Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

In 1929, Mollison had measured the organic content of Reck’s skeleton under ultraviolet light, hoping to gain insight into its age. Sonia Cole (1975, p. 93), Leakey’s biographer, said: “he found a great contrast between it and very recent bones on the one hand and the fossil fauna from Olduvai Bed II on the other.” According to Cole, the differences in organic content indicated to Mollison that the bones were of different ages. In particular, Reck’s skeleton would have to be younger than the other fossils found in Bed II. Mollison’s ultraviolet measurements are said to have substantially influenced Leakey to change his mind about the antiquity of Reck’s skeleton (Cole 1975, p. 93).

But Protsch contradicted Cole’s statement, quoted above, that Mollison had found the organic content of Reck’s skeleton to be different from that of the fauna from Bed II. Protsch (1974, p. 380) said Mollison had found “identical results for the organic content of the hominid and the fauna of Bed II.” This demonstrates the difficulties one encounters in trying to unravel the truth about a case like this.

According to Protsch (1974, p. 380), Mollison obtained an organic content of 4.8 percent for the Olduvai human skeleton and 5.3 percent for a skull, only a few thousand years old, from the Ofnet Cave in Bavaria. Mollison used this determination to assign a date of approximately five thousand years to the Olduvai skeleton. Protsch later ran his own tests, using modern microanalytical methods to measure the amount of collagen, the main organic constituent of bone. He obtained an organic content of 2.7 percent for Reck’s skeleton and

16.56 percent for the Bavarian skull. This invalidated the earlier determination by Mollison. Not much can be read into either set of results, because bones from different locations can lose their organic content at greatly different rates (Appendix 1.1).

Eventually, fragments of bone thought to belong to the original skeleton were dated by the radiocarbon method. Protsch (1974) obtained for his sample an age of 16,920 years.

The skull was considered too valuable to use for testing, and the rest of the skeleton had disappeared from a Munich museum during the Second World War. Protsch (1974, p. 383) stated: “Through the courtesy of G. Glowatzki, director of the Staatssammlung, some very fragmentary postcranial material still imbedded in earth was found and used for radiocarbon dating. This material consisted mainly of rib fragments, long bone fragments, and pieces of vertebrae. Some of the bones were covered by the preservative Sapon, a lacquer, which was easily flaked off and removed. Many parts were not covered by this preservative, but nevertheless the same chemical pretreatment was given to all bone material. This postcranial material most likely belongs to the Olduvai Hominid I since it was marked as such.”

But if the bones were “still embedded in earth,” how did they become fragmented? The original skeleton was said to be intact. Also, the hard Bed II material in which the skeleton was encased upon arrival in Germany was not exactly “earth.” Reports of the discovery say the skeleton had to be removed with hammers and chisels, indicating the matrix was stonelike in hardness.

From the bone fragments available to him, Protsch was able to gather a sample of only 224 grams, about one third the normal size of a test sample for the method he used. Although he obtained an age of 16,920 years for the human bone, he apparently got very much different dates from other materials from the same site. “Several other radiocarbon dates were run, but could be contaminated by either recent or old radiocarbon, since these sample materials were mostly calcrete or fresh water shells,” said Protsch (1974, p. 384). But the human fossil material may also have been contaminated by recent radiocarbon.

In Appendix 1, we discuss in detail the difficulties involved in radiocarbon dating of bones that have been exposed to contamination. By 1974, the remaining bone fragments from Reck’s skeleton, if they in fact belonged to Reck’s skeleton, had been lying around in a museum for over 60 years and had been soaked in an organic preservative (Sapon).

Protsch did not describe what chemical treatment he used to eliminate recent carbon 14 contributed by the Sapon. Thus we have no way of knowing to what degree the contamination from this source was eliminated.

In Appendix 1.3.2, we also describe other sources of contamination, including: (1) saprophytes growing in and feeding on bone, (2) humic and fulvic acids, (3) exogenous amino acids, (4) improper collection procedures. Protsch (1974) did not discuss any of these sources of contamination or what procedures he used to try to eliminate them. All of these sources of contamination, if not properly dealt with, would cause the carbon 14 test to yield a falsely young age.