Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [158]
Crude Paleolithic Stone Tools
In the previous chapter, we considered anomalous stone tools of the crudest type, the eoliths. We shall now turn our attention to other stone tools, which, although also crude when compared with the sophisticated implements of the conventional Late Stone Age, represent an advance over the eoliths. These we have chosen to designate as crude paleoliths.
For some researchers, the terms eolith and paleolith represent a chronological succession, but we use these terms principally to make a distinction in the morphology of tool types. Eoliths, it may be recalled, are naturally broken pieces of stone that are used as tools with little or no further modification. A working edge might be retouched and show signs of wear. Paleoliths, however, are often deliberately flaked from stone cores and then more extensively modified.
As we have previously mentioned, arriving at clear-cut distinctions between eoliths and crude paleoliths is not always possible. Furthermore, a particular group of discoveries often includes implements of various levels of sophistication. In making decisions about what industries to put in this chapter, we have been guided by statements of scientists who favorably compared individual implements, and groups of implements, to recognized tools from much later periods. Anomalously old stone tool industries containing a good many implements comparable to the cruder kinds of classical Paleolithic implements have been selected for inclusion.
4.1 The Finds of Carlos Ribeiro in Portugal ( Miocene)
We first turn our attention to Carlos Ribeiro’s discoveries in the Miocene of Portugal. The first hint of Ribeiro’s work came to our attention quite accidentally. While going through the writings of the nineteenth-century American geologist J. D. Whitney, who reported evidence for Tertiary human beings in California, we encountered a sentence or two about Ribeiro having discovered flint implements in Miocene formations near Lisbon. We found more brief mentions in the works of S. Laing, a popular English science writer of the late nineteenth century. Curious, we searched libraries, but turned up no works under Ribeiro’s name and found ourselves at a dead end. Sometime later, Ribeiro’s name turned up again, this time in the 1957 English edition of Fossil Men by Boule and Vallois, who rather curtly dismissed the work of the nineteenth-century Portuguese geologist. We were, however, led by Boule and Vallois to the 1883 edition of Le Préhistorique, by de Mortillet, who gave a favorable report of Ribeiro’s discoveries, in French. By tracing out the references mentioned in de Mortillet’s footnotes, we gradually uncovered a wealth of remarkably convincing original reports in French journals of archeology and anthropology from the latter part of the nineteenth century. The search for this buried evidence was very illuminating, demonstrating how the scientific establishment treats reports of facts that no longer conform to accepted views. Keep in mind that for most current students of paleoanthropology, Ribeiro and his discoveries simply do not exist. You have to go back to textbooks printed over 30 years ago to find even a mention of him. Did Ribeiro’s work really deserve to be buried and forgotten? We shall present the facts and allow readers to form their own conclusions.
4.1.1 A Summary History of Ribeiro’s Discoveries
Carlos Ribeiro was not an amateur. In 1857, he was named to head the Geological Survey of Portugal, and he would also be elected to the Portuguese Academy of Sciences. During the years 1860– 63, he conducted studies of stone implements found in Portugal’s Quaternary strata.