Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Turning once more to France, we note that in the late nineteenth century the museum of natural history at Clermont-Ferrand had in its collection a femur of Rhinoceros paradoxus with grooves on its surface. The specimen was found in a freshwater limestone at Gannat, in a quarry said to be dated by fossils to the Mayencian age of the Middle Miocene (de Mortillet 1883, p. 52). M. Pomel presented this piece to the anthropological section of the French Association for the Advancement of Science meeting of 1876 in Clermont. Pomel said the marks were from carnivores, which were numerous in the French Middle Miocene. But de Mortillet disagreed that an animal could have been responsible. He pointed out that the grooves on the Miocene rhinoceros femur could not have been made by a rodent, because rodent incisors usually leave pairs of parallel marks. The grooves on the rhinoceros femur were not arranged in pairs. De Mortillet also believed that the marks were not caused by larger carnivores, because, as noted by Binford (1981, p. 169) in modern times, carnivore teeth leave many irregular impressions and cause distinctive patterns of bone destruction. Binford stated that “association of scoring with patterns of destruction is not expected when man dismembers an animal with tools.” According to this standard, the Miocene rhinoceros femur, which displayed scoring but no pattern of destruction, might very well have been cut by ancient humans using stone tools.

For de Mortillet, however, the marks were a purely geological phenomenon. He concluded that the grooves on the rhinoceros femur of ClermontFerrand were probably produced by the same subterranean pressures responsible for the marks on the Billy specimen (de Mortillet 1883, p. 52). But de Mortillet’s own description (1883, p. 52) of the markings on the bone leaves this interpretation open to question: “The impressions occupy a portion of the inner surface near the condyles. They are parallel grooves, somewhat irregular, transverse to the axis of the bone.” The condyles are the rounded prominences on the articulator, or joint, surfaces at the end of the femur, or thighbone. The orientation and position of the marks on the fossil were identical to those of incisions made in the course of butchering operations on a long bone such as the femur. Binford’s studies (1981, p. 169) revealed: “cut marks are concentrated on articulator surfaces and are relatively rare as transverse marks on long bone surfaces. . . . cut marks from stone tools are most commonly made with a sawing motion resulting in short and frequently multiple but roughly parallel marks. Such marks are generally characterized by an open cross section. Another characteristic of cut marks derived from the use of stone tools is that they rarely follow the contours of the bone on which they appear. That is, the cut does not show equal pressure in depressions and along prominent ridges or across the arc of a cylinder.” As described by de Mortillet, the short parallel grooves found on the Miocene rhinoceros femur conform to these criteria, leaving one to wonder how it is possible that chance geological pressures could so closely duplicate, in terms of position and character, the distinctive marks of human butchering.

The Miocene dating of the Clermont-Ferrand site is confirmed by the presence of Anthracotherium magnum, an extinct mammal of the hippopotamus family. In fact, the site could be older than Middle Miocene. According to one modern authority, Anthracotherium existed in Europe from the Late Miocene to the Early Eocene (Romer 1966, p. 389). Savage and Russell (1983, p. 245) last report Anthracotherium in the Orleanian land mammal stage of the Early Miocene.

2.15 Carved Shell from the Red Crag, England (Late Pliocene)

In a report delivered to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1881, H. Stopes, F.G.S. (Fellow of the Geological Society), described a shell, the surface of which bore a carving of a crude but unmistakably human face. The carved shell was found in the stratified deposits of the Red Crag (Stopes 1881, p. 700). The Red Crag, part of which is called the Walton Crag, is thought to be of Late Pliocene age. According to Nilsson (1983, p. 308), the Red (Walton) Crag is between 2.0 and 2.5 million years old.

Figure 2.6. Carved shell from the Late Pliocene Red Crag formation, England (M. Stopes 1912, p. 285).