Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [163]
On September 22, 1880, at six in the morning, the gentlemen of the commission boarded a special train and proceeded north from Lisbon. During the rail journey, they gazed at the old forts topping the hilltops, and pointed out to each other the Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary terrains as they moved through the valley of the Tagus River. They stepped off the train at Carregado. It is on a line from Carregado north to Cercal that Ribeiro discovered most of his flints. They then proceeded to nearby Otta and two kilometers ( just over a mile) from Otta arrived at the hill of Monte Redondo. At that point, the scientists dispersed into various ravines in search of flints.
Paul Choffat, a member of the commission and its secretary, later reported to the Congress: “Of the many flint flakes and apparent cores taken from the midst of the strata under the eyes of the commission members, one was judged as leaving no doubt about the intentional character of the work” (1884a, p. 63). This was the specimen found in situ by the Italian naturalist Bellucci ( Figure 4.6). Choffat then noted that Bellucci had found on the surface other flints with incontestable signs of work. Some thought they were Miocene implements that had been removed from the Miocene conglomerates by atmospheric agencies, such as rain and wind, while others thought that the implements were of a much more recent date.
Figure 4.6. Flint implement found by G. Bellucci in an Early Miocene formation at Otta, Portugal (Choffat 1884b, figure 1). It was judged by a commission of scientists to be identical to Late Pleistocene implements of similar type.
In his book Le Préhistorique, Gabriel de Mortillet gave an informative account of the events that took place at the Congress at Lisbon: “While the printer was preparing the first pages of this book,” wrote de Mortillet (1883, p. 100), “I went to the meeting of the International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archeology in Lisbon, one of my purposes being to complete the table of strata containing evidence for the presence of humans. I was able to confirm in a very exact and positive manner the actuality of Ribeiro’s discoveries, including the precise geological position of certain of his worked flints.” De Mortillet (1883, pp. 100 –101) then proceeded to describe the scientists’ excursion to Otta and Bellucci’s remarkable discovery: “The members of the Congress arrived at Otta, in the middle of a great freshwater formation. It was the bottom of an ancient lake, with sand and clay in the center, and sand and rocks on the edges. It is on the shores that intelligent beings would have left their tools, and it is on the shores of the lake that once bathed Monte Redondo that the search was made. It was crowned with success. The able investigator of Umbria [Italy], Mr. Bellucci, discovered in situ a flint bearing incontestable signs of intentional work. Before detaching it, he showed it to a number of his colleagues. The flint was strongly encased in the rock. He had to use a hammer to extract it. It is definitely of the same age as the deposit. Instead of lying flat on a surface onto which it could have been secondarily recemented at a much later date, it was found firmly in place on the under side of a ledge extending over a region removed by erosion [ Figure 4.7]. It is impossible to desire a more complete demonstration attesting to a flint’s position in its strata.” All that was needed was to determine the age of the strata. Study of the fauna and flora in the region around the Monte Redondo site showed that the formations present there can be assigned to the Tortonian stage of the Late Miocene period (de Mortillet 1883, p. 102).
“ The refore,” concluded de Mortillet “during the Tortonian epoch there existed in Portugal an intelligent being who chipped flint just like X Quaternary humans” (1883, p. 102). Some