned, uppermost Bed II at Olduvai Gorge is now given a late Early Pleistocene age of 1.15 million years. By modern accounts, Homo sapiens sapiens is not thought to be more than 100,000 years old, although some specimens regarded as early Homo sapiens are dated at around 300,000 years.

In an article published in the Times of London, Leakey stated that his firsthand research in Africa had established “almost beyond question that the skeleton of a human being found by Professor Reck in 1913 is the oldest authentic skeleton of Homo sapiens” (Goodman 1983, p. 107). This led Leakey to announce that Beijing man and Java man were not direct human ancestors. How could they be, when Reck’s skeleton, fully human, was just as old as they were?

Hopwood later published his own account of the 1931 expedition to Olduvai. Hopwood (1932, p. 193) stated: “Examination of the site in 1931 confirmed the observation that the bed in which the skeleton lay was undoubtedly, Bed II.” Hopwood (1932, p. 194) added: “The slope is covered by rubble from Beds III and V in such a manner that it is difficult to see how a shallow grave could be dug and filled again without including some of this rubble.”

From his study of the stratigraphy and the rate of erosion, Hopwood concluded that as little as 250 years ago “the place where the skeleton lay would certainly have been covered by the lower hard layer [of Bed V calcrete], which is ten to twelve inches thick.” Hopwood pointed out that the calcrete layers at the site were extremely hard. He once saw laborers working with heavy crow bars take two full days to dig a hole just 2 feet square and 3 feet deep through similar material. The nearly impenetrable character of the calcrete appeared to rule out burial (Hopwood 1932, p. 194). Furthermore, the Bed II sediments themselves were quite hard at that point. The skeleton found by Reck in 1913 had to be extracted with hammers and chisels.