Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

It is certain that these stone implements are older than the Late Pliocene Red Crag. But how much older they actually are depends upon how one interprets the detritus bed below the Red Crag. J. Reid Moir (1924, pp. 642–643) wrote: “The sub-Red Crag detritus bed, which is sometimes as much as three feet in thickness, is, as its name implies, composed of materials of different periods occurring prior to the time when the deposit was laid down. Sir Ray Lankester has shown that these varying materials have been derived from the following sources:—(a) the chalk, [Cretaceous] (b) the London Clay [Eocene], (c) a Miocene land surface, (d) a marine Pliocene deposit (the Diestian Sand), (e) the earlier sweepings of a land surface which submerged after the Diestian deposit, and (f) later sweepings of the same land surface. It will thus be seen that the flint implements, now to be described, that were found in the detritus bed, may be referable to any of the periods represented by c, e, or f of the above list. We have no reason to think that at the epochs when the chalk and the London Clay were being laid down, man was present upon this planet, nor can he well be associated with the marine accumulation (d).”

Modern authorities give similar accounts of the detritus bed below the Red Crag. Tage Nilsson (1983, p. 105) stated: “At the bottom of the Red Crag deposits there is often a stony layer, constituting a kind of basal conglomerate, the Red Crag Nodule Bed. This mainly consists of flint pebbles and phosphorite nodules, washed out from older bedrock. It contains usually densely mineralized and often well-rounded and polished mammal fossils, which must in part be reworked from Eocene and other pre-Quaternary deposits.”

According to Nilsson (1983, p. 105), some fossils of Villafranchian species (such as Mammuthus meriodionalis) were found in the detritus bed. The Villafranchian land mammal stage spans the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary. This might suggest that the Red Crag detritus bed contains materials from the Early Pleistocene.

Arguing against this is the fact that the detritus beds are often found in situ beneath the intact Red and Coralline Crags (Moir 1924, p. 641), which can be safely referred to the Pliocene. Thus the Villafranchian component of the detritus bed fauna can be assigned to the Pliocene (rather than Pleistocene) part of the Villafranchian stage.

We note that potassium-argon dates obtained for a Villafranchian site in France reached 2.5–3.0 million years (Nilsson 1983, pp. 24, 158). We can therefore conclude that the age of the materials in the detritus beds at the base of the Crags range from Late Pliocene to perhaps Cretaceous in age. The Cretaceous chalk is, however, a marine formation, making the Eocene London Clay the earliest habitable land surface in the stratigraphic sequence of East Anglia.

3.3.3 Tools from Below the Red Crag (Pliocene to Eocene)

J. Reid Moir found in the sub-Crag detritus beds many types of stone tools, showing varying degrees of intentional work (Figure 3.6). He concluded that the cruder tools were older. Since the detritus beds, according to this scheme, appeared to contain a succession of stone tools from different periods, perhaps as far back as the Eocene, Moir (1935, pp. 360–361) wrote: “then it becomes necessary to recognize a much higher antiquity for the human race than has hitherto been supposed. I am fully aware of the implication of such a conclusion and the responsibility attaching to those who support it. Nevertheless, after a very careful and painstaking examination of all the available facts, I have been compelled to accept this conclusion as true, and have no hesitation in stating that such is the case.”

Moir connected the crudest tools, resembling the Harrison eoliths, with the Miocene elements of the detritus bed below the Red Crag. He considered them to be contemporary with the flint implements discovered in French Miocene formations at Aurillac (Section 4.3). But further than that he would not go, having stated, as above mentioned: “We have no reason to think that at the epochs when the chalk and the London Clay were being laid down, man was present upon this planet” (Moir 1924, p. 643).

Figure 3.6. Pointed implement from below the Red Crag (Moir 1935, p. 364). This specimen is over 2.5 million years old.

J. Reid Moir may have thought in that way, but, as we shall demonstrate later in this book, there is evidence that humans of the fully modern type were in fact present throughout the Tertiary, including the Eocene period, during the time when the London Clay was be-

ing deposited upon the underlying Cretaceous chalk (Sections 3.4.2, 5.5, 6.2, and 6.3; also Appendix 2).