Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Just how the discovery ( Figure 2.6) was received was detailed by Marie C. Stopes, the discoverer’s daughter, in an article in The Geological Magazine (1912, p. 285): “in 1881, when it was brought forward by Mr. Henry Stopes at a British Association meeting, it was considered wrong to suggest that man could have been alive at so early a date.” Arguing against forgery, Marie Stopes (1912, p. 285) stated: “It should be noted that the excavated features are as deeply coloured red-brown as the rest of the surface. This is an important point, because when the surface of Red Crag shells are scratched they show white below the colour. It should also be noticed that the shell is so delicate that any attempt to carve it would merely shatter it.” It is therefore quite possible that this shell was carved and deposited in the Red Crag strata during the Late Pliocene. If true, this would place intelligent human beings in England as far back as 2.0 million and maybe as much as 2.5 million years ago. One should keep in mind that in terms of conventional paleoanthropological opinion, one does not encounter such works of art until the time of fully modern Cro-Magnon man in the Late Pleistocene, about 30,000 years ago.

Discoveries of incised bones dating back to the Pliocene or earlier persisted into the early part of the twentieth century. Opposition to them also persisted, and eventually prevailed. For example, Hugo Obermaier, professor of prehistoric archeology at the University of Madrid, wrote (1924, pp. 2–3): “traces (chiefly fluted, engraved, or grooved) have been observed on the bones of animals and shells of molluscs in Tertiary deposits at Saint-Prest, Sansan, Pouancé, and Billy, France; in the Tertiary basin of Antwerp, Holland; at Monte Aperto near Siena, Italy; in North and South America; and in several other places. . . . it is easy to explain supposed traces of human activity as the result of natural causes—such, for example, as the gnawing or biting of animals, earth pressure, or the friction of coarse sand.” But can we say for certain that this “easy” explanation is the correct one?

2.16 Bone implements From Below the Red Crag, England (Pliocene to Eocene)

In the early twentieth century, J. Reid Moir, the discoverer of many anomalously old flint implements (Section 3.3), described “a series of mineralised bone implements of a primitive type from below the base of the Red and Coralline Crags of Suffolk” (1917a, pp. 116–131). The top of the Red Crag in East Anglia is now considered to mark the boundary of the Pliocene and Pleistocene, and would thus date back about 2.0–2.5 million years (Romer 1966, p. 334; Nilsson 1983, p. 106). The older Coralline Crag is Late Pliocene and would thus be at least 2.5–3.0 million years old. The beds below the Red and Coralline Crags, the detritus beds (Table 2.1, p. 78), contain materials ranging from Pliocene to Eocene in age (Section 3.3.2). Objects found there could thus be anywhere from 2 million to 55 million years old. One group of Moir’s specimens is of triangular shape (Figure 2.7). In his report, Moir (1917a, p. 122) stated: “These have all been formed from wide, flat, thin pieces of bone, probably portions of large ribs, which have been so fractured as to now present a definite form. This triangular form has, in every case, been produced by fractures across the natural ‘grain’ of the bone.” Moir (1917a, p. 116) then began to describe some of his attempts to reproduce the specimens: “having conducted a number of experiments in which mineralised and unmineralised bones were subjected to the effects of fortuitous blows and pressure, and after having fractured numerous modern shank bones of the bullock by striking and cutting them with flints and other stones held in the hand with a view of thus shaping them to the forms of the sub-Crag examples, he [the author] is compelled to regard these latter specimens as undoubted works of man.” According to Moir, the triangular pieces of fossilized whale bone discovered in the strata below the Coralline Crag might have once been used as spear points.

Figure 2.7. Three bone tools from the detritus bed beneath the Coralline Crag, which contains materials ranging from Pliocene to Eocene in age. These implements could thus be anywhere from 2 to 55 million years old (Moir 1917a, plate 26).