Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

At a lecture before the Royal Society in London, Lankester said he hoped “that no one would venture to waste the time of the society by suggesting that sub-crag flints had been flaked by natural causes, as by so doing it would be plain that they had a very scanty knowledge of such matters.” Someone present did, however, venture to suggest exactly that. Lankester said it was “the sort of thing I would expect to hear from a savage.” Another time G. Worthington Smith, known to us for his skeptical exchanges with Benjamin Harrison of Ightham, said of the eoliths and pebble tools: “We have here choppers that do not chop and borers that do not bore.” Lankester retorted: “You, sir, are a bore who does bore” (Millar 1972, p. 100).

About the age of the rostro-carinate tools, Lankester stated in 1941: “I do not intend to proceed without caution to any conclusion on this subject, but it seems to me quite possible that there is a close relationship between the men who made the Upper Miocene rostro-carinate implements of Aurillac [Section 4.3] and those who made similar implements in Suffolk before the deposit of the Red Crag” (Moir 1935, p. 359).

Moir (1935, p. 360) himself also observed that intact counterparts of the beds that provided the materials for the detritus layer below the Red Crag could be found elsewhere in Europe and contained stone implements: “the Upper Miocene deposits of France [Sections 4.2, 4.3] and some older beds in Belgium [Section 4.4] have already yielded flaked flints, claimed by certain competent investigators as of human origin.”

3.3.4 The Foxhall Finds (Late Pliocene)

One important set of discoveries by Moir occurred at Foxhall, where he found stone tools (Figure 3.8) not in the detritus bed but in the middle of the Red Crag formation. Some authorities, including Moir, have placed the upper part of the Red Crag in the Early Pleistocene, but our review of the range of geological opinion has led us to place the entire Red Crag formation in the Late Pliocene. The Foxhall implements would thus be over 2.0 million years old. Moir (1927, p. 33) wrote: “The finds consisted of the debris of a flint workshop, and included hammer-stones, cores from which flakes had been struck, finished implements, numerous flakes, and several calcined stones showing that fires had been lighted at this spot. The Foxhall implements are, in the majority of cases, of a yellowish white colour, and more finely made than the still more ancient specimens found at the base of the Crag, and give us a very clear idea of the type of workmanship of which these ancient Suffolk people of Early Quaternary times were capable. While if the famous Foxhall human jaw-bone, which was apparently not very primitive in form, was, indeed, derived from the old land surface now buried deep beneath the Crag and a great thickness of Glacial Gravel, we can form the definite opinion that these ancient people were not very unlike ourselves in bodily characteristics.” The jaw spoken of by Moir has an interesting history (Section 6.2.1). For now, we shall simply note that some scientists who examined it considered it like that of a modern human being.

Figure 3.8. Front and rear views of two stone tools from the Red Crag at Foxhall, England. They are Late Pliocene in age. Henry Fairfield Osborn (1921, p. 572) said of the tool on the left: “Two views of pointed flint implement flaked on the upper and lower surfaces and with a constricted base, from sixteen-foot level of Foxhall pit. Primitive arrowhead type, which may have been used in the chase.” Of the implement on the right, Osborn wrote: “Borer ( perçoir) from sixteen-foot level of Foxhall.”

It is unfortunate that the Foxhall jaw is not available for further study, for it might offer further confirmation that the flint implements from Foxhall were of human manufacture. But even without the presence of actual human skeletal remains, the tools themselves point strongly to a human presence in England during the Late Pliocene, perhaps 2.0–2.5 million years ago.