Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

As time passed, Benjamin Harrison continued to win more and more converts. Sir Edward R. Harrison (1928, pp. 287–288) wrote: “A visit from Professor Max Verworn of Göttingen, who had come to England in connexion with the centenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, gave Harrison great pleasure. Professor Verworn, who stated that he did not at first believe in eoliths or in any of the supposed evidence of Tertiary man, but had modified his views after personal investigation of the Miocene deposits of the Cantal [Section 4.3.3], spent five days at Ightham. The fullest use was made of the time available, both in Harrison’s museum and in the field. Professor Verworn found an interesting old paleolith in situ in the Plateau gravel at the Vigo, an implement that from its position near the crest of the Chalk escarpment, and its rolled condition, could only have come from the vanished Wealden hills. . . . Harrison could not have wished for a more striking discovery to have been made by his visitor in order to satisfy him of the great antiquity of man in Kent.” If Sir Edward Harrison is using the word paleolith in its then accepted sense, we have here an account of an implement more technically advanced than the Eolithic type being found in the very old gravels of the Plateau, and having the worn appearance of implements belonging to those gravels. This gives added support to the possibility that humans of the modern type may have existed in later Tertiary times in England, perhaps 2– 4 million years ago.

On July 25, 1909, Professor Verworn wrote to Harrison from Göttingen: “If up to then I had the slightest doubt of the artificial nature of the eoliths of Kent, my visit on the spot and your splendid collection would have quite converted me” (E. Harrison 1928, p. 288).

3.2.14 More Opposition

The controversy over the eoliths continued well into the twentieth century. On April 28, 1911, Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock) wrote to Harrison: “I am satisfied that many, if not most of your eoliths are worked, though the numbers are staggering. I am not satisfied, however, that palaeolithic implements are in all cases younger” (E. Harrison 1928, pp. 294–295). In his last edition of his book Prehistoric Times, Lord Avebury fully accepted the eoliths of Harrison, as well as the implements of J. Reid Moir, which we shall discuss in the next section of this chapter ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 305). The opposition, however, continued to criticize the eoliths. In 1911, F. N. Haward published a paper purporting to show that natural forces were able to chip flints in a way that gives the impression of human work. We shall discuss Haward’s objections in connection with the flint implements of J. Reid Moir.

At this point, one may question the necessity of giving such a detailed treatment of the Harrison eoliths. There are several good reasons for doing so. The authors have discovered that modern students of paleoanthropology are generally not at all acquainted with many nineteenth-century discoveries demonstrating the presence of humans of the modern type in Tertiary times. And when these discoveries are brought to the attention of modern students, they tend to categorize them as “crackpot” or “oddball” cases that somehow gained some public notoriety and were quickly dismissed when brought to the attention of scientific authorities. We have also noted a strong prejudice against anomalous evidence that is “old.” Old accepted evidence is honored— for example, Java man, highlighted in all modern textbooks, was a nineteenth-century discovery. But the less familiar nineteenth-century evidence, which goes against the theories presented in modern textbooks, is tainted with suspicion, more so if one has never even heard of it before. In such cases, one often encounters in modern students a very strong assumption that if one has not even heard of some anomalous evidence, then it must have been completely rejected on purely scientific grounds long ago. One reason for presenting a detailed account of anomalous evidence is to show that it was not always of a marginal, crackpot nature. Rather anomalous evidence was quite often the center of serious, longstanding controversy within the very heart of elite scientific circles, with advocates holding scientific credentials and positions just as prestigious as those of the opponents. By presenting detailed accounts of the interplay of conflicting opinion, we hope to give the reader a chance to answer for himself or herself the crucial question—was the evidence actually rejected on purely scientific grounds, or was it dropped from consideration and forgotten simply because it did not lie within the parameters of certain circumscribed theories?