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By Root 1519 0

of the Tertiary period, was found in Eastern Georgia in a locality called Udabno. It was named Udabnopithec. This find confirmed the possibility that mankind originated in Trans-Caucasia (in addition to other regions embracing South Asia, South Europe, and Northeast Africa). But in order to substantiate this hypothesis, science needed the chief link—if not the remains of primitive man himself, then at least the most ancient implements of labor. In 1946–48, S. M. Sardaryan and M. Z. Panichkina, while surveying Satani-dar (Mount Satan), which is situated close to Mount Bogutlu in Armenia, found crude obsidian implements of the most ancient forms dating from the Chellean period; to date, these implements are the most ancient of the archaeological finds in the U.S.S.R. and make up yet another link in the chain of facts proving that the southern areas of the Soviet Union were part of the region where man grew out of the animal state.”

Another scientist, Yuri Mochanov, discovered stone tools resembling the European eoliths at a site overlooking the Lena River at Diring Yurlakh, Siberia. The formations from which these implements were recovered were dated by potassium-argon and magnetic methods to 1.8 million years before the present. Mochanov, leaving aside the standard African origins concept, proposed the simultaneous emergence of man in Siberia and Africa during the very early Pleistocene. Mochanov stated: “I couldn’t believe my eye, at first. After all, I had always argued against finding such primitive pebble tools in this part of Siberia” (Daniloff and Kopf 1986). Some have argued that Siberia was too cold for human habitation. But Pavel Melnikov, director of the Permafrost Institute at Yakutsk, stated that “paleobotanists, studying pollens and seeds in ancient layers, have concluded that the Siberian climate a million years ago was much like today and could have supported people” (Daniloff and Kopf 1986). There is no reason to rule out the possibility that these toolmaking people might have been very much like modern Homo sapiens. And here is something else to consider—if the climate was like that of today these ancient Siberians surely would have needed clothing, indicating an advanced level of culture.

Recent evidence from India also takes us back about 2 million years. Many discoveries of stone tools have been made in the Siwalik Hills region of northwestern India. The Siwaliks derive their name from the demigod Shiva (Sanskrit Siva), the lord of the forces of universal destruction. Roop Narain Vasishat, an anthropologist at Punjab University, objected strongly to the idea that “the Siwalik hominoids did not evolve into hominids and the prehistoric stone tool making man in this region was an intruder from outside” (1985, pp. xiv–xv). Some Indian scientists, like the Russians and Chinese, believe that the key steps in human evolution took place within their nation.

In 1981, Anek Ram Sankhyan, of the Anthropological Survey of India, North Western Region, reported: “the author recovered a Palaeolithic implement from the Upper Siwalik horizon, about 8 kms [5 miles] east of Haritalyangar village” (1981, p. 358). Sankhyan offered this description of the implement: “The stone tool under reference is a typical Bifacial Chopper made on a large darkcoloured quartzite cobble, 12.5 cm [4.9 inches] in length, 9.3 cm [3.7 inches] in breadth, and 6.5 cm [2.6 inches] in maximum thickness at the butt end. The core exhibits multiple flaking scars on nearly half of its surface on both sides forming a sharp and broad cutting edge. One surface is smoothly flaked and tapering whereas the other carried a large and deep flake scar, besides other smaller flake scars near the edge. The butt end is unworked and rounded for a comfortable grasp” (1981, pp. 358–359).

On the age of the implement, Sankhyan (1981, p. 358) reported: “The stone tool was recovered from a thin band of pebbles distributed in patches over a grey shale horizon. . . . Prasad (1971) assigns these beds to the Tatrot Formation (Upper Pliocene).” Sankhyan subsequently discovered