Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

The Gombore humerus was, however, more recent than the Kanapoi humerus. Noting that stone tools were found near the Gombore humerus, Brigitte Senut (1979, pp. 112 –113) stated: “The stone industry of Gombore IB is like that of the upper part of Bed I and the base of Bed II at Olduvai (Tanzania), which have been dated at 1.7 million years by the potassium-argon method. The same radiometric method applied to basalt at the Ethiopian site gives the layers in which the Oldowan tools were found a date older than 1.5 million years.” The first excavators (Chavaillon et al. 1977, p. 961) also noted: “The site is an Oldowan encampment, with a shelter and organized zones containing different types of tools.”

Senut (1979, p. 111) said, in an English summary of one of her French papers, that the Gombore humerus could, along with the Kanapoi humerus, “be attributed to the genus Homo.” Concerning the Kanapoi humerus, Senut was in agreement with B. Patterson and Howells (1967), McHenry and Corruccini (1975), McHenry (1972, 1973), Oxnard (1975a), and Day (1978), who all thought the Kanapoi humerus to be unlike that of Australopithecus. Senut differed from Feldesman (1982a), who thought the Kanapoi humerus to be like that of Australopithecus boisei (ER 739).

Like Senut (1979), the original discoverers of the Gombore humerus hesitated to designate it as anything more than Homo (Chavaillon et al. 1977). Similarly, Feldesman (1982a, p. 92), who thought the Kanapoi humerus to be like those of australopithecines, said: “The Gombore specimen appears to be closer to Homo than to anything else.” But Chavaillon and his coworkers (1977, p. 962) noted: “in the lateral view, the bone very much resembles Homo sapiens sapiens.” Senut later found other features that were humanlike. “Gombore IB 7594,

which was primitively [first] attributed to the genus Homo (Chavaillon et al. 1977, Senut 1979), cannot be differentiated from a typical modern human,” she wrote (Senut 1981b, p. 91).

So now we seem to have two very ancient and humanlike humeri to add to our list of evidence challenging the currently accepted scenario of human evolution. These are the Kanapoi humerus at 4.0–4.5 million years in Kenya and the Gombore humerus at more than 1.5 million years in Ethiopia. At the very least, the Early Pliocene Kanapoi humerus “could challenge the new phylogenies tending to show that only one genus and one species (Australopithecus afarensis) was living at this date” (Senut 1979, p. 111). The Kanapoi and Gombore humeri also support the nonevolutionary view that human beings of modern type have coexisted with other humanlike and apelike creatures for a very long time.

11.6 Richard, Son of Leakey

Louis Leakey’s son Richard at first avoided fossil hunting, working instead as a safari organizer for clients including the National Geographic Society. Eventually, however, Richard took up the family profession. Although he had no university training, he began to develop his own reputation as a competent paleoanthropologist.

In 1967, Richard Leakey, then just 23 years old, led the Kenya section of an international paleoanthropological expedition to the Omo region of southern Ethiopia. Unhappy at having to turn over fossils he discovered to professional scientists, Leakey suddenly left the Omo site. He flew by helicopter to Koobi Fora, on the crocodile-infested eastern shores of Kenya’s Lake Rudolf, now called Lake Turkana. On his very first walk around Koobi Fora, Leakey found a stone tool and fossil pig jaw. The site was promising, but he needed funding in order to systematically develop it.

In January of 1968, Richard Leakey journeyed to Washington, D.C., where he got a grant of 25,000 dollars from the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration. Returning to Kenya, Leakey set up a permanent camp at Koobi Fora.

That first year saw no major discoveries, but in 1969 Richard and his wife Meave found an australopithecine skull. Over the next few years, fossils of three more Australopithecus individuals turned up (R. Leakey 1973b, p. 820). Also, Glynn Isaac found hundreds of crude stone tools at several Early Pleistocene sites near Koobi Fora (R. Leakey 1973b, p. 820). Australopithecus was not known to have been a toolmaker. So who had made the tools?

11.6.1 Skull Er 1470