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Dear Cliff,
The following is my reply to Lepper's review of Hidden History.
It will be published, along with Lepper's review, in my book Forbidden
Archeology's Impact, which will be in bookstores this coming spring. Lepper
did not reply to my letter.
Sincerely,
3.1.4.1 Letter to Dr. Bradley T. Lepper, June 1, 1997
I've only recently seen your review of my book The Hidden History of the
Human Race. I thank you for acknowledging that the book "makes a genuine
contribution to our understanding of the history of archaeology and
paleoanthropology." I also thank you for your statement that the authors
"are quite right about the conservatism of many archeologists and physical
anthropologists" and for your admission that archeologists sometimes
dismiss ancient dates for sites "without an examination of the date or even
a careful reading of the published claim."
Furthermore, I am grateful to you for listing the articles that are not
mentioned in Hidden History's discussion of the Timlin, New York, site. It
was a mistake not to include them. They do raise important questions about
the artifacts recovered from the site and about the geological
interpretation of the age of the site.
Nevertheless, in one of the papers cited by you, Bryan and Schnurrenberger
(p. 149) concluded that at least five of the Timlin artifacts were genuine.
From new studies of the geology of the site (p. 147), they concluded it was
more recent than the original discoverers (Raemsch and Vernon) claimed.
Raemsch and Vernon thought the Timlin artifacts were found in glacial till
deposits, laid down by glaciers 60 or 70 thousand years ago. According to
Bryan and Schnurrenberger, the glacial deposits had been reworked by a
stream in early postglacial times. They thought the Timlin artifacts dated
to this period. But it seems to me that if the tools were found in reworked
glacial deposits, they could have come from those glacial deposits. This is
a possibility that must at least be considered.
I now want to offer some comments on the parts of your review that do not
accurately reflect the content and purpose of Hidden History.
The methodology employed in Hidden History was not borrowed from
fundamentalist Christian creationists. As acknowledged in the introduction
to Forbidden Archeology, the major methodological influences on the
authors, particularly this author, were recent work in the history,
philosophy, and sociology of science, as well as the Sanskrit historical
literature of India, as interpreted by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta
Swami Prabhupada, whose translations and commentaries have drawn favorable
reviews from Sanskrit scholars and Indologists worldwide.
In my study of Christian creationist books, I found some of higher quality
than others. Not many of them, however, were directly related to human
origins and antiquity, and those that were did not treat these topics in
sufficient depth. They were not, therefore, extensively cited in Hidden
History.
Furthermore, I sensed that most Christian creationist work was directed
more toward other Christian creationists than to mainstream scientists and
scholars. Hidden History's parent book Forbidden Archeology was consciously
aimed at mainstream scholars. It was intended to open a genuine scholarly
dialogue or debate, and this effort has been successful. The large number
of serious reviews the book has received in academic journals is a sign of
that. To my knowledge, such journals do not normally give this kind of
attention to other kinds of antievolutionary literature.
As might be expected, some mainstream scholars succumbed to the temptation
to force this book into familiar categories and responded accordingly; but
many resisted that temptation, at least partially, and looked at the book
somewhat objectively.
The distinction between Hidden History's parent book (Forbidden Archeology)
and ordinary creationist literature has been noted by many scientific
reviewers, including Kenneth Feder, whom you cited in your article.
Feder wrote in Geoarchaeology (9:338): "While decidedly antievolutionary in
perspective, this work is not the ordinary variety of antievolutionism in
form, content, or style. In distinction to the usual brand of such writing,
the authors use original sources and the book is well written. Further, the
overall tone of the work is far superior to that exhibited in ordinary
creationist literature."
Hidden History is not simply a "catalog" of "odd 'facts' which appear to
conflict with the modern scientific understanding of human evolution." It
develops a refined epistemological argument, which you were unable or
unwilling to follow. It appears that you, like others, instinctively forced
Hidden History into a familiar category (poorly contrived creationist
tracts). And then you automatically repeated the customary set of
accusations--"catalog of odd facts," "quoting out of context," etc.
But these conventional maledictions do not apply to Hidden History, which
presents a thorough and systematic survey and critique of evidence relevant
to human origins and antiquity. The facts in the book are deployed within
the framework of a well-articulated analysis of the quality of
archeological and paleoanthropological reporting.
About Hidden History's parent book, Journal of Field Archeology (21: 112)
said:
"This volume combines a vast amount of both accepted and controversial
evidence from the archeological record with sociological, philosophical,
and historical critiques of the scientific method to challenge existing
views and expose the suppression of information concerning history and
human origins."
And archeologist Tim Murray wrote in British Journal for the History of
Science (28: 379) that the book "provides the historian of archeology with
a useful compendium of case studies in the history and sociology of
scientific knowledge, which can be used to foster debate within archaeology
about how to describe the epistemology of one's discipline."
This is not to suggest that the writers of these statements endorsed the
book's conclusions; they did not. But it is apparent that they thought the
book was something more than a collection of poorly documented odd facts
and quotations taken out of context. They could recognize something of the
book's epistemological framework and intellectual integrity, whereas you
could not.
Hidden History does not quote out of context. Hidden History examines
particular cases in considerable detail, with long quotations from original
sources. The reasons for the detailed treatment are outlined in Hidden
History's parent book (Forbidden Archeology, p. 35): "It would of course be
possible to more briefly summarize and paraphrase reports such as these.
There are two reasons for not doing so. The first is that
paleoanthropological evidence mainly exists in the form of reports . . .
and we shall therefore take the trouble to include many selections from
such reports, the exact wording of which reveals much. . . . A second
consideration is that the particular reports . . . are extremely difficult
to obtain. . . . A final consideration is that proponents of evolutionary
theory often accuse authors who arrive at nonevolutionary conclusions of
'quoting out of context.' It therefore becomes necessary to quote at
length, in order to supply the necessary context."
Admittedly, some of the context may have been lost in abridging the
900-page Forbidden Archeology to the 300-page Hidden History. But the
preface I wrote to Hidden History explicitly refers readers desiring more
complete context to the unabridged version of the book.
Regarding quoting an author in support of a conclusion the author himself
would not have advocated, there is nothing wrong with that if the quotation
is accurate and the meaning of the quotation is taken as intended by the
author. For example, Richard Leakey reported that the ER 1481 femur, found
isolated from other bones, was anatomically modern and about 1.8 million
years old (Hidden History, p. 253). It is not wrong for me to cite this
information in support of the idea that the femur could have come from an
anatomically modern human living in Africa 1.8 million years ago, even
though Richard Leakey would probably not entertain this idea himself.
Speaking of taking quotes out of context, you yourself are not sinless. You
lifted the quote about mechanistic science being a militant ideology from
its context, which deals with the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation
in China in the first decades of the twentieth century, and presented it as
the authors' general indictment of today's science.
What Hidden History (pp. 195-196) actually says is that the Rockefeller
Foundation, the board of which included educators like Charles W. Eliot
(formerly president of Harvard University), scientists like Dr. Simon
Flexner, and industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, wanted to open an
independent secular university in China, for the purpose of introducing
Western science. This was opposed by both the Chinese government, which
wanted control over it, and Christian missionaries in China, worried about
an influence detrimental to their own educational activities. To get around
this opposition, Eliot suggested opening a hospital and medical school.
According to a Foundation official, Eliot thought "there was no better
subject than medicine to introduce to China the inductive method of
reasoning that lies at the basis of all modern science." He apparently felt
that China was being held back by its attachment to traditional Buddhist
and Taoist ways of knowledge. The ploy was successful. The Foundation
accepted Eliot's idea, as did the Chinese government and the Christian
missionary establishment. It was in this context that Hidden History (p.
196) said: "Here mechanistic science shows itself a quiet but nevertheless
militant ideology, skillfully promoted by the combined effort of
scientists, educators, and wealthy industrialists, with a view toward
establishing worldwide intellectual dominance." This particular statement
is thus tied to a very specific event in history, and to a very specific
group of educators, scientists, and industrialists. To make a case that the
statement applies in a more general way to today's entire scientific
enterprise might be worth attempting, but that would take a book in itself.
In short, you took out of context a limited statement that was reasonable
in terms of its supporting evidence and deliberately gave your readers the
misimpression that Hidden History was making an unsupported wild
generalization of the kind your readers are properly conditioned to reject.
You also took out of its clearly stated context the report of evidence for
extreme human antiquity discovered in France, published in American Journal
of Science and Arts. This case was included in a chapter containing Hidden
History's most extreme anomalies. The chapter introduction (p. 103) clearly
stated: "The reports of this extraordinary evidence emanate, with some
exceptions, from nonscientific sources. . . . We ourselves are not sure how
much importance should be given to this highly anomalous evidence. But we
include it for the sake of completeness and to encourage further study."
This statement of context is so clear that your omission of it from your
disparaging discussion can only be characterized as deliberate and, hence,
intellectually dishonest.
The following paragraph from your review illustrates just how far you are
willing to descend into the realm of silliness and triviality: "Cremo and
Thompson discuss the three to four million year old fossilized footprints
discovered at Laetoli, and note that scholars have observed 'close
similarities with the anatomy of the feet of modern humans' (p. 262). Cremo
and Thompson conclude that these footprints actually are the tracks of
anatomically modern humans, but they offer no explanation for why these
individuals were not wearing the shoes which supposedly had been invented
more than 296 million years earlier." Hidden History proposes that
scientists who hold firmly to orthodox views on human origins often employ
ridicule as their weapon of choice when confronted with challenging
evidence. I see you are no exception to this rule. The real question is
this: how do you explain the occurrence of anatomically modern footprints
in rock 4 million years old? The foot bones of the australopithecines,
supposedly the only hominids then in existence, could not, according to
physical anthropologists such as Russell Tuttle, have made those prints.
Regarding the report of the Nevada shoe print, the stimulus for your
attempt to ridicule your way out of considering the obvious implications of
the Laetoli footprints, it was included in Hidden History's chapter on
extreme anomalies, with a very clear statement of its context. And you
insisted on taking it out of this context. It was duly acknowledged that
reports such as this, from nonscientific publications, leave much to be
desired but were included in the book for the sake of completeness and to
encourage further study. The photograph you complained about is of value in
that it to some degree confirms the existence of the object in question.
The report also offers opportunities for pursuing further investigation of
this object. It might be possible, for example, to track down the object
itself or to find the original microphotographs, said to have been taken by
an employee of the Rockefeller Institute in New York.
In addition to blatantly taking the reports of the Nevada shoe print and
the above mentioned discoveries in France out of their clearly stated
context and improperly suggesting that the "naive" authors were accepting
of them to a degree that they were not, you were also unable or unwilling
to see how this particular category of reports fit into the overall
epistemological argument presented in the book. For your benefit, I shall
put it as simply and briefly as I can.
Assuming that there is evidence for extreme human antiquity in the earth's
strata, we can make the following predictions. Some of the evidence will be
close to conventionally accepted limits for human antiquity and some will
far exceed these limits. Some of the evidence will be found by scientists,
who will react to it according to their theoretical preconceptions and
report it according to their professional standards. Some of the evidence
will be found by nonscientists with few theoretical preconceptions and
reported in nonscientific literature. It is likely that the evidence that
most radically departs from conventionally accepted limits will be
reported by nonscientists in nonscientific literature. In terms of this
approach, evidence of the kind reported in the chapter on extreme anomalies
does have some value in confirming the hypothesis that evidence for extreme
human antiquity does exist and has been reported by various categories of
researchers, ranging from professional scientists whose findings are
published in academic journals to nonscientists whose findings are reported
in newspapers and magazines.
You said that just because reports of unusual phenomena were published in a
19th-century journal that happened to have the word "science" in its title
is no measure of the reports' "reliability or relevance to modern science."
Neither is this, in itself, any measure of their unreliability or
irrelevance to modern science.
You have misunderstood and taken out of context Thomas Kuhn's statement
that "to reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is
to reject science itself." Kuhn did not intend this to mean that any
individual who introduces evidence contradicting a reigning paradigm must
himself immediately introduce a new paradigm.
If you carefully study Kuhn's entire description of scientific revolutions,
you will find the following development. In the beginning of a science
there is no reigning paradigm. Individual scientists gather evidence from
nature and use it to build competing paradigms. Eventually, one of these
may triumph, and at this point a mature science, a research community with
a common program, develops. This research community is guided by a single
dominant paradigm, through which it structures its research goals and
methods. The paradigm does not resolve all questions and problems. If it
did, there would be no need for further research. Instead it gives a
systematic approach for solving various puzzles suggested by the paradigm.
The solving of these puzzles constitutes the activity of normal science. In
the course of normal science, it may happen that anomalies begin to
accumulate. Some of these may be set aside for future research. Some may be
dismissed as irrelevant. But if a sufficient number of anomalies
accumulates, anomalies which resist solution by the paradigm or
incorporation into it, a crisis develops. As the crisis intensifies,
scientists begin to offer and promote new paradigms capable of
accommodating the anomalies. If one of these paradigms attracts the
attention of a sufficient number of members of the research community, a
scientific revolution takes place. The research community learns to see
things in a different way. It develops a new set of methods and concerns.
Kuhn points out that unless there is a recognizable crisis, provoked by an
accumulation of crucial anomalies, there will be no movement to a new
paradigm. The first step toward movement to a new paradigm is thus
recognition of anomalies, of counterinstances to the current paradigm.
In the 1970 edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (pp. 93-94),
Kuhn compares scientific revolutions to political revolutions: "Initially
it is crisis alone that attenuates the role of political institutions as we
have already seen it attenuate the role of paradigms. In increasing numbers
individuals become increasingly estranged from political life and behave
more and more eccentrically within it. Then, as the crisis deepens, many of
these individuals commit themselves to some concrete proposal for the
reconstruction of society in a new institutional framework. . . The
remainder of this essay aims to demonstrate that the historical study of
paradigm change reveals very similar characteristics in the evolution of
the sciences."
The purpose of Forbidden Archeology is to confront the community of human
evolution researchers with the massive number of unassimilated crucial
anomalies in their field, and thus provoke a sense of crisis in at least
some small section of this community. This effort has been to some degree
successful, but the sense of crisis must be intensified. Only when the
sense of crisis becomes intense will researchers give serious consideration
to adopting a new paradigm. Kuhn noted (p. 76) that "retooling is an
extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it."
In any case, I can assure you that I will be offering a new paradigm in a
forthcoming book, as promised in Forbidden Archeology. In my opinion, the
occasion demands it.
I suppose we shall have to disagree on whether or not the claims of Carter,
Lee, and Steen-McIntyre are supported by sufficiently compelling evidence.
But I think your admission that they have been shamefully treated and
subjected to unfortunate ad hominem attacks should cause researchers
interested in North American archeology to take a second look at their
findings, or, perhaps, a first look, and make up their own minds.
I also have to disagree with your insistence that evidence that goes
against current ideas of human origins must be subjected to a much higher
standard of proof than evidence supporting current ideas. I agree with
George Carter, who said in his book Earlier Than You Think (1980, p. 318):
"When a new idea is advanced, it necessarily challenges the previous idea.
. . . The new idea is then attacked, and support of it is required to be of
a high order of certainty. The greater the departure from the previous
idea, the greater the degree of certainty required, so it is said. I have
never been able to accept this. It assumes that the old order was
established on high orders of proof, and on examination this is seldom
found to be true."
I also agree with Alfred Russell Wallace, cofounder with Darwin of the
theory of evolution by natural selection, who said (Nineteenth Century,
vol. 22, p. 679) that "the proper way to treat evidence as to man's
antiquity is to place it on record, and admit it provisionally wherever it
would be held adequate in the case of other animals, not, as it too often
now the case, to ignore it as unworthy of acceptance or subject its
discoverers to indiscriminate accusations of being impostors or the victims
of impostors."
You are correct that even if true the chapter on living ape-men does not
directly contribute to the book's thesis that anatomically modern humans
existed in the very distant past. But if true the chapter would support the
book's general picture of the coexistence of humans and more apelike
hominids from the distant past until the present. While evidence of the
coexistence of anatomically modern humans with more apelike hominids today
does not do any violence to evolutionary theory, their coexistence in the
distant past would do some violence to it. And the evidence documented in
Hidden History suggests they did coexist in the distant past.
You say that Hidden History offers "a mistaken identification" of a stone
tool from Sandia Cave as a Folsom point and cite this as an example of the
authors' "ignorance of the basic data of the basic data of archaeology."
The identification is, however, not that of the authors, but of the
archeologists who took the photograph of the stone tool and published the
photograph along with their identification of the stone tool as a Folsom
point in an archeological publication of the Smithsonian Institution, duly
cited in the permission credits on the copyright page of Hidden History.
The tool is shown cemented in the cave breccia. The references you gave in
your review (Haynes and Agogino, Preston) also refer to the tools found
cemented in the cave breccia as Folsom tools.
I find it somewhat unusual that you faulted Hidden History, a book
published in 1994 (as an abridgment of a work published in 1993), for not
citing reports published in 1994 and 1995. I suppose the author of any
book-length work on any scientific subject could also be accused of not
being totally up to date on the latest work in his or her field. But that
is the nature of the book writing process. You write a book, it goes to
press, and comes out a year later. So automatically the book is going to be
a year or two behind the times as soon as it becomes available for sale. In
any case, I have already admitted that I should have been aware of the 1977
and 1978 reports on the Timlin site.
Concerning the other reports you have cited (and I do thank you for calling
them to my attention), I have the following comments.
Haynes and Agogino think the implements found at Sandia Cave are no more
than 14,000 years old. But their report on the Sandia Cave discoveries does
not rule out the possibility that the human artifacts found there are
perhaps as much as 300,000 years old.
At Sandia Cave two kind of implements were found--Folsom implements and
Sandia implements.
The sequence of layers at Sandia Cave were as follow [sic.], from top to bottom.
First came a layer of recent dirt and debris (Unit J). Under this was a
layer of dripstone (calcium carbonate). This layer of dripstone (Unit I)
yielded carbon 14 ages of 19,100 and 24,600 years. Haynes and Agogino found
these ages hard to accept and proposed they must be wrong. They proposed
that the dripstone had been contaminated with old carbon, and that this had
caused the tests to yield ages that were falsely old. But even Haynes and
Agogino were mystified by this. They acknowledged that contamination of
samples is usually with younger carbon instead of older carbon (p. 26).
Furthermore, over 80 percent of the carbon in the samples would have had to
have been introduced by contaminants. They admitted that they could see no
visible sign of any such contamination, and were reduced to speculating
that the old carbon must have come from old carbon dioxide in the air
trapped in the cave (p. 27).
Haynes and Agogino (p. 7) said the ages of 19,100 and 24,600 "cannot be
correct because of the archaeology and the dating of more reliable
materials in the underlying units." In referring to the archaeology, they
mean that tools identified as Folsom tools were found under the dripstone.
Folsom tools are generally considered to be 10 or 11 thousand years old.
Therefore, they reasoned, the carbon 14 dates of the overlying dripstone
must be wrong. This is exactly the kind of reasoning that Forbidden
Archeology criticizes. As for younger carbon dates on rock and bone below
the dripstone being more reliable, this is hard to believe. For one thing,
Haynes and Agogino (p. 26) admitted that none of their carbon 14 dates were
reliable because they had been obtained by methods now considered obsolete.
Furthermore, if they could attribute the ages of 19,100 and 24,600 years
for the dripstone to contamination by old carbon (even though no
contaminants were visible) they should also be able to attribute the
younger ages of other samples to contamination by recent carbon.
Below the dripstone, which could be 24,000 years old, was a deposit of cave
breccia (Unit H). A bone from this deposit gave a uranium series age of
73,000 years (p. 7). Haynes and Agogino (p. 7) said that "the U-series date
cannot be supported archaeologically." As mentioned above, Folsom
implements, generally thought to be 10 or 11 thousand years old, were found
cemented in the cave breccia of Unit H. Therefore the U-series date must be
wrong. One could also propose that the generally accepted upper age limit
for Folsom implements is wrong, and that the Folsom implements from Unit H
of Sandia Cave are about 70,000 years old.
Haynes and Agogino cited carbon 14 dates of 9,100 years for carbonate rock
from the Unit H breccia and 12,830 years for bone fragments. But they have
admitted that these dates are unreliable. In other words, the dates could
be correct, or they could be falsely old or young. As we have seen, Haynes
and Agogino have felt free to adjust the carbon 14 and uranium series dates
to fit their conviction that the Folsom implements found in Unit H could
not be more than 10 or 11 thousand years old. But there is another way to
adjust things. We can accept the carbon 14 date of 24,000 years for the
dripstone of Unit I and the uranium series age of 73,000 years for the bone
found in the cemented breccia of Unit H. This would mean the Folsom
implements of Unit H would be between 24,000 and 73,000 years old.
Below Unit H is found another layer of dripstone called Unit G. This
dripstone yielded a carbon 14 age of 30,000 or more years. In other words,
the Unit G dripstone could be of any age more than 30,000 years. For
example, Unit G could be 100,000 years old. Haynes and Agogino concluded
this date must be wrong. But it fits into the sequence that we have
established. The dripstone of Unit I yielded a radiocarbon date of 24,000
years, bone from the Unit H breccia yielded a uranium series age of 70,000
years, and the radiocarbon date of Unit G could be in excess of that.
Below the dripstone of Unit G was another layer of cemented breccia called
Unit F. Organic carbon from a cave wall gave a carbon 14 date of 12,000
years, but this could have resulted from contamination by younger carbon.
Then comes a gypsum crust (Unit E), followed by another layer of dripstone,
Unit D. This lower dripstone gave a carbon 14 age of 32,000 years, but
Haynes and Agogino thought it was not correct. Wanting it to be younger,
they proposed it had been contaminated with older carbon. The same
dripstone yielded a uranium series age of 226,000 years. According to
Preston (p. 74), another uranium series test gave an age of 300,000 years.
Haynes and Agogino dismissed these ages, and revised the radiocarbon date
downward to 27,000 years. I would propose dismissing the radiocarbon age,
and keeping the uranium series dates, which fit nicely into the sequence of
radiocarbon and uranium series dates that I have established.
Beneath the dripstone of Unit D is a deposit of yellow ocher. When burned,
yellow ocher yields a reddish substance used as a cosmetic. Haynes and
Agogino suggested the ocher deposits had been mined by early Indians.
Beneath the yellow ocher, the original discovers found a loose deposit of
rock and dirt (Unit X) containing in some places stone tools of a type
different from the Folsom implements found in the upper breccias. They
called these stone tools Sandia implements. According to Haynes and
Agogino, rodents carried all of these tools down from the upper levels of
the cave deposits (Units F and H) starting about 14,000 years ago. To
support this hypothesis, the pointed to the presence of rodent bones
yielding carbon 14 dates ranging from 8,000 to 14,000 years. If the
positions in which they were found in Unit X were their original positions,
then the tools would be at least 300,000 years old (if we accept the
uranium series date for the overlying Unit D dripstone).
There are several points to consider here. First, Haynes and Agogino (p.
vii) admitted that their carbon 14 dates were unreliable: "There is no
foolproof method of positively isolating indigenous bone carbon from
contaminant carbon in leached bone." So the rodent bones could have been
much older than their maximum carbon 14 dates of 14,000 years, and the
rodents could thus have moved the tools to their positions in Unit X much
earlier than 14,000 years ago.
The effective range of the carbon 14 dating method used by Haynes and
Agogino was about 40,000 years. This means that if the rodent bones were
300,000 years old, then even a small amount of contamination would have
caused them to yield a carbon 14 date of 40,000 years. More extensive
contamination would have brought the ages down even further.
Furthermore, there are some difficulties with the idea that rodents moved
the Sandia tools from higher levels in the cave down to positions in and
below the ocher deposits at any point in time, whether 14,000 or 300,000
years ago. Only Sandia implements are found in Unit X. None are found in
Units F and H, which according to Haynes and Agogino were the most likely
source of the Sandia implements. Haynes and Agogino (p. 28) proposed that
the Sandia implements were deposited in Unit F between 14,000 and 11,000
years ago, before Unit F was consolidated into a hard cave breccia between
11,000 and 9,000 years ago. The Folsom implements would have been deposited
in Units F and H during this latter period of consolidation.
But Haynes and Agogino (p. 28) noted a problem: "If Sandia occupation was
before Folsom occupation it is surprising that no diagnostic Sandia
artifacts were found in the [Unit F] breccias." Preston (p. 75) asked
Haynes this question: "How was it possible that all the Sandia
points--nineteen of them--were somehow carried by rodents to the bottom
layer only?" Rodent tunnels are found in many of the layers, not just the
bottom layer. Haynes replied, "Don't think we didn't ask ourselves that
same question. It's very, very strange."
Haynes and Agogino also considered the possibility that the Sandia
implements were younger than the Folsom implements found in the cave
breccias of Units F and H. This means they would have to be from the loose
cave debris (Unit J) that started accumulating on the cave floor after
9,000 years ago. But Haynes and Agogino (p. 28) note that this "appears
unlikely because no Sandia artifacts are reported from the upper loose
debris (Unit J)."
A more reasonable possibility would be that the Sandia artifacts below the
yellow ocher are in their original positions and that they were not moved
by rodents from the upper levels of the cave. Just because there is
evidence that rodents made tunnels into the levels containing the
implements does not rule out the possibility that the implements were in
their original positions. That the Sandia implements were found only in and
beneath the ocher argues for them being in their original positions. In
that case, the implements would be over 300,000 years old, about the same
age as the crude stone tools from the Calico, California, site and the
advanced stone tools from the Hueyatlaco, Mexico, site.
Here is another reason for suspecting that the Sandia implements were in
their original positions, arriving their as a result of human action rather
than transport by rodents. The first Sandia implement was found on the
level of the cave floor, alongside a hearth made from four stream-rounded
cobble stones, charcoal, and a jaw of a large mammal (Haynes and Agogino,
figure 6). Haynes and Agogino (p. 28) noted: "Apparently all witnesses
considered the point, four rounded cobbles, and a bovid mandible to be in
situ and associated with the hearth."
According to Preston, some archaeologists have suggested that the Sandia
cave discoveries were all fraudulent. Haynes and others disagreed. Of
course, if the discoveries were fraudulent, that would be significant. We
would have another case, in addition to Piltdown, in which professional
scientists manufactured evidence in support of their own theories.
To me, however, the most likely interpretation of the Sandia evidence is
that you have Folsom implements in Units F and H that could be anywhere
from 24,000 to 73,000 years old and Sandia implements in Unit X that are at
least 300,000 years old.
Taylor's report on the Calico site is a review of published literature and
does not give any new evidence. Taylor (p. 7) admitted that the age of the
artifact-bearing sediments at Calico is "in excess of 100,000 years and
perhaps as much as 200,000 years old." He doubted, however, that the
objects found in these sediments are the result of human work. In this
regard, Taylor cited a report by Payen, which analyzed the Calico artifacts
in terms of the Barnes platform angle method. According to Barnes, at least
75 percent of the platform angles should be acute (less than 90 degrees)
for the object to be of human manufacture. Payen found that the Calico
implements did not satisfy this requirement. But Taylor neglected to
mention a later report by Leland W. Patterson, an expert in lithic
technology, and his coworkers that appeared in Journal of Field Archeology
(vol. 14, pp. 91-106). Patterson and his coauthors (p. 97) reported,
"Acute platform angles were found on 94.3% of the Calico flakes with intact
platforms . . . The average platform angle of the Calico flakes was 78.7% .
. . . This is consistent with the usual products of intentional flaking." A
more detailed discussion can be found in Forbidden Archeology (pp.
166-175). Patterson disputed Payen's conclusions and methodology.
The paper by Meltzer, Adovasio, and Dillehay the Pedra Furada site in
Brazil raises questions about the evidence for a human occupation there at
30,000 years. The original discoverers reported hearths with charcoal at
levels of this age, along with stone tools. Meltzer, Adovasio, and Dillehay
expressed some doubts about the charcoal (was it from wildfires rather than
hearths?) and the stone tools (were they really of human manufacture?). The
original discoverers have, of course, already given attention to such
doubts. Meltzer, Adovasio, and Dillehay (pp. 695-696) themselves
acknowledged that they "are not experts on the data and evidence recovered
from Pedra Furada" and that they did not "expect our opinions will be
shared by our colleagues (even those who viewed the site with us)." I would
not therefore characterize their report as a refutation of the claims of
the original discoverers.
Regarding the report of Julig, Mahaney, and Storck on the Sheguiandah, it
is, as the title indicates, a very brief preliminary study. The original
investigators, T. E. Lee and J. T. Sanford, found stone tools in deposits
they characterized as glacial till. This would give them considerable
antiquity. Other investigators have challenged the identification of the
Sheguiandah deposits as till. But the preliminary studies of Julig,
Mahaney, and Storck (p. 111) revealed that "the so-called 'till' deposits
are clearly non-sorted and may be till or colluvium." They noted that "of
the 27 samples analyzed from the so-called 'till' deposits and underlying
sediments, 20 exhibit curves which are characteristic of nonsorted sediment
such as till or colluvium." Furthermore, Julig, Mahaney, and Storck stated
that "crescentic gouges. . . which are widely considered to be the effect
of transport by continental ice, were . . . observed on grains of several
samples." So your suggestion that their report clearly contradicts the
earlier work of Lee and Sanford is mistaken. In fact, the report tends to
confirm the judgments of Lee and Sanford.
Returning to general methodology, you accuse the authors of being
"selectively credulous to an astonishing degree." You find it objectionable
that we "accept without question the testimony of 19th-century goldminers
and quarrymen, but treat with extreme skepticism (or outright derision) the
observations of 20th-century archaeologists." Of course, we did not accept
without question the testimony of anyone. But I can understand how you
could have gotten an impression of selective credulity. Missing from Hidden
History's discussion of epistemological principles is the following
paragraph from Forbidden Archeology (p. 25), which may help you understand
something about the methods we employed in evaluating reports:
"In discussing anomalous and accepted reports . . . we have tended to
stress the merits of the anomalous reports, and we have tended to point out
the deficiencies of the accepted reports. It could be argued that this
indicates bias on our part. Actually, however, our objective is to show the
qualitative equivalence of the two bodies of material by demonstrating that
there are good reasons to accept much of the rejected material, and also
good reasons to reject much of the accepted material. It should also be
pointed out that we have not suppressed evidence indicating the weaknesses
of anomalous findings. In fact, we extensively discuss reports that are
highly critical of these findings, and give our readers the opportunity to
form their own opinions."
In a final flourish of rancor, you hurl at Hidden History a veritable
barrage of curses, practically exhausting the fundamentalist Darwinian's
stock of clichés, calling the book a "sloppy rehashing of canards, hoaxes,
red herrings, half truths and fantasies." But others have passed a
different final judgment. In their review article about the unabridged
version of Hidden History, historian of science David Oldroyd and his
graduate student Jo Wodak wrote in Social Studies of Science (26: 107): "So
has Forbidden Archeology made any contribution at all to the literature on
palaeoanthropology? Our answer is a guarded 'yes', for two reasons. First,
while the authors go in for overkill in terms of swamping the reader with
detail . . . much of the historical material they resurrect has not been
scrutinized in such detail before. Second, . . . Cremo and Thompson do
raise a central problematic regarding the lack of certainty in scientific
'truth' claims."
Earlier in the same review article (p. 196) they noted: "It must be
acknowledged that Forbidden Archeology brings to attention many interesting
issues that have not received much consideration from historians; and the
authors' detailed examination of the early literature is certainly
stimulating and raises questions of considerable interest, both
historically and from the prospective of practitioners of sociology of
scientific knowledge."
Regarding Ian Tattersall's book, the following quote from Wodak and Oldroyd
is perhaps relevant: "If scientists have lost sight of the idea of
Tertiary Man, perhaps historians bear some responsibility. Certainly some
pre-FA histories of palaeoanthropology, such as Peter Bowlers, say little
about the kind of evidence adduced by C&T, and the same may be said of some
texts published since 1993, such as Ian Tattersalls recent book. So perhaps
the rejection of Tertiary Homo sapiens, like other scientific
determinations, is a social construction in which historians of science
have participated."
Anyone who is really interested in learning the complete story of how we
know what we think we know about human origins and antiquity cannot afford
to ignore Hidden History or, better yet, Forbidden Archeology.
In the end, I cannot judge you too harshly. After all, like many of your
generation, you probably grew up believing in Darwinism and were
conditioned to regard such belief as one of the characteristics of
scientific and intellectual respectability. You were also conditioned to
regard opposition to Darwinism as a symptom of religious intolerance or
irrational credulity, deserving of righteous contempt. Given all that, your
fundamentalist reaction to Hidden History is understandable. Even so, I
detect in your review some signs that you may someday rise to the platform
of virtuous scientific impartiality to which you now pretend.
since this site opened in 1998
The Galileo Effect:
Cremo Responds to a Critic
From MCremo@compuserve.com Thu Jan 1 00:10:13 1998
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 18:02:56 -0500
From: "Michael A. Cremo"
Subject: Hidden History, Hidden Agenda
Sender: "Michael A. Cremo"
To: Cliff Soon
Message-id: <199712311803_MC2-2DA8-F4EE@compuserve.com>
Michael A. Cremo
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