The Record Of The Rocks

Reck's Controversial Find

Regarding evidence for the extreme antiquity of modern man, it should be noted that the extent to which it challenges the standard views is matched by the degree of vehemence with which the evolutionary establishment tends to reject it. One example of such controversy is provided by a find made in 1913 by Dr. Hans Reck in East Africa's famous Olduvai Gorge.

Dr. Reck discovered a skeleton of fully modern man in strata that made it contemporary with Peking Man and Java Man, supposedly distant ancestors of homo sapiens. This find inspired much controversy, but when the famous Louis Leakey visited the site in 1931 with Reck, he concluded the skeleton was at least a half million years old.15

Opponents continued to argue that it was an intrusive burial, that it was a man of recent origin buried in the ancient strata of rock. But Reck insisted that he had taken adequate care to rule out this interpretation. The strata above the skeleton had been undisturbed, he claimed. Yet other investigators charged they had found material from higher strata in the rock matrix in which the skeleton was embedded. In the face of the conflicting testimony, Reck and Leakey withdrew their claims.

In 1973, Dr. Reiner Protsch of the department of biology and anthropology of the J. W. Goethe University in Frankfurt, West Germany, made a report on radiocarbon dating of Reck's skeleton. Since the skull was considered too valuable to destroy for radiocarbon dating, Protsch wanted to use other bones. Unfortunately all of the skeleton except the skull had mysteriously disappeared from the Munich museum in which it had been kept! Some fragmentary portions of ribs, long bones, and vertebrae were later produced and were thought to have come from the originally complete skeleton. As a precaution, both the skull and the fragments were tested for nitrogen content to see if they were actually from the same skeleton. The results of the test were similar enough to not rule out the possibility that this may have been the case. The subsequent radiocarbon dating gave an age of 17,000 years for these bones, which according to Protsch means that the skeleton was buried by digging down from a land surface in the middle of bed 5 at Olduvai Gorge.16 This has been taken as final proof that Reck's skeleton is an intrusive burial and is much younger than originally thought.

Yet the British scientist A. Tindell Hopwood observed on the site a hard layer of calcrete (limestone) between the base of bed 5 and the lower bed 2 in which the skeleton was found. If the skeleton had indeed been buried from a land surface in the middle of bed 5, the hole would have had to go through the calcrete layer. Regarding the hardness of calcrete, Hopwood noted that African diggers "working at their own speed with heavy crowbars, failed to dig a hole two feet square and three feet deep through similar material, although they were two days on the job."17

The whole question remains problematic. We have Reck's original testimony that it was not an intrusive burial, along with attempts to prove it was. But upon close examination it appears the refutations are less than airtight, leaving open the possibility that Reck's original observations about the placement of the skeleton and its extreme age were correct. It is remarkable indeed that the picture of the nature and origin of man that we have derived from modern science is largely based on evidence and lines of reasoning as questionable and slipshod as these.

Louis Leakey was involved in other finds indicating the presence of homo sapiens in very early strata. One example is his discovery of the Kanam jaw in the lowest level (bed 1) of Olduvai Gorge. This jaw was initially accepted as belonging to homo sapiens by a committee of twenty-seven experts, who agreed it derived from the Lower Pleistocene period.18 This would give it an age of about 2 million years, contemporaneous with homo habilis and australopithecus robustus.

Unfortunately, when one Professor Boswell, who was also involved in the controversy over Reck's skeleton, challenged Leakey's claims, Leakey was unable to relocate the exact site where the find had been made. As a result the find was discredited in the eyes of archaeologists although Leakey insisted that his original report was correct.19

In considering the treatment of Reck's skeleton and the Kanam jaw, it is interesting to note that the standards imposed for the acceptance of evidence that contradicts current views seem to be stricter than the standards for acceptance of evidence that agrees with current views. Consider for example, the Petralona skull, which was found in Greece. This skull seems to be nearly intermediate in form between the homo erectus type of skull and the homo sapiens type. It is given a date of about 200,000--300,000 years and is accepted as evidence of human evolution by archeological authorities such as John Gowlett, head of the radiocarbon dating laboratory at Oxford.

Yet how solid are the facts indicating the age of this skull? John Gowlett gives the following information: "The finds were first uncovered not by archaeologists, but by local people who kept no records. Some accounts speak of a skeleton as well as the skull, but no evidence of this has ever been produced. Even the exact stratigraphic position of the skull has been debated."20 If the Petralona skull had to conform to the same standards applied to Leakey's Kanam jaw or Reck's skeleton, it is highly doubtful that it would ever have been accepted as evidence for human evolution.

Modern Man in Ancient Strata

There is evidence for the existence of modern man in even older periods than those represented by Reck's skeleton and the Kanam jaw. The Castenedolo skull provides one example. It was discovered in 1860 in Castenedolo, Italy, by Professor Ragazzoni, an expert geologist, in strata dated as Pliocene. This means the remains, if actually deposited in this strata, were 2-7 million years of age. Later on, in 1880, the remains of two children and a woman were found nearby at the same level.

Inevitably the charge was made that the skeletons must have reached their positions in Pliocene strata as a result of intrusive burial. However, Professor Giuseppe Sergei, who investigated these finds, wrote in 1921 that the incompleteness of the skeletons and the dispersal of their bones in the strata ruled out the possibility of burial. Also there was no admixture of materials from higher levels, as one would expect if a pit had been dug from above. Yet after a brief period of initial controversy, the Castenedolo finds were ignored by scientists writing on human evolution.

The eminent British evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith wrote in connection with Castenedolo and finds of a similar nature, "Were such discoveries in accordance with our expectations, if they were in harmony with the theories we have formed regarding the date of man's evolution, no one would ever dream of doubting them, much less of rejecting them."21

At this point, let us shift our attention from the antiquity of modern man to the recency of primitive man. According to standard views of paleoanthropologists, the Neanderthal man became extinct some 135,000 years ago, and since that time only fully modern man has existed throughout the entire world. Furthermore, it is widely accepted that the more primitive homo erectus forms ceased to exist some 200,000 to 300,000 years ago.

Yet in the respected journal Nature we find the following interesting report. A European scientist, Mr. K. Stolyhwo, gave an account of a Neanderthal skull found as part of a skeleton in a tomb in which there was also a suit of chain armor together with iron spearheads. He said the skull was very similar to the Spy Neanderthal skull, a classical example of the type.22

Many similar reports of skeletal remains of recent vintage with very primitive characteristics could be cited. But now we turn to an even more interesting report. In a recent article appearing in the journal Antiquity, archaeologist Myra Shackley of the University of Leicester, England, described extensive evidence that she interprets to indicate the survival of Neanderthal man up to the present time.

Her evidence consists mainly of accounts of sightings and captures, as well as footprints and other traces, of a kind of subhuman but manlike being. Called the Almas, its existence has been repeatedly reported for many centuries throughout a broad area in Central Asia stretching from the Altai Mountains in Outer Mongolia to the Caucasus of southern Russia. These reports include many accounts made by reputable scientists, by officers in the Soviet military forces, and by local people. The following eyewitness account of a captured Almas is given by V. H. Khaklov, a Russian zoologist of the early twentieth century. "They are of medium height, with hair all over the body, absence of a forehead but prominent browridges and heavy lower jaw and no chin, long arms and short legs, feet broad with big toe shorter than other toes."23

Although Dr. Shackley interprets the many reports of the Almas as evidence for the survival of Neanderthal man, these reports actually indicate that the Almas, if it exists, has a much lower level of culture than is customarily attributed by scientific authorities to the Neanderthals. Indeed since the Almas are described by local people as being without language and without knowledge of fire, they seem to be more primitive even than homo erectus as he is commonly presented by scientists.

The evidence cited by Myra Shackley illustrates the problematic nature of the empirical method: we automatically tend to reject this evidence since it conflicts with everything we believe. Yet, considered by itself, her study is as substantial as much of the evidence accepted as confirmation for conventional scientific views. Without committing ourselves to any final conclusion about any of the evidence presented here, either controversial or not controversial, let us try to objectively consider what empirical picture it conveys.

Did Evolution Really Occur?

If we combine the evidence for the existence in modern times of very primitive human or subhuman forms with the evidence for the existence over 2 million years ago of modern man, there comes into focus a picture of the human fossil evidence very different from the standard evolutionary scenario. The simplest interpretation of this evidence would seem to be that human beings as we know them have coexisted with various quasi-human forms for millions of years and that there is no real indication of any evolutionary transformation from one form to another.

Thus far we have been considering various bits and pieces of evidence that have been ignored or rejected by the scientific establishment but that nonetheless were initially reported in scientific journals. In addition to this relatively staid and respectable anomalous evidence, we should in all honesty briefly note the existence of a broad category of evidence that more severely violates the theoretical systems of modern science. This evidence includes reports of human remains and artifacts found in coal mines and, more generally, in strata far antedating the purported appearance of man. Such evidence used to be reported frequently in scientific periodicals such as Nature and Scientific American. Here we will give one example from the many available in the literature.

In June 1852 Scientific American carried a short article about a metallic vessel that had been blasted out of "an immense mass of rock" in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The report went on to say, "The chasing, carving and inlaying are exquisitely done by the art of some cunning workmen. This curious and unknown vessel was blown out of solid pudding rock, fifteen feet below the surface."24 According to geological surveys, the "pudding stone" at Dorchester is Precambrian (at least 600 million years old). This would date the decorated vase to a period before the supposed origin of vertebrates, what to speak of human beings.

Taken at face value this extremely anomalous evidence suggests that human beings or comparable intelligent agencies may have left their traces in the record of the rocks, even in ancient strata associated in modern scientific thinking with evolution's earliest stages. We cannot claim that this evidence constitutes decisive proof of this, for indeed facts do not speak for themselves--they are accepted or rejected within a system of ideas established by human society. The problem is that in human society established systems of ideas tend to determine what can be accepted as evidence. We have Shown that scientists wedded to the theory of evolution tend to reject outright any evidence that contradicts the theory.

Our discussion of paleontological evidence thus has perhaps greater bearing on the general shortcomings of the empirical process than upon any specific evolutionary theory. First of all, we are dealing with a subject in which the basic data, the record of the rocks itself, is extremely fragmentary. Therefore if one is going to draw an empirical conclusion, one is forced to speculate extensively to fill the gaps. Secondly, as we have mentioned, the basic facts in the record of the rocks do not speak for themselves but must be interpreted, and this interpretation depends very strongly on the nature of the existing views. This encourages researchers to try to establish a final picture based on fragmentary evidence and then "hold the line" against all opposing views.

This in turn leads to a double standard. Evidence favoring the established view is accepted even though shaky, and evidence opposing the established view tends to be rejected even though this is done on shaky grounds. All of these factors make it difficult to establish the truth about the origin and ancient history of man by the empirical process of paleontology. If anything at all, however, can be deduced from the evidence presently available, it is that, contrary to the picture presented in all standard textbooks and popular accounts, it is completely misleading to present the current evolutionary scenario as established fact.

REFERENCES

1. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 308.

2. N. Heribert-Nilsson, Synthetische Artbildung (Gleerup, Sweden: Lund University, 1954).

3. Pierre-P. Grasse, The Evolution of Living Organisms (New York: Academic Press, 1977), p. 31.

4. George Gaylord Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), p. 107.

5. David M. Raup and Steven Stanley, Principles of Paleontology (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1971), p. 11.

6. Tjeerd H. van Andel, "Consider the Incompleteness of the Geological Record," Nature, Vol. 294 (December 3, 1981), pp. 397--398.

7. R. M. Stainforth, "Occurrence of Pollen and Spores in the Roraima Formation of Venezuela and British Guiana," Nature, Vol. 210, No. 5033 (April 16, 1966), pp. 292--294.

8. S. Le Clercq, "Evidence of Vascular Plants in the Cambrian," Evolution, Vol. X, No. 2 (June, 1956), pp. 109--114.

9. Peter Beaumont, Hertha de Villiers, and John C. Vogel, "Modern Man in Sub-Saharan Africa Prior to 49,000 Years B.P.: A Review and Evaluation with Particular Reference to Border Cave," South African Journal Science, Vol. 74 (November 1978), 409.

10. Virginia Steen-McIntyre, Roald Fryxell, and Harold E. Malde, "Geologic Evidence for Age of Deposits at Hueyatlaco Archeological Site, Valsequillo, Mexico," Quaternary Research, Vol. 16 (1981), p. 15.

11. Jeffrey Goodman, American Genesis (New York: 24. "Relic of a Bygone Age," Scientific American, Vol. 7 (June 5, 1852).(Berkley Books, 1982), p. 114.

12. Jeffrey Goodman, American Genesis, p. 112.

13. Thomas E. Lee, editorial comments on "On Pebble Tools and Their Relatives in America," George F. Carter, Anthropological Journal of Canada (1966), pp. 18--19.

14. Alan Lyle Bryan, "An Overview of Paleo-American Prehistory from a Circum-Pacific Spectrum," Early Man in America, Alan Lyle Bryan, ed. (Edmonton, Alberta: Archaeological Researches International, 1978), pp. 318--327.

15. L.S.B. Leakey, Arthur T. Hopwood, Hans Reck, "Age of the Oldoway Bone Beds, Tanganyika Territory," Nature, Vol. 128, No. 3234 (October 24, 1931), 724.

16. Reiner Protsch, "The Age and Stratigraphic Position of Olduvai Hominid I," Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 3 (1974), pp: 379--385.

17. A. Tindell Hopwood, "The Age of Oldoway Man," Man, No. 226 (August 1932), p. 194.

18. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, et. al., "Early Man in East Africa," Nature (April 1, 1933), pp. 477--478.

19. L.S.B. Leakey, "Fossil Human Remains from Kanam and Kanjera, Kenya Colony," Nature (Oct. 10, 1936). p. 643.

20. John Gowlett, Ascent to Civilization (London: William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, 1984), p. 87.

21. Sir Arthur Keith, The Antiquity of Man (London: Williams and Norgate, 1920), p. 473.

22. "Notes," Nature, Vol. 77 (April 23, 1908), p. 587.

23. Myra Shackley, "The Case for Neanderthal Survival: Fact, Fiction, or Faction?" Antiquity, Vol. 56 (1982), p. 37