Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, p. 166) gave a summary of the three papers presented by Prestwich: “The first paper opened up the subject of Harrison’s discoveries by describing the palaeolithic implements found around Ightham in the post-glacial valley gravels, in the glacial high-level gravels, and in the very ancient, pre-glacial gravels of the high Chalk Plateau. . . . The second paper, on the drift stages of the Darent valley, added to the evidence contained in the Ightham paper. . . . The third paper was directed to the character of the rude implements, the nature of the chipping upon their edges, the classification of the specimens in groups representing different kinds of tools, and the other reasons that existed for attributing them to the hand of man.” In light of Prestwich’s testimony, it is remarkable that most modern studies of stone implements generally do not mention Harrison’s eoliths, and those few that do give only brief, highly critical, and often sarcastic notices of dismissal.

3.2.6 A. R. Wallace Visits Harrison

On November 2, 1891, Alfred Russell Wallace, who was at that time one of the world’s most famous scientists, paid an unannounced visit to Benjamin Harrison at his grocery shop in Ightham. Harrison recorded the incident in his notebooks: “Dr. A. R. Wallace, accompanied by Mr. Swinton of Sevenoaks, dropped in unexpectedly at 10.30. I had previously purchased Dr. Wallace’s Travels on the Amazon, and from his portrait, which forms the frontispiece to this work, I recognized him before he entered my shop. I therefore greeted him with ‘Dr. Wallace, I presume,’ a recognition which puzzled him until I explained that I had many times studied his portrait. This evidently pleased him. A long and patient examination was made of the old types of implement and of some later paleoliths” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 169). Harrison then took Wallace on a walking tour of the sites where the implements had been found.

Harrison also noted: “When I was showing him my rude implements and placing them in groups, he asked, ‘Was it not a pleasure to you to find such agreement in form and work when first you became certain of them?’ I answered that it was a supreme time. . . . Our conversation turned to the subject of the new and startling find of implements in the auriferous gravels of North America, startling in the fact that although their positions indicated a high antiquity, yet their forms were similar to those of implements in use by the Indians at the time of the discovery of the continent in the fifteenth century” (E. Harrison 1928, pp. 169–170). The stone implements from the auriferous, or gold bearing, gravels were of Neolithic type (Section 5.5). As we shall show, they provided evidence for the presence of humans of the modern type in the very early Pliocene, or perhaps even as far back as the Eocene.

The day following his visit to Ightham, Wallace wrote in a letter to Harrison: “I was very greatly interested in your collection of the oldest paleoliths. Could you not write a popular article giving an account of your discovery of them, with all the main features of their form and peculiarities, and the special areas in which they are found, illustrated by outline sketches of all the chief types of form, and laying particular stress on the fact that each of these types, however made, is illustrated by numbers of specimens showing how natural flint pebbles of suitable form have been selected, and by being chipped on one side only, have been brought to the required shape and edge? If you could write as you speak, I think such a paper would be published by one of the good reviews” ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 171). Harrison did not write such an article immediately, but, according to Sir Edward Harrison, in 1904 he published a pamphlet along the lines suggested by Wallace.

On March 14, 1892, the noted Scottish geologist Sir Archibald Geikie wrote to Benjamin Harrison about the paper presented by Prestwich at the Anthropological Institute: “I was delighted to receive a copy of Mr. Prestwich’s paper [on eoliths] a few days ago, and to read his account of your very successful investigations. It is a strange tale which these implements tell, and you may be congratulated on the successful result of your long and laborious, but, no doubt, very interesting quest. Yes, paleolithic man is old. . . . I am at present preparing a work the object of which is to show the results of glacial and archaeological researches into the antiquity of man which have been obtained up to the present time.

The more one investigates the question, the further into the past does paleolithic man seem to recede” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 175).

3.2.7 More Objections