Carved Bones and Shells
In the decades after Darwin introduced his theory, numerous scientists discovered incised and broken animal bones and shells suggesting that tool-using humans or human precursors existed in the Pliocene (2–5 million years ago), the Miocene (5–25 million years ago), and even earlier. In analyzing cut and broken bones and shells, the discoverers carefully considered and ruled out alternative explanations—such as the action of animals or geological pressure—before concluding that humans were responsible. In some cases, stone tools were found along with the cut and broken bones or shells.
A particularly striking example in this category is a shell with a crude yet recognizably human face carved on its outer surface. Reported by geologist H. Stopes (1881) to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, this shell, from the Pliocene Red Crag formation in England, is over 2 million years old. According to standard views, humans capable of this level of artistry did not arrive in Europe until about 30,000 or
40,000 years ago. Furthermore, they supposedly did not arise in their
African homeland until about 100,000 years ago.
Concerning evidence of the kind reported by Stopes, French anthropologist Armand de Quatrefages wrote in his book Hommes Fossiles et Hommes Sauvages (1884): “The objections made to the existence of man in the Pliocene and Miocene seem to habitually be more related to theoretical considerations than direct observation.”
eoliths: Stones of Contention
Rudimentary stone tools called eoliths (“dawn stones”), found in unexpectedly old geological contexts, inspired protracted debate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For some, eoliths were not always easily recognizable as tools. Eoliths were not shaped into symmetrical implemental forms. Instead, an edge of a natural stone flake was chipped to make it suitable for a particular task, such as scraping, cutting, or chopping. Often, the working edge bore signs of use. Critics said eoliths were the product of natural forces, such as tumbling in stream beds. But defenders of eoliths offered convincing counterarguments, demonstrating that natural forces could not have made them.
In the late nineteenth century, Benjamin Harrison, an amateur archeologist, found eoliths on the Kent Plateau in southeastern England (Prestwich 1892). Geological evidence suggests that the eoliths were manufactured in the Middle or Late Pliocene, about 2–4 million ago. In addition to eoliths, Harrison found at various places on the Kent Plateau more advanced stone tools (paleoliths) of similar Pliocene antiquity. Having toolmaking hominids in England at that time violates all current schemes of human evolution. Among the supporters of Harrison’s eoliths were Alfred Russel Wallace (E. Harrison 1928, p. 370), cofounder with Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection; Sir John Prestwich, (1892, p. 251) one of England’s most eminent geologists; and Ray E. Lankester, a director of the British Museum (Natural History).
In the early part of the twentieth century, J. Reid Moir, a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and president of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, found eoliths (and more advanced stone tools) in England’s Red Crag formation. The tools were about 2.0–2.5 million years old. Some of Moir’s tools were found in the detritus beds beneath the Red Crag and could be anywhere from 2.5 to 55 million years old.
Moir’s finds won support from one of the most vocal critics of eoliths, Henri Breuil, then regarded as one of the world’s preeminent
20 HumAn DevoluTion: A vedic Alternative to Darwin’s Theory
authorities on stone tools. Another supporter was paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. And in 1923, an international commission of scientists journeyed to England to investigate Moir’s principal discoveries and pronounced them genuine.
Crude Paleoliths
In the case of eoliths, chipping is confined to the working edge of a naturally broken piece of stone. But the makers of the crude paleoliths deliberately struck flakes from stone cores and then shaped them into more recognizable types of tools. In some cases, the cores themselves were shaped into tools.
Among the crude paleoliths are the early Miocene implements (about 20 million years old) found in the late nineteenth century by Carlos Ribeiro, head of the Geological Survey of Portugal. At an international conference of archeologists and anthropologists held in Lisbon, a committee of scientists investigated one of the sites where Ribeiro had found implements. One of the scientists in the party found a stone tool even more advanced than Ribeiro’s better specimens. Comparable to accepted Late Pleistocene tools of the Mousterian type, it was firmly embedded in a Miocene conglomerate, in circumstances that confirmed its Miocene antiquity (Choffat 1884, p. 63).
Crude paleoliths were also found in Miocene formations at Thenay, France. S. Laing (1893, pp. 113–115), an English science writer, observed: “On the whole, the evidence for these Miocene implements seems to be very conclusive, and the objections to have hardly any other ground than the reluctance to admit the great antiquity of man.” Scientists also found crude paleoliths of Miocene age at Aurillac, France. And at Boncelles, Belgium, A. Rutot uncovered an extensive collection of paleoliths of Oligocene age (25 to 38 million years old).
Advanced Paleoliths
Whereas the eoliths and crude paleoliths could be either the work of anatomically modern humans or the work of human precursors such as Homo erectus or Homo habilis, advanced paleoliths are unquestionably the work of anatomically modern humans.
Florentino Ameghino, a respected Argentine paleontologist, found advanced stone tools, signs of fire, broken mammal bones, and a human vertebra in a Pliocene formation at Monte Hermoso, Argentina. Ameghino made numerous similar discoveries in Argentina, attracting the attention of scientists around the world.
In 1912, Ales Hrdlicˇ ka, of the Smithsonian Institution, published a lengthy, but not very reasonable, attack on Ameghino’s work. Hrdlicˇ ka asserted that all of Ameghino’s finds were from recent Indian settlements. In response, Carlos Ameghino, brother of Florentino Ameghino, carried out new investigations at Miramar, on the Argentine coast south of Buenos Aires. There he found a series of stone implements, including bolas, and signs of fire in the Chapadmalalan formation, which modern geologists say is 3–5 million years old. Carlos Ameghino also found at Miramar a stone arrowhead firmly embedded in the femur of a Pliocene species of Toxodon, an extinct South American mammal.