Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Despite Boswell’s attacks on the Kanam and Kanjera finds, a few well-known scientists continued to keep open minds about Leakey’s original claims. Robert Broom, who in the 1930s found the first adult specimens of Australopithecus, wrote (1951, p. 13): “I have looked into this controversy very carefully and have no hesitation in saying that I have the fullest confidence in Leakey’s work; I am quite satisfied that Leakey found these remains where he says he found them, and that they prove modern man is far older than a few English scientists had thought—perhaps even as old as the Lowest Pleistocene.” Broom’s use of the words “modern man” to describe the Kanam and Kanjera fossils suggests he regarded them as similar to Homo sapiens sapiens. Broom (1951, pp. 11–12) characterized the Kanjera fossils as “skulls of early man with a large brain, and without any of the characters of Neanderthal man.” Standard texts give a lot of attention to Broom’s Australopithecus finds, but usually fail to mention his unorthodox views on Kanam and Kanjera.

Philip V. Tobias of South Africa said about Kanjera (1968, p. 182): “Boswell did not disprove the claim that human fragments were found in a Middle Pleistocene deposit; he only failed to find additional evidence confirmatory of Leakey’s claim. Thus there is a good prima facie case to re-open the question of Kanjera.”

And the Kanjera case was in fact reopened. Leakey’s biographer Sonia Cole (1975, p. 358) wrote: “In September 1969 Louis attended a conference in Paris sponsored by UNESCO on the theme of the origins of Homo sapiens. . . . the 300 or so delegates unanimously accepted that the Kanjera skulls were Middle Pleistocene.”

Leakey originally suggested that the fossil-bearing formation at Kanjera was equivalent to Olduvai Bed IV, which is approximately 400,000 to 700,000 years old (early to middle Middle Pleistocene). By 1960, however, Leakey had modified his position. He said the Kanjera skulls were the same age as the Swanscombe skull (L. Leakey 1960d, p. 204), which is about 300,000 years old. In the paper Leakey presented at the UNESCO conference, he maintained his view that the deposits at Kanjera and Swanscombe were “of comparable age.” But as we have seen, H. B. S. Cooke (1963), a leading authority on African mammals, confirmed Leakey’s original view that the Kanjera beds were the same age as Olduvai Bed IV. In his Paris paper, Leakey (1971, p. 26) also asserted that the Kanjera skulls had “brow-ridges of modern Homo sapiens appearance.”

Tobias (1962, p. 344) said about the Kanam jaw: “Nothing that Boswell said really discredited or even weakened the claim of Leakey that the mandible belonged to the stratum in question, nor did Boswell deny the faunal and cultural associations previously attributed to this stratum. . . . a number of subsequent writers have gratuitously assumed that Boswell’s report invalidated all Leakey’s claims. Although Leakey answered some of Boswell’s specific criticisms, the reply has seldom been quoted and little cognizance has seemingly been taken of it.” But, as we shall see below, Tobias had his own ideas about the age and evolutionary status of the Kanam jaw.

11.2.7 Morphology of the kanam jaw

Scientists have described the Kanam jaw in a multiplicity of ways. In 1932, a committee of English anatomists proclaimed it Homo sapiens (Woodward et al.

1933). Louis Leakey initially attributed the jaw to a new species, Homo kanamensis, a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens. But his biographer Sonia Cole (1975, pp. 103–104) said he soon gave up that designation in favor of Homo sapiens. Sir Arthur Keith (1935, p. 163), the dean of British anthropologists, also considered the Kanam jaw Homo sapiens. But in the 1940s Keith decided the jaw was most likely from an australopithecine (Tobias 1968, p. 180).

Tobias, an expert on the Australopithecinae, disagreed. After comparing the Kanam jaw with available Australopithecus jaws, Tobias (1968, p. 181) found it was, among other things, “much less robust” and different in the “general conformation and orientation” of the front part of the jaw.

Tobias (1962, p. 341) suggested that some of the sapiens-like features of the front part of the Kanam jaw might be, at least partially, the result of bone growth in response to a tumor on the inner surface of the front part of the jaw. Tobias was, however, not the first to notice the tumor.