Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

People living along the banks of these rivers left stone tools, which were transported by the river to their present locations on the North Downs hilltops and the Chalk Plateau. This took place before the present river systems came into being. Embedded in the gravel deposits for long periods of time, the flint implements acquired their coloration and patina. These implements, their edges worn by transport, could not be any younger than the now-vanished northwardflowing rivers. Any implements more recently dropped into these gravels would have remained unrolled and unworn because no water was flowing at that high level. The new rivers were flowing at much lower levels.

How old were the Paleolithic flint implements on the Kent Plateau and in the hilltop drifts? Prestwich (1889, p. 292) concluded: “physiographical changes and the great height of the old chalk plateau, with its ‘red clay with flints’ and ‘southern drift’ high above the valleys containing the Postglacial deposits, point to the great antiquity—possibly Preglacial—of the palaeolithic implements found in association with these summit drifts.”

According to current opinion, glaciers approached, but did not actually cover the Kent Plateau. The Cromer Till of East Anglia, north of the Kent Plateau, represents the earliest definite geological evidence of glaciation in southern England (Nilsson 1983, pp. 112, 308). A till is a deposit of stones left by retreating glaciers. The Cromer till is .4 million years old. But evidence of an arctic climate occurs somewhat earlier than the Cromer Till, in the Beestonian cold stage at around .6 million years ago (Nilsson 1983, pp. 108, 308).

So strictly speaking, the preglacial period in southern England might be said to begin in the Middle Pleistocene. Interpreted in this light, Prestwich’s statement that the implements found in the summit drifts were preglacial could thus mean they were as recent as the early Middle Pleistocene. But, as we have seen, Edmunds (1954, p. 47) has proposed that the summit drifts, the ferruginous sands, are in fact Pliocene in age.

Hugo Obermaier (1924, p. 8), a leading paleoanthropologist of the early twentieth century, stated that the flint implements collected by Harrison from the Kent Plateau “belong to the Middle Pliocene.” J. Reid Moir, a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, also referred Harrison’s discoveries to the Tertiary (Section 3.3.1).

A Late or Middle Pliocene date for the implements of the Kent Plateau would give them an age of 2–4 million years. Modern paleoanthropologists attribute the Paleolithic implements of the Somme region of France to Homo erectus, and date them at just .5–.7 million years ago. The oldest currently recognized implements in England are about .4 million years old (Nilsson 1983, p. 111). So the Paleolithic implements of the Kent Plateau pose a number of difficulties for modern paleoanthropology.

3.2.3 Eoliths

Among the Paleolithic implements collected by Benjamin Harrison from the Kent Plateau were some that appeared to belong to an even more primitive level of culture. These were the eoliths, or dawn stones (Figure 3.3). This name eventually came to be used for a wide variety of very crude stone tool industries from England and other countries.

Figure 3.3. An eolith from the Kent Plateau (Moir 1924, p. 639).

The Paleolithic implements discovered by Harrison, although somewhat crude in appearance, had been extensively worked in order to bring them into definite tool and weapon shapes (Figure 3.4). The Eolithic implements, however, were, as defined by Harrison, natural flint flakes displaying only retouching along the edges.

Figure 3.4. These implements from the Kent Chalk Plateau were characterized as paleoliths by Sir John Prestwich (1889, plate 11). Prestwich (1889, p. 294) called the one on the left, from Bower Lane, “a roughly made implement of the spear-head type.”

Such tools are still used today by primitive tribal people in various parts of the world, who pick up a stone flake, chip one of the edges, and then use it for a scraper or cutter.

The question then arises as to how such eoliths could be distinguished from broken pieces of flint unmodified by human action. There were, of course, difficulties in making such distinctions, but even modern experts accept lithic assemblages resembling the eoliths collected by Harrison as genuine human artifacts. We shall consider this subject in greater detail in the course of this chapter, but for now we shall mention as an example the crude cobble and flake tools of the lower levels of Olduvai Gorge (Figure 3.5).