Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Furthermore, in an October 1932 letter to Nature, Leakey (1932b) pointed out that the side of the cliff had receded about 2 feet since 1913. At this rate, a few centuries ago the side of the cliff would have been many yards past the present position of the skeleton. So any burial by horizontal tunneling must have taken place fairly recently. And Hopwood (1932, p. 194) noted: “The present inhabitants of the country, the Masai, rarely bury their dead.” And if they did, they did not dig tunnels. Hopwood, describing current Masai burial practices, said: “the shallow grave (about one metre [3 feet] deep) is filled with stones and earth.” The stones are meant “to keep hyaenas from abstracting the body.” Reck’s skeleton was not surrounded by stones.

Leakey’s measurements also showed that since 1913 erosion had lowered the land surface near the skeleton’s resting place by about 6 inches. Repeating a conclusion he had expressed in his May 1932 letter, Leakey said: “my own estimate is that a time less than fifty years before Prof. Reck came to Oldoway, the site where he found the skeleton was covered by a deposit consisting of a very small relic of Bed 3 overlain by Bed 5 and the steppe lime” (L. Leakey 1932b). Therefore, if a burial took place 50 or more years ago, workers would have had to dig through bright red layers of Bed III materials and the hard calcrete layers of Bed V. And neither Leaky nor Reck had seen any materials from Bed III or Bed V present in the skeleton’s matrix.

But Cooper and Watson (1932b) called Leakey’s 50-year estimate “a guess.” They thought it was possible that Bed II could have been exposed for a very much longer time, allowing the skeleton to be buried without the difficulty of digging through the bright red Bed III materials or the hard calcrete layers of Bed V. The longer period of time would also allow for the subsequent fossilization of the skeleton. But the high rate of erosion observed by Leakey did not support the view maintained by Cooper and Watson.

Also, Hopwood (1932, p. 194) observed that Bed II was, at the time the skeleton was excavated, covered with a rubble of Bed III and Bed V materials, along with pieces of steppe lime, or calcrete. So even if the overlying beds were not intact, a very recent burial should nevertheless have caused their loose materials to be mixed in the grave filling.

In his October letter, Leakey responded to criticism of his proposal that Reck’s skeleton had been buried during the formation of Bed II, a shallow Middle Pleistocene lake bottom. Leakey suggested that the deposit might have been dry during parts of the year, as often occurs with African lakes. He also remarked that burial in shallow water is not unknown. “Even to-day in certain circumstances,” he wrote, “some native tribes dispose of the bodies of undesirables, such as suicides, in just such a way, ‘so as to prevent the spirit from escaping’” (L. Leakey 1932b).

Leakey also replied to a suggestion by Cooper and Watson that the Kanam and Kanjera discoveries were irrelevant to the solution of the question of the age of Reck’s skeleton. “I must, however, add,” he wrote, “that I do regard the discovery of the Kanam mandible and Kanjira skulls as relevant to the Oldoway problem, in that they at least show that Homo sapiens was in existence at the time when Bed 2 at Oldoway was being formed” (L. Leakey 1932b, p. 578).

11.1.4 Reck and Leakey change their Minds

Despite the broadsides from Cooper and Watson, Reck and Leakey seemed to be holding their own. But in August 1932, P. G. H. Boswell, a geologist from the Imperial College in England, gave a perplexing report in the pages of Nature.

Professor Mollison had sent to Boswell from Munich a sample of what Mollison said was the matrix surrounding Reck’s skeleton. Mollison, it may be noted, was not a completely neutral party. As early as 1929, he had expressed his belief that the skeleton was that of a Masai tribesman, buried in the not too distant past (Protsch 1974, p. 380).

Boswell (1932, p. 237) stated that the sample supplied by Mollison contained “(a) pea-sized bright red pebbles like those of Bed 3, and (b) chips of concretionary limestone indistinguishable from that of Bed 5 and enclosing at least one mineral (an amphibole), in relative abundance, not found in Beds 2 and 3, but present in Bed 4.” Boswell took all this to mean that the skeleton had been buried after the deposition of Bed V, which is topped by a hard layer of steppelime, or calcrete. At the time he wrote his report, he was unaware that there was also a layer of calcrete at the bottom of Bed V.

The presence of the bright red Bed III pebbles and Bed V limestone chips in the sample sent by Mollison certainly calls for some explanation. Reck and Leakey had both carefully examined the matrix at different times over a period of