Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Here is what appears to have taken place. In the 1890s, Eugene Dubois discovered and promoted the famous, yet dubious, Java ape-man (Section 7.1). Many scientists accepted Java man, found unaccompanied by stone tools, as a genuine human ancestor. But because Java man was found in Middle Pleistocene strata, the extensive evidence for toolmaking hominids in the far earlier Pliocene and Miocene periods no longer received much serious attention. How could such toolmaking hominids have appeared long before their supposed ape-man ancestors? Such a thing would be impossible; so better to ignore and forget any discoveries that fell outside the bounds of theoretical expectations.

And that is exactly what happened—whole categories of facts were interred beneath the surface layers of scientific cognition. By patient research we have, however, managed to locate and recover a vast hoard of such buried evidence, and our review of it shall take us from the hills of Kent in England to the valley of the Irrawady in Burma. We shall also give consideration to anomalously old crude stone tool industries discovered by researchers in the late twentieth century.

The anomalous stone tool industries we shall consider fall into three basic divisions: (1) eoliths, (2) crude paleoliths, and (3) advanced paleoliths and neoliths.

According to some nineteenth-century authorities, eoliths (or “dawn stones”), were stones with edges naturally suited for certain kinds of uses. These, it was said, were selected by humans and used as tools with little or no further modification. Often one or more of the natural edges of the stone would be chipped to make it more suitable for a desired function. To the untrained eye, Eolithic stone implements were often indistinguishable from ordinary broken rocks, but specialists in lithic technology developed criteria for identifying upon them signs of human modification and usage.

In the case of more sophisticated stone tools, called paleoliths, the signs of human manufacture were more obvious, involving an attempt to form the whole of the stone into a recognizable tool shape. Questions about such implements centered mainly upon the determination of their correct age. Some Paleolithic implements, such as those used in Europe during the Late Stone Age and in recent historical times by the American Indians, display a high degree of artistry and craftsmanship, with very fine and elaborate chipping and graceful, symmetrical shapes. Most of the implements we shall be examining, however, are far more rudimentary. In fact, some researchers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have categorized them among the eoliths. But we have chosen to make a rough distinction between eoliths and crude paleoliths. While the eoliths are formed from naturally broken pieces of stone, perhaps with some slight chipping on a working edge, the crude Paleolithic industries include some specimens that have been deliberately flaked from stone cores and then modified by more extensive chipping into definite tool shapes. In distinguishing crude paleoliths from eoliths, we have also relied on experts who have testified that anomalously old paleoliths from the Pliocene, Miocene, and earlier periods are identical to accepted Paleolithic implements of the Late Pleistocene.

Our third division, advanced paleoliths and neoliths, refers to anomalously old stone tools that resemble the very finely chipped or smoothly polished stone industries of the standard Late Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.

Over the years, the terms eolith, paleolith, and neolith have been used in various ways. For most researchers, they have denoted not only levels of technical development but also a definite temporal sequence. Eoliths would be the oldest implements, followed in turn by the paleoliths and neoliths. But in the course of our discussion we will mainly use these terms to indicate degrees of workmanship. The evidence, we propose, makes it impossible to assign dates to stone tools simply on the basis of their form.