Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [153]
In 1986, George Carter and Fred Budinger discovered an additional site at Calico. Minshall (1989, p. 111) stated that Carter and Budinger found “small stone specimens apparently worked by man and more than 20 feet below the dated volcanic ash stratum at the foot of the Calico/Mule Canyon fan” near the main Calico site. Fossils of typical Pleistocene mammals such as the sabertooth tiger, camel, horse, and mammoth were also found beneath the ash, which yielded a potassium-argon date of 185,000 years.
In general, however, the Calico discoveries have met with silence, ridicule, and opposition in the ranks of mainstream paleoanthropology. Ruth Simpson nevertheless stated: “The data base for very early man in the New World is growing rapidly, and can no longer simply be ignored, because it does not fit current models of prehistory in the New World. With the present data gaps that exist in our knowledge of the prehistory of man in the New World, any current proposed
‘final’ solutions to the early origins, migrations, and cultures of Pleistocene man in the New World are premature. At the present state of knowledge in early man research, there is a need for flexibility in thinking to assure unbiased peer reviews” (Simpson et al. 1986, p. 104). The same might also be said of the larger question of human evolution.
3.8.4 Toca da Esperança, Brazil (Middle Pleistocene)
Support for the authenticity of the Calico tools has come from a find in Brazil. In 1982, Maria Beltrao found a series of caves with wall paintings in the state of Bahia. In 1985, a trench was cut in the Toca da Esperança (Cave of Hope), and excavations in 1986 and 1987 “yielded stone tools associated with Quaternary fauna in a defined stratigraphic context” (de Lumley et al. 1988, p. 241).
There were four layers in the cave. The first layer was a hard carbonate crust, 20 to 60 centimeters (about 8 to 24 inches) thick. Beneath this were 3 layers of sand and sandy clay. In the lowest, Layer 4, stone implements were discovered along with abundant mammalian fossils. De Lumley et al. (1988, p. 241) commented: “Three bones . . . were dated by the uranium-thorium method using alpha and gamma-ray spectrometries, [giving] ages between 204,000 and 295,000 years.” These tests were performed at three different laboratories— Gif-sur-Yvette, France; the University of California at Los Angeles; and the laboratory of the U.S. Geological Survey at Menlo Park, California (de Lumley et al. 1988, p. 243).
The tools were fashioned from quartz pebbles and were somewhat crude, like those from Olduvai Gorge. The implements included “a chopper with cuttingedge trimmed by three adjacent removals” (de Lumley et al. 1988, p. 243). The report pointed out that the nearest source of quartz pebbles is about 10 kilometers from the cave.
De Lumley et al. (1988, p. 242) stated: “the evidence seems to indicate that Early Man entered into the American continent much before previously thought.” They went on to say: “In light of the discoveries at the Toca da Esperança, it is much easier to interpret the lithic industry of the Calico site, in the Mojave Desert, near Yermo, San Bernardino County, California, which is dated at between 150,000 and 200,000 years” (de Lumley et al. 1988, p. 245).
According to de Lumley and his associates, humans and protohumans entered the Americas from northern Asia several times during the Pleistocene. The early migrants, who manufactured the tools in the Brazilian cave, were Homo erectus (de Lumley et al. 1988, p. 242). While this view is in harmony with the consensus on human evolution, there is no reason why the tools in the Toca da Esperança could not have been made by anatomically modern humans. As we have several times mentioned, such tools are still being manufactured by humans in various parts of the world.
Toca da Esperança provides a clear example of how the scientific community hesitates to change deeply