Ancient Traces

by Michael Baigent

  It is not well known that Europe too has revealed similar evidence but this evidence is so astonishing, so controversial, so politically incorrect, that the scientists have long pushed it to one side hoping that it will gradually be lost under the dust of passing years. For if this evidence were to be accepted, it would destroy utterly every modern theory of human prehistory.

  The Mysterious Prehistoric Tools of Europe

  Compelling evidence for the very early use of tools in Europe was presented to a meeting of the Anthropological Institute in London, Monday 8 April 1872. Fellows present were shown a collection of fossil sharks’ teeth which had been excavated from the so-called Red Crag formation of Suffolk, the residue of an ancient sea which had existed 2 to 2.5 million years ago. While the existence of sharks’ teeth in this maritime geological formation is not anomalous, they none the less confronted all present with a challenge: each sharks’ tooth had a small hole carefully drilled through its centre.

  A close examination of these holes revealed that each was tightly filled with the Red Crag rock matrix from which they had been excavated, proving that the holes had been drilled before the teeth had been dropped into the ancient sea. This point alone indicated an age greater than 2 million years.19

  These drilled teeth reveal that an unknown early European man was using tools at much the same date as those recently found in Ethiopia. But the tools used to drill such a small hole are immensely more sophisticated than the simple flaked stone choppers and cutters of Gona. But, like these, the Red Crag finds had no human bones associated with them. We cannot therefore even speculate as to what kind of early European man might have created them. Or whether they were the same species as those unknown inhabitants of ancient Ethiopia.

  During October 1875 Professor Capellini, a geologist at Bologna University, had visited the Siena region to pursue his interest in the small fossil whales found there. He had been fortunate enough to find the major part of a fossil whale which he chipped out of the rock himself and brought back to his university. As he cleaned one of the bones, he discovered a slice had been cut into it before it had been fossilized. It seemed deliberately cut by a sharp edge. Yet this bone had come from a geological formation allocated to the Pliocene, an epoch dated from 2 to 5 million years ago.

  Closer inspection of the bone revealed three additional but superficial cuts. Professor Capellini concluded that he was viewing the traces of some very ancient butchering because these particular marks were very different from those which would have been made by the teeth of carnivores such as sharks. It appeared most probable that the flesh had been removed from the bones of this ancient whale by humans using a sharp tool which, during the process, cut and scraped the whale’s bones. To check, he inspected bones of modern animals which had been butchered and then placed in museum collections: they showed a similar pattern of cuts. As a further test, using some ancient flint tools he had found in the area, he experimented on modern bones proving that he could reproduce the same type of cut. It was, too, easy to demonstrate that the fossil bones had not been cut recently; he later explained to his professional colleagues that the fossil bone was so hard, a steel point could not scratch it.20

  Recent work has supported the distinction between butchering marks and those of predators. A study of ancient butchering marks found on bones from Olduvai Gorge concluded that

  No process has yet been discovered which produces marks that mimic slicing, chopping or scraping marks on a microscopic level. Tooth scratches and gnawing of carnivores produce grooves with rounded or flat bases respectively; both lack the fine parallel striations of slicing or scraping marks.21

  Professor Capellini discovered these marks on quite a number of the fossil bones but was intrigued to find that they occurred only on the top of the spine and the outer face of the right-hand set of ribs. From this curious distribution of the evident butchering marks he surmised that the whale had been beached in some shallows of the ancient sea and was lying on its left side when humans cut the flesh from its right, using flint knives.

  He concluded that these marks proved that humans were living in Tuscany over 2 million years ago, at the same time as these whales.22 He presented these findings to his scientific colleagues at international gatherings in 1876 and 1878. A debate ensued with the result that a number of prominent scientists came out in his support despite the very early date for mankind that was implicit.

  Other bones revealing a similar pattern of cuts were subsequently found. A large collection of fossil whale bones, recovered from the Tuscan valley of the Fine, had been donated to the Museum of Florence. Professor Capellini searched through these and discovered several that showed identical cut marks, presumably also from butchering. These findings were supported by several other scientists including a professor of palaeontology and a professor of zoology and comparative anatomy.’23

  A small number of other bones showing traces apparently from human action were also found in Italy. One fossilized animal bone had a round hole through it, perhaps drilled; another appeared to have been sawn part-way through and then snapped. Both dated from 2 million or more years ago.24

  In France similar evidence appeared. A rhinoceros thigh bone was found in limestone at Gannat, in central France. There were parallel cuts across the top of it which would seem to duplicate the marks butchering would leave. This was much older than the Italian fossils, being dated to the Miocene period – from 5 to 25 million years ago – but other fossils found with it are now placed even earlier by modern authorities. The bone could, then, be much older.25

  Ancient fossil bones of a prehistoric aquatic mammal, rather like a sea-cow, were discovered near Pouancé, north-west France. On an upper forelimb several deep and sharp cuts were evident. It was clear that the bones had never been disturbed in the rock from which they were extracted and so these cuts must have been made prior to fossilization. What is particularly mysterious about this find is that the marine deposits in which it was found are dated today to the early Miocene period: around 20 to 25 million years ago.26 The thought that humans might have lived at that period is serious heresy. But that is the implication of this fossil.

  But what of the tools themselves which might have been used for such early butchering? Records reveal that stone tools, some quite sophisticated, have been discovered in many very ancient rock formations in Europe.

  Archaeologists working over the last decade have dramatically increased the acknowledged age of human artefacts found in Europe. Well-made hand axes are turning up at Boxgrove in southern England, at a site dated to at least 500,000 years ago, perhaps more. At both Gran Dolina in north-east Spain and Ceprano in Italy, south-east from Rome, simple choppers have been found dating from at least 800,000 years ago. These recent finds amount to literally hundreds of tools.

  Even older is a cutting tool from the million-year level at Gran Dolina. This is the earliest find in Europe of a tool together with fossilized human and animal bones. Some of these bones, including those of humans, reveal the cut marks from butchering; dead humans were also a valuable source of protein.27

  The fact that humans using tools at least 1 million years ago in southern Europe is now scientifically acceptable begins to remove the taint of heresy from the finds we have already mentioned such as the drilled sharks’ teeth or the butchered whale found by Professor Capellini, even though they date in excess of 2 million years ago. But even this date may become scientifically acceptable soon, when the argument over another find of flint tools in France is resolved.

  In 1989 a French archaeologist, Eugène Bonifay, discovered some simple stone artefacts at the site of Saint-Eble in central France. He dated them to between 2.2 and 2.5 million years ago. Nearby is an extinct volcano which erupted 2 million years ago covering the area; these tools are beneath the volcanic debris.28

  Stone tools, crude, but remarkably similar to those found by the Leakeys in East Africa and termed ‘Oldowan’, better than those found by Bonifay in France
, were discovered on the Kent plateau near Ightham last century. By the late nineteenth century several hundred had been recovered from various sites there. In the early twentieth century the strata they were found in were dated to between 2 and 4 million years ago.29

  The Red Crag area dating from 2 million years ago to back as far as 55 million years, where the drilled sharks’ teeth were discovered, has also produced flint tools – but of a rather higher level of skill. Large numbers of flints which had all the appearance of being modified were found there at several sites: scrapers and hand axes with elaborate flaking to create a sharp surface similar to tools found in many other excavations.30

  Considerable controversy was engendered by these finds and an international commission of experts in prehistory was convened to look into the matter. In 1923 the commission decided in favour of the finds and of the dating to 2 to 5 million years ago. But who knows of these now? Today they are either unknown or dismissed sarcastically as erroneous. For they do not fit the theories which have emerged from the African excavations.

  But what if the specialists were wrong? What if the humans in Europe at the time did not come from Africa but had already been in Europe and Asia for many millions of years?

  The most astounding finds, however, have been in France. A little north of Paris, at Clermont, several well-worked flint tools were found in very ancient strata indeed. In 1910 the famous French prehistorian and university professor Abbé Henri Breuil wrote of one which he had personally extracted and thus was ‘absolutely certain’ of its age; yet, because of its manufactured appearance, ‘Its discovery in place, at the base of the Eocene sands of Bracheux… caused me a profound stupefaction.’31 A stupefaction indeed. The Eocene dates from 38 to 55 million years ago.

  Drawings of this and a second tool also found by Breuil and published in 1910 reveal unambiguous evidence of deliberate manufacture. But Breuil, unable to avoid the early date – since he had removed the tools himself – and unwilling to even hint at the possibility of humans living so early, declared each stone tool to be created naturally.32 Of course, that such a sophisticated tool could occur through geological action alone is effectively impossible. And Breuil must have known this.

  The uncomfortable fact that he must have quietly agonized over is that, despite their great age, these tools are identical in sophistication to human artefacts of the Homo erectus era, known to archaeologists as Acheulian. And, in passing, we might note that they are similar in age to the artefacts found last century by the coal miners of California.

  The Earliest Examples of Man

  Three to 4 million years ago, a warm sea lapped at the base of the Italian Alps; it has left many rock layers containing marine fossils. In the summer of 1860 an Italian geologist and academic, Professor Giuseppe Ragazzoni, was searching for fossil shells at Castenedolo, near Brescia. In this ancient maritime formation he found some fossilized human bones; an upper cranium fused with fossilized coral, together with other limbs and ribs. He showed them to other geologists who considered it impossible that human bones could be in such an ancient stratum and concluded that they must have come from an intrusive burial – that is, a deep burial of a far later date, which reached down into lower rock layers. And so Professor Ragazzoni discarded them.

  Then, in January 1880, more bones came to light. They were found lying between an ancient coral reef and fossilized clay containing shells. Professor Ragazzoni was notified and he and his assistant went to the site to remove the bones themselves. Quite a number were found: parts of the skull, jaw, teeth, vertebrae and limb bones. Later that month jaw fragments and teeth, differing from those previously found, were discovered seven feet away. Remembering his earlier experience, Ragazzoni made a careful study of the site to exclude the possibility of these bones having derived from an intrusive burial. There was no such evidence and, as he wrote, all the bones were ‘completely covered with and penetrated by the clay and small fragments of coral and shells’, thus allaying any lingering suspicion. This, furthermore, proved that they had once been within the ancient sea.33

  About three weeks later, during February 1880, an almost complete skeleton was found. Again Ragazzoni supervised the extraction of the fossil remains. The bones revealed the skeleton to be that of a woman. In all, the remains indicated four people, a male, a female and two children. The bones had been rather dispersed, which would be in line with the suggestion of wave action on the bodies following a drowning at sea. They may have been in a boat.

  The fact that the bones could be so securely placed within the ancient maritime fossil layers made a date of 3 to 4 million years ago very safe.

  Ragazzoni showed the bones to a professor of anatomy at the University of Rome who studied both the excavation and the bones. This expert noted that there was no indication at all that the female skeleton in particular might have come from a burial. He also noted that the skull was so entangled in the clay that it took considerable careful effort for him to extract it.34

  This professor concluded that the bones, ‘are an irrefutable document for the existence of man… man of a character fully human’.35

  As late as 1969 worried experts were still trying to discredit these finds. Scientific tests conducted that year by the British Museum of Natural History purported to show a recent age for the bones but the tests were easily shown to be flawed: insufficient attention had been given to the risks of contamination not only from acids, saprophytes and roots while the bones lay beneath the ground but also afterwards, when for eighty-nine years they had rested in a museum with no protection from the atmosphere or small organisms.36 However, the tests did reveal that the bones had a high fluorine content and an ‘unexpectedly high’ concentration of uranium, suggesting that they are very ancient.37

  The professor to whom Ragazzoni took these bones had his finger on the pulse of scientific attitudes when he predicted that the academic reaction would inevitably be hostile. He deplored the attitudes of his colleagues, warning that ‘by means of a despotic scientific prejudice’ such discoveries would be discredited.38

  We should note that, while these fossil bones are of a similar date to those found in East Africa, there is one very significant difference. These finds at Castenedolo are of individuals anatomically identical to modern humans. Most of the finds in East Africa have been of early and primitive creatures, at best perhaps proto-humans.

  Yet, to give us pause, there are a very small number of finds in East Africa, of very early date, of people anatomically similar to modern humans.

  In 1965, at Kanapoi, at the southern end of Lake Turkana in Kenya, an upper-arm bone, ‘strikingly close’ to modern human examples, was found and initially dated around 2.5 million years ago.39 This date was later revised to 4 million or more years ago.40 At Koobi Fora, east of Lake Turkana, in 1973, some fossil leg bones dated at 2.6 million years ago were found. Richard Leakey declared that they were ‘almost indistinguishable’ from those of modern man.41 Also at Koobi Fora, an ankle bone was discovered in 1974, dated from 1.5 to 2.6 million years ago. Anatomist Dr Bernard Wood (now Professor) studied this fossil at length and proved it to be virtually identical to that of a modern human.42 In 1977 the French team led by J. Chavaillon found an upper-arm bone at Gombore in Ethiopia which they pointed out was the same as that of modern man.43 This was also dated at over 1.5 million years ago.

  Other human remains, equally controversial as those of Professor Ragazzoni, have been found in Europe, Asia and South America. All of them have been the butt of scornful attacks over the years by scientists defending what now seems to be a mistaken evolutionary orthodoxy. Yet orthodoxy itself is getting closer and closer to the heretical.

  It is right that we allow the final word to those gatherers of dissident data, Michael Cremo, Richard Thompson and their researcher, Stephen Bernath: ‘we conclude that the total evidence, including fossil bones and artefacts, is most consistent with the view that anatomically modern humans have coexisted with other primates for tens
of millions of years’.44

  7

  Where Did Our Civilization Come From?

  On the bare Anatolian highlands of central Turkey, thirty-two miles south-east of the Turkish provincial capital Konya, are two ancient mounds hiding the ancient ruins of Çatal Hüyük, the world’s first town.

  This substantial Stone Age community appeared from nowhere. There are no known sites which reveal where its inhabitants gained their technical skills, their religion with its complex temples or their ability to create an urban trading and farming lifestyle. This highly sophisticated culture suddenly erupted upon the fertile highland plains as though transported mysteriously from elsewhere.

  For archaeologists and historians, this city is where civilization begins. It is, in effect, the beginning of the age of settlements and farming, the Neolithic. Its first excavator, Englishman James Mellaart, enthused

  The Neolithic civilization revealed at Çatal Hüyük shines like a supernova among the rather dim galaxy of contemporary peasant cultures… Its most lasting effect was not felt in the Near East, but in Europe, for it was to this new continent that the Neolithic cultures of Anatolia introduced the first beginnings of agriculture and stockbreeding and a cult of the Mother Goddess, the basis of our civilization.1