Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Moir found specimens of a stone industry (Figure 3.9), including large handaxes, lying on the beach at Cromer and East Runton in Norfolk. He stated that they originated from a stone bed exposed in the base of the cliffs along the shore. Moir (1924, p. 649) wrote: “The Cromer specimens are found chiefly upon the foreshore. . . . They lie upon the chalk, and have evidently been derived from a formation at the very base of the Cromer Forest Bed series of deposits, which form the lowermost strata of the high bluffs of the Norfolk coast. . . . In some places, as at East Runton, about two miles northwestward of Cromer, large areas of the implementiferous bed can be seen in situ upon the chalk, and from this deposit have been recovered several very definite examples of Early Paleolithic hand axes.” If the implements are, as Moir stated, from the lowest part of the Cromer Forest Bed formation, they would, according to modern estimates, be at least .8 million and perhaps as much as 1.75 million years old.

Moir (1924, p. 652) went on to describe the implements: “There is no doubt that the Cromer industry shows an advance from the sub-Crag culture, but it is nevertheless closely related to it. The ancient Cromerians, using probably large hammerstones of flint, were able to detach in some cases enormous flakes of flint, and the whole industry is on a large and massive scale. On the foreshore at Cromer the contents of a workshop site were found, comprising hand axes, choppers, side scrapers, points, and numerous flakes. . . . Their skill in flint-flaking is evidenced by the immense flake scars produced by the primary quartering blows, the well-formed striking platforms, and the regular and accurate secondary flaking.” Critics of anomalous stone tools often ask for just the type of evidence reported by Moir—a variety of finished tool types and flakes in close association, indicating a workshop site.

3.3.6 Moir Versus Haward

Having briefly reviewed Moir’s discoveries beneath the Red and Coralline Crags, in the Red Crag at Foxhall, and from the Cromer Forest Bed, we shall now examine the history of the scientific controversies surrounding them. J. M. Coles (1968) of Cambridge gave a rare modern summary of the disputes.

In 1919, F. N. Haward attacked Moir’s discoveries, claiming that they were the product of geological pressure acting on flint. Moir and A. S. Barnes replied to Haward in articles published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia. Moir (1919, p. 158) made the following comments: “It appears that Mr. Haward has found in the Norwich Stone Bed a flint, or flints, which exhibit a flake detached, but not removed from the parent block, and he concludes, and rightly concludes, that such flakes have become so detached since the bed in which they occur was laid down. He draws attention to the well-known fact that flints in the chalk, and, I may add, in other deposits as well, break up into pieces of varying size, and that such breakage is of natural origin. And once more I am in agreement. But here, I fear, we take widely different paths.”

Haward believed the cause of breakage to be pressure. Moir agreed that this was indeed one possible cause, and pointed out that he had himself published a paper on this topic (“The Fractured Flints of the Eocene ‘Bull-Head’ at Coe’s Pit, Bramford, near Ipswich”) in the Journal of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia. Moir (1919, pp. 158–159) went on to state: “But I know also that pressure flakes exhibit certain peculiarities of their surfaces which differentiate them markedly from other flakes which have been removed by percussion, and so far as I can ascertain, Mr. Haward has not yet demonstrated, scientifically, that the few flakes upon which he bases his portentous argument have without doubt been detached by pressure. It may also be recalled that the Norwich Stone Bed, as I can testify from actual observation, contains very often fragile bones of mammals, and the sands above it, at Whitlingham, where a large proportion of the sub-crag implements described by Mr. Clarke have been found, have embedded in them even more fragile shells. And it is legitimate to ask why, if pressure is fracturing the hard, resistant flints in the Stone Bed, the easily-broken organic remains mentioned are quite frequently found intact.” Rejecting the pressure hypothesis, Moir suggested another explanation. Before being embedded in the deposit a flint nodule might have been subjected to blows strong enough to produce incipient bulbs of percussion. Later, under the influence of heat, for example, the flakes might have come off. Moir (1919, p. 159) added that Haward himself had noted that some flaked flints he studied bore signs of percussion.