Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [149]
An alternative approach would be to recognize that in fields such as archeology, most empirical evidence is of a doubtful nature, whether it corroborates our views or contradicts them. Therefore, it would be best (though difficult in practice) to maintain all relevant evidence in a readily accessible form, without giving absolute credence to any current positive or negative interpretations. If this cannot be done, one should at least recognize that one may be aware of only a fraction of the evidence that has already been seriously studied—what to speak of the evidence that may be uncovered in the future.
The present method of rendering final judgement on controversial evidence by how well it fits with currently established theories does not seem to be scientifically healthy, and it can be argued that it may do irremediable damage not only to the progress of scientific knowledge, but also to the reputations of persons who happen to find controversial evidence. This is especially true when politics and intrigue enter into the scientific process. Such considerations appear to have played a major role in the negative treatment of evidence suggesting that human beings were living in the New World long before both the 12,000-year limit still favored by a majority of paleoanthropologists and the 30,000-year limit currently accepted by a growing minority. We shall now discuss a few recent examples of this evidence, in the form of anomalously old crude stone tool industries, with the aim of shedding more light on the social processes of acceptance and rejection of evidence in the scientific world.
3.8.2 Texas Street, San Diego (Early Late Pleistocene to Late Middle Pleistocene)
A good example of a controversial American early stone tool industry reminiscent of the European eoliths is the one discovered by George Carter (1957) in the 1950s at the Texas Street excavation in San Diego. At this site, Carter (1957) claimed to have found hearths and crude stone tools at levels corresponding to the last interglacial period, some 80,000–90,000 years ago. Critics scoffed at these claims, referring to Carter’s alleged tools as products of nature, or “cartifacts”, and Carter was later publicly defamed in a Harvard course on “Fantastic Archeology” (Williams 1986, p. 41). However, Carter gave clear criteria for distinguishing between his tools and naturally broken rocks, and lithic experts such as John Witthoft (1955) have endorsed his claims.
In 1973, Carter conducted more extensive excavations at Texas Street and invited numerous archeologists to come and view the site firsthand. Almost none responded. Carter (1980, p. 63) stated: “San Diego State University adamantly refused to look at work in its own backyard.”
Carter found evidence for a human presence during the last interglacial period at several other sites in San Diego and elsewhere in the southwestern United States. But he found it difficult to get his findings published in standard scientific journals. In 1960, an editor of Science, the journal of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, asked Carter to submit an article about early humans in America. Carter did so, but the article was rejected. The editor wrote to Carter on February 1, 1960: “It was good of you to prepare a paper ‘On the Antiquity of Man in America’ for possible publication in our Current Problems in Research series in Science. In view of the fact that I invited you to prepare the paper for us, I especially regret to say that your paper, although it is interesting and deals with an important subject, is too controversial for publication in a general scientific magazine such as ours. I sought the advice of two highly competent