On June 22, 1844, this curious report appeared in the London Times: “A few days ago, as some workmen were employed in quarrying a rock close to the Tweed about a quarter of a mile below Rutherford-mill, a gold thread was discovered embedded in the stone at a depth of eight feet.” Dr. A. W. Medd of the British Geological Survey wrote to my research assistant in 1985 that this stone is of Early Carboniferous age (between 320 and 360 million years old).
The following report, titled “A Relic of a Bygone Age,” appeared in the magazine Scientific American (June 5, 1852): “A few days ago a powerful blast was made in the rock at Meeting House Hill, in Dorchester, a few rods south of Rev. Mr. Hall’s meeting house. The blast threw out an immense mass of rock, some of the pieces weighing several tons, and scattered fragments in all directions. Among them was picked up a metallic vessel in two parts, rent asunder by the explosion. On putting the two parts together it formed a bell-shaped vessel. . . . On the side there are six figures of a flower, or bouquet, beautifully inlaid with pure silver, and around the lower part of the vessel a vine, or wreath, also inlaid with silver. . . . This curious and unknown vessel was blown out of the solid pudding stone, fifteen feet below the surface. . . . The matter is worthy of investigation, as there is no deception in the case.” According to a recent U.S. Geological Survey map of the Boston-Dorchester area, the pudding stone, now called the Roxbury conglomerate, is of Precambrian age, over
600 million years old.
The April 1862 edition of The Geologist included an English translation of an intriguing report by Maximilien Melleville, the vice president of the Academic Society of Laon, France. In his report, Melleville described a round chalk ball discovered 75 meters (about 246 feet) below the surface in early Eocene lignite beds near Laon. If humans made the ball, they must have existed in France 45–55 million years ago.
Melleville (1862, p. 147) stated: “Long before this discovery, the workmen of the quarry had told me they had many times found pieces of wood changed into stone . . . bearing the marks of human work. I regret greatly now not having asked to see these, but I did not hitherto believe in the possibility of such a fact.”
In 1871, William E. Dubois of the Smithsonian Institution reported on several human artifacts found at deep levels in Illinois. The first object was a copper coin from Lawn Ridge, in Marshall County, Illinois. It came from a well-boring, at a depth of 114 feet (Winchell 1881, p. 170). Using the drilling record, the Illinois State Geological Survey estimated the age of the deposits at the 114-foot level. The deposits would have formed during the Yarmouthian interglacial period “sometime between
200,000 and 400,000 years ago.”
The coin suggests the existence of a civilization at least 200,000 years ago in North America. Yet beings intelligent enough to make and use coins (Homo sapiens sapiens) are generally not thought to have lived much earlier than 100,000 years ago. According to standard views, metal coins were first used in Asia Minor during the eighth century bc.
A small human image, skillfully formed in clay, was found in 1889 at Nampa, Idaho. The figurine came from the 300-foot level of a well boring (Wright 1912, pp. 266–267). Responding to inquiries by my research assistant, the United States Geological Survey stated in a letter that the clay layer at a depth of over 300 feet is “probably of the Glenns Ferry Formation, upper Idaho Group, which is generally considered to be of PlioPleistocene age.” The boundary between the Pliocene and the Pleistocene lies at two million years ago. Other than Homo sapiens sapiens, no hominid is known to have fashioned works of art like the Nampa figurine. The evidence therefore suggests that humans of the modern type were living in America around 2 million years ago, at the Plio-Pleistocene boundary.
On June 11, 1891, The morrisonville Times (Illinois, U.S.A.) reported: “A curious find was brought to light by Mrs. S. W. Culp last Tuesday morning. As she was breaking a lump of coal preparatory to putting it in the scuttle, she discovered, as the lump fell apart, embedded in a circular shape a small gold chain about ten inches in length of antique and quaint workmanship.” The Illinois State Geological Survey has said the coal in which the gold chain was found is 260–320 million years old. This raises the possibility that culturally advanced human beings were present in North America during that time.
The April 2, 1897 edition of the Daily news of Omaha, Nebraska, carried an article titled “Carved Stone Buried in a Mine,” which described an object from a mine near Webster City, Iowa. The article stated: “While mining coal today in the Lehigh coal mine, at a depth of 130 feet, one of the miners came upon a piece of rock which puzzles him and he was unable to account for its presence at the bottom of the coal mine. The stone is of a dark grey color and about two feet long, one foot wide and four inches in thickness. Over the surface of the stone, which is very hard, lines are drawn at angles forming perfect diamonds.The center of each diamond is a fairly good face of an old man.” The Lehigh coal is probably from the Carboniferous.
On January 10, 1949, Robert Nordling sent a photograph of an iron cup to Frank L. Marsh of Andrews University, in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Nordling wrote: “I visited a friend’s museum in southern Missouri. Among his curios, he had the iron cup pictured on the enclosed snapshot” (Rusch 1971, p. 201).
At the private museum, the iron cup had been displayed along with the following affidavit, made by Frank J. Kenwood in Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, on November 27, 1948: “While I was working in the Municipal Electric Plant in Thomas, Okla. in 1912, I came upon a solid chunk of coal which was too large to use. I broke it with a sledge hammer. This iron pot fell from the center, leaving the impression or mould of the pot in the piece of coal. Jim Stall (an employee of the company) witnessed the breaking of the coal, and saw the pot fall out. I traced the source of the coal, and found that it came from the Wilburton, Oklahoma, Mines” (Rusch 1971, p. 201). According to Robert O. Fay of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, the Wilburton mine coal is about 312 million years old.
On October 8, 1922, the American Weekly section of the new York Sunday American ran a prominent feature titled “Mystery of the Petrified ‘Shoe Sole’,” by Dr. W. H. Ballou (1922, p. 2). Ballou wrote: “Some time ago, while he was prospecting for fossils in Nevada, John T. Reid, a distinguished mining engineer and geologist, stopped suddenly and looked down in utter bewilderment and amazement at a rock near his feet. For there, a part of the rock itself, was what seemed to be a human footprint! Closer inspection showed that it was not a mark of a naked foot, but was, apparently, a shoe sole which had been turned into stone. The forepart was missing. But there was the outline of at least two-thirds of it, and around this outline ran a well-defined sewn thread which had, it appeared, attached the welt to the sole.” The Triassic rock bearing the fossil shoe sole is 213–248 million years old.
W. W. McCormick of Abilene, Texas, has a document recording his grandfather’s account of a stone block wall that was found deep within a coal mine: “In the year 1928, I, Atlas Almon Mathis, was working in coal mine No. 5, located two miles north of Heavener, Oklahoma. This was a shaft mine, and they told us it was two miles deep.” One evening, Mathis was blasting coal loose by explosives in “room 24” of this mine. “The next morning,” said Mathis, “there were several concrete blocks laying in the room. These blocks were 12-inch cubes and were so smooth and polished on the outside that all six sides could serve as mirrors.” Mathis added: “As I started to timber the room up, it caved in; and I barely escaped. When I came back after the cave-in, a solid wall of these polished blocks was left exposed. About 100 to 150 yards farther down our air core, another miner struck this same wall, or one very similar” (Steiger 1979, p. 27). The coal in the mine was probably Carboniferous, which would mean the wall was at least 286 million years old.