Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Replying to Boswell’s charge that he had not properly marked the sites, Leakey (1936) stated in a letter to Nature that he had in fact done so. Unfortunately, the iron pegs he used had disappeared, perhaps taken by natives for spearheads or fishhooks. He had not marked the sites on a map, but only because no maps of sufficient detail existed. He had considered hiring a surveyor to make maps, but had not done so because of lack of money. Instead, he had taken photographs to identify the sites, but these had been spoiled by a malfunction in his camera.

His own photographs of Kanam and Kanjera ruined, Leakey had selected some by Miss Kendrick, a member of his expedition, to display with his fossils in England. In his letter to Nature, Leakey explained he had misinterpreted the label on one of Kendrick’s photographs and had mistakenly used it to show the site where the Kanam jaw had been found. But he pointed out: “I carefully refrained from using any photographs as evidence in connexion with my claim for the antiquity of the Kanam mandible, and only used them to show the general nature of the sites” (L. Leakey 1936).

Furthermore, Leakey felt he had been able to show Boswell the locations where he had found his fossils. Leakey (1936) wrote: “At Kanjera I showed him the exact spot where the residual mound of deposits had stood which yielded the Kanjera No. 3 skull in situ. . . . the fact that I did show Prof. Boswell the site is proved by a small fragment of bone picked up there in 1935 which fits one of the 1932 pieces.”

Regarding the Kanam jaw, Leakey stated in his memoirs: “It had been found in direct association with Lower Pleistocene fossils such as Deinotherium and Mastodon, and the matrix adhering to it was entirely similar to that which Boswell had now seen in the Kanam West gullies” (L. Leakey 1972, p. 35). Boswell did not mention the matrix adhering to the jaw in his letter to Nature.

Leakey (1972, p. 35) added: “Boswell, however, remained doubtful because no scientist had seen the jaw in situ. He would not agree to accept Juma’s statement that it had been dug out while he was working on the Deinotherium tooth.” Of course, if this standard were to be applied across the board, then many thoroughly accepted discoveries would also have to be thrown out. The Heidelberg (Mauer) jaw, for example, was discovered by a German sand pit worker. And almost all of the Java man discoveries reported by von Koenigswald were found by native collectors.

Regarding the location of the Kanam jaw, Leakey (1972, p. 35) said: “we had originally taken a level section right across the Kanam West gullies, using a Zeiss-Watts level, and could therefore locate the position to within a very few feet—and, in fact, we did so. I had brought with me a copy of the cross section, taken from a tree that could still be located on one side of the gully to another tree on the other side. On this cross section was a mark showing the point where the jaw had been recovered. I had, therefore, no doubt at all that I was showing Boswell and Wayland the right place within a few feet.”

Boswell suggested that even if the jaw was found in the Early Pleistocene formation at Kanam, it had entered somehow from above—by “slumping” of the strata or through a fissure. To this Leakey (1960d, pp. 202–203) later replied: “I cannot accept this interpretation, for which there is no evidence. The state of preservation of the fossil is in every respect identical to that of the Lower Pleistocene fossils found with it. Had the Kanam mandible been a specimen representing some specialized extinct type of man (such as used to be called ‘primitive’) no one would have suggested that it was not contemporary with the other fossils of the same horizon. . . . the fact that the Kanam mandible has a distinct chin eminence certainly influenced some people against accepting its authenticity.”

Boswell’s preconceptions about the morphology of hominids in the Early Pleistocene apparently motivated his attacks on the age of the Kanam jaw, and of Reck’s skeleton (Section 11.1.4). Leakey (1972, pp. 35–36) said in his memoirs: “he actually told us that were it not for the counterindication provided by the Piltdown jaw, which showed that man in the Lower Pleistocene had a simian shelf and extremely apelike characteristics, he would be inclined to accept the Kanam evidence, since the mineralization of the specimen compared closely with that of other fossils from the same deposits.” Of course, British scientists later declared the Piltdown jaw to be a fake (Chapter 8).

11.2.6 Kanam and Kanjera after Boswell