Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [137]
Finally, the news service article stated: “Anthropologists also noted that pebbles fracture easily as they roll through flowing water, resulting in shapes that can be mistaken for artifacts.” Do these anthropologists think that the British scientists who discovered the implements in Pakistan were unaware of this problem, which has been the object of serious study for over a century? As we have seen earlier in this chapter (Sections 3.2.3, 3.2.5, and 3.2.11), authorities ranging from Sir John Prestwich (1892, p. 256; 1895, and p. 625) to Leland W. Patterson (1983, p. 108) have pointed out that fortuitous damage to stones in stream beds can be clearly distinguished from intentional human work.
Now let us look at the report on the discovery of the Pakistani tools published in New Scientist, and see how it matches up with the newspaper statements of scientists critical of the find. In the New York Times New Service story, Sally McBrearty strongly suggested that the reported 2-million-year date for the Pakistani implements was very uncertain, but New Scientist stated: “These artefacts are surprisingly old, but the date is convincing” (Bunney 1987, p. 36). McBrearty also claimed that the stratigraphic context was not good, hinting that if the objects were tools, they did not belong to the beds where they were found.
But the New Scientist stated: “Such doubts do not apply in the case of the stone pieces from the Soan Valley southeast of Rawalpindi, argues Robin Dennell, the field director of the Paleolithic Project of the British Archaeological Mission and the University of Sheffield. He and his colleague Helen Rendell, a geologist at the University of Sussex, report that the stone pieces, all of quartzite, were so firmly embedded in a deposit of conglomerate and gritstone called the Upper Siwalik series, that they had to chisel them out” (Bunney 1987, p. 36). According to the New Scientist, the dating was accomplished using a combination of paleomagnetic and stratigraphic studies.
The New York Times News Service article left the reader with the strong impression that the objects in question were quite probably formed by random concussion in stream beds, and it did not mention any of the evidence in favor of their human manufacture. However, the New Scientist gave its readers with a more balanced treatment: “Of the pieces that they extracted, eight, Dennell believes are ‘definite artefacts.’In Dennell’s view, the least equivocal artefact is a piece of quartzite that a hominid individual supposedly struck in three directions with a hammer stone, removing seven flakes from it [Figure 3.27]. This multifaceted flaking together with the fresh appearance of the scars left on the remaining ‘core’ make a ‘very convincing’ case for human involvement, Dennell told New Scientist” (Bunney 1987, p. 36). So what is going on with the find in Pakistan? It appears we may have a recent example of scientists being unable to objectively evaluate evidence that contradicts their preconceptions about the progress of human evolution.
Figure 3.27. A stone tool discovered in the Upper Siwalik formation in Pakistan (Bunney1987, p. 36). British scientists estimated its age at about 2 million years.
In this case, we find that scientists holding the view that Homo erectus was the first representative of the Homo line to leave Africa, and did so about a million years ago, were apparently quite determined to discredit stone tools found in Pakistan, about 2 million years old, rather than modify their ideas. We can just imagine how such scientists would react to stone tools found in Miocene contexts.
3.6.4 Siberia and India (Early Pleistocene to Late Pliocene)
Many other discoveries of stone implements around 2 million years old have been made at other Asian sites, in Siberia and northwestern India. Turning first to Siberia, let us consider what A. P. Okladinov and L.