Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

This still gives a potentially anomalous age for the fully human Reck’s skeleton. The base of Bed V is about 400,000 years old, according to current estimates (Table 11.1, p. 629). Therefore, even according to the revised position taken by Reck and Leakey, the skeleton could be at least 400,000 years old. This is true even if, as Boswell claimed in his August 1932 letter, the matrix sample supplied by Mollison contained deep red pebbles like those of Bed III and pieces of steppe-lime with a mineral characteristic of Bed IV. Today, however, most scientists believe that Homo sapiens sapiens first appeared about 100,000 years ago, as shown by the Border Cave discoveries in South Africa.

The March 1933 letter to Nature concluded with some interesting observations about stone tools found “in the basal deposits of Bed V” and on an “old land surface” at the same level as the steppe-lime just below Bed V. These tools, said the authors, had “very close affinities with the phase C of the Upper Kenyan Aurignacian” (Leakey et al. 1933, p. 398). Archeologists first used the term Aurignacian in connection with the finely-made artifacts of Cro-Magnon man (Homo sapiens sapiens) found at Aurignac, France. According to standard opinion, tools of the Aurignacian type did not appear before 30,000 years ago.

The Kenyan Aurignacian is now called the Kenyan Capsian, and the industry referred to above is called Upper Kenyan Capsian C. An Upper Kenyan Capsian C industry is found at Gamble’s Cave, Kenya. Gamble’s Cave is considered Holocene, or less than 10,000 years old (Oakley et al. 1977, pp. 36–37).

The presence of tools characteristic of anatomically modern humans just below Bed V and in the basal layers of Bed V at Olduvai Gorge is significant. The tools lend support to the idea that anatomically modern humans, as represented by Reck’s skeleton, were present in this part of Africa at least 400,000 years ago. Alternatively, one could attribute the tools to Homo erectus. But this would mean granting to Homo erectus toolmaking abilities substantially greater than scientists currently accept.

In The Stone Age Races of Kenya (1935), Leakey repeated his view that Reck’s skeleton had been buried into Bed II from a land surface that existed during the formation of Bed V. But now he favored a time much later in that period, contemporary with the Upper Kenyan Capsian C industry at Gamble’s Cave. Rainer Protsch (1974, p. 382) wrote: “The contemporaneity was not based on association of the hominids in both localities with that culture, but on the association of one with that culture [at Gamble’s Cave] and similar physical types of the hominids in both sites.” In our discussion of discoveries made in China, we examined the practice of morphological dating. Here again we see the primary role that the morphology of a skeleton plays in assigning it a date. And Leakey was not alone. Concerning the dating of Reck’s skeleton, Protsch (1974, p. 382) noted: “Weinert [1934] argued against an early age of these Homo sapiens remains from a purely theoretical evolutionary point of view.”

In 1971, Mary Leakey repeated the position taken by her husband in The Stone Age Races of Kenya: “The skull is of Homo sapiens type and resembles those of the Kenya Capsian from Gamble’s Cave II and Naivasha Railway Rockshelter in Kenya. A living site with a microlithic industry dated about 10,000 b.p. is known to exist within a short distance of the Olduvai burial and it is possible that the two are associated” (M. Leakey 1971, p. 225).

But even if the hypothesis that the skeleton was buried into Bed II during the deposition of Bed V is accepted, the skeleton could still be up to 400,000 years old. As mentioned above, that is when the post-Bed IV sediments began to accumulate at Olduvai. Other than its anatomically modern character, the Leakeys had little justification for assigning Reck’s skeleton to recent rather than earlier Bed V times.

11.1.5 The Radiocarbon Dating of Reck’s skeleton

Reiner Protsch later attempted to remedy this situation by dating Reck’s skeleton itself. Without such a determination, all that could truthfully be said (granting the Bed V burial hypothesis) was that the skeleton could be anywhere from 400,000 to perhaps a few thousand years old.