Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [116]
Breuil felt that human action could be ruled out with complete certainty because the flints were found in an Eocene formation. Like many other scientists, he could not imagine human beings existed in the Eocene, when the mammals known from fossils were, apparently, quite different from those of today. Breuil (1910, p. 406) wrote of “the absolute unlikelihood of the presence, before the deposit of the Bracheux sands or during their deposit, of an intelligent being, a worker of flint.”
But if human action were to be excluded, how, then, had the flint objects been produced? Searching for a natural explanation, Breuil (1910, pp. 387–388) wrote: “It is easy to observe that the flints have not been subjected to transport, for their sharpest edges remain intact. From among the processes that could have resulted in their fracture, one can therefore eliminate the mechanical action of water, either of oceans or rivers. Further examination of the fracturing gives evidence of a different kind of mechanical action, which was able to produce facets and impressions analogous to those produced by intentional human work, or by energetic localized force. A bulb of percussion, more or less clearly present, is often found at the point where a flake was taken off from the surface of the parent block. One can totally eliminate a thermal origin of the fractures, because fractures produced by heat, in the form of surface flaking or cracking of the entire flint block, are completely different.”
Breuil (1910, p. 403) then presented specimens that he believed shed a very clear light on the mode of production of the “pseudotools” he had reviewed: “They are pieces of flint which were flaked while in their positions in the interior of the beds, the fragments remaining in contact with each other. It is easy to see that these fragments present conchoidal fracturing, with the production of positive and negative bulbs of percussion” (Figure 3.20).
Figure 3.20. Henri Breuil (1910, p. 405) found examples of flakes removed from parent blocks of flint by geological pressure in an Eocene formation in Clermont (Oise), France. Such specimens, he believed, showed that eoliths were not made by human beings.
Conchoidal fracturing is fracturing that results in elevations or depressions shaped like the curved inner surface of a shell. A positive (raised) bulb of percussion is found on the surface of a flake detached from a flint core. The core retains a negative impression of the bulb. Breuil held that the fracturing that produced these bulbs of percussion was the result of geological pressure. But what about the further signs of modification that normally are present on even the
crudest eoliths?
To account for this, Breuil also described a few flakes, found adjacent to parent blocks of flint, that had some chips removed from an edge. According to Breuil (1910, p. 403), geological pressure caused this apparent retouching. He proposed that as a flake was detached, it rotated, causing chips to be removed from its thinner edge as it scraped over the surface of the parent block of flint (Figure 3.21).
We shall give careful attention to Breuil’s arguments, because similar reasoning has been used in attempts to discredit many of the discoveries discussed in this book.
For example, Hugo Obermaier (1924, p. 4) observed in his book Fossil Man in Spain: “The controversy concerning Thenay [France did not subside until the year 1901, when L. Capitan and G. d’Ault du Mesnil showed how purely natural agencies might produce effects very similar to human handiwork, one of the most important being earth pressure above the brittle flint.”
Figure 3.21. (1) Parent block of flint, found in an Eocene formation at Clermont (Oise), France. (2) Flake, apparently removed by geological pressure, found in contact with parent block of flint. (3) Opposite