Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

During the late 1960s, Louis Leakey made some interesting discoveries at Fort Ternan, Kenya. The fossil-bearing formations at this site are said to be from 12.5 to 14.0 million years old (Butzer 1978, p. 198), which makes them Middle Miocene. After noting that hundreds of relatively undamaged fossil mammal bones had been found at Ft. Ternan, Leakey (1968, p. 528) said: “In striking contrast to this situation, there are in the same deposit, and at the same level, small areas of fossils where the bones have been broken up, and where the damage includes excellent examples of depressed fractures of the types usually associated with  ‘a blunt instrument.’. . . We also recovered a peculiar lump of lava exhibiting several battered edges, and with every appearance of having been used to smash bones.” According to Glynn Isaac (1978, p. 229), Leakey believed that the lava was not of the kind found normally in the deposit; therefore it must have been transported to the site. Leakey concluded that an apelike Miocene hominid called Kenyapithecus had used the lava stone to crack bones for marrow. E. L. Simons (1978, pp. 548–549) and others considered Kenyapithecus to be an African variety of the Asian hominid Ramapithecus. Currently, however, scientists do not think the ramapithecines can be classified as hominids (Section 3.9). Because no one (as far as we know) now attributes tool behavior to Miocene apes, we are left wondering what hominid used stones to break bones for marrow at Ft. Ternan over 12.5 million years ago. We do not know, but, as we noted in Chapter 2, modern humans leave similar broken bone assemblages.

11.5 A Tale of Two Humeri

In 1965, Bryan Patterson and W. W. Howells found a surprisingly modern-looking hominid humerus (upper arm bone) at Kanapoi, Kenya. In 1977, French workers found a similar humerus at Gombore, Ethiopia.

11.5.1 The Kanapoi Humerus

The Kanapoi humerus fragment, consisting of the intact lower (or distal) part of the bone, was found on the surface. But B. Patterson and Howells (1967, p. 64) noted: “Color, hardness, and degree of mineralization agree with those of numerous specimens collected in situ in the sediments.” Potassium-argon tests on volcanic materials above the bone-bearing sediments yielded dates of 2.9 and 2.5 million years. Paleomagnetic tests showed the lava displayed reverse polarity. The Matuyama Reverse Epoch began 2.5 million years ago, consistent with the potassium-argon results (B. Patterson and Howells 1967, p. 64).

The Pliocene lake sediments also yielded a fauna earlier than that found in Bed I of Olduvai Gorge. Patterson and Howells said it corresponded to the early Villafranchian of Europe. Another researcher later commented on the faunal remains: “These are comparable to those found at the Mursi site in the Omo River valley, with an age of 4.0 to 4.5 million years” (Senut 1979, p. 113). Patterson accepted this as a reasonable date for the layer from which the humerus was thought to have eroded (Oakley et al. 1977, p. 59).

Could the bone have been intrusive in the deposit? B. Patterson and Howells (1967, p. 64) stated: “The excellent state of preservation—the fragment shows no significant postmortem damage other than the break that separated it from the remainder of the original bone—rules out the possibility of derivation from later deposits that may once have been present in the vicinity of the capping lava.”

B. Patterson and Howells (1967, p. 65) said the Kanapoi humerus was “readily distinguishable . . . from gorilla and orangutan.” They then made detailed “morphological and metrical comparisons” with human beings, chimpanzees, and Australopithecus.

Patterson and Howells measured 7 features on 40 human humeri, 40 chimpanzee humeri, and a cast of the distal humerus of Paranthropus robustus (Kromdraii TM 1517), the only australopithecine distal humerus then available. They concluded: “In these diagnostic measurements Kanapoi Hominoid 1 is strikingly close to the means of the human sample. It is larger than the individual of Paranthropus robustus represented by the corresponding humeral fragment from Kromdraai in each measurement” (B. Patterson and Howells 1967, p. 65). Patterson and Howells (1967, p. 65) added: “Paranthropus emerges from these morphological comparisons as rather less man-like than Kanapoi Hominoid 1.” Further emphasizing the humanlike character of the Kanapoi humerus, they said: “there are individuals in our sample of man on whom measurements . . . of Kanapoi Hominoid I can be duplicated almost exactly” (B. Patterson and Howells 1967, p. 66).

Patterson and Howells would not have dreamed of suggesting that the Kanapoi humerus belonged to an anatomically modern human. Nevertheless, if an anatomically modern human had died at Kanapoi 4.0–4.5 million years ago, he or she might have left a humerus exactly like the one they found.