Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [174]
But from the standpoint of modern theory, species may change at different rates. Even if it is agreed that some mammalian species have been replaced several times since the Miocene, there is no reason to reject evidence that suggests the human species might not have been replaced. According to current thinking, speciation is a relatively abrupt and unpredictable occurrence rather than the result of an ongoing process of gradual, progressive change.
As can be seen from the different conclusions of Roujou and de Mortillet, evolutionary theory is quite flexible, perhaps too flexible. It seems almost any piece of paleoanthropological evidence can be accommodated within the elastic evolutionary framework.
De Mortillet went on to make the following observation. “If we see in the flint objects found at Thenay signs of intentional work, we can only conclude that it was the work not of anatomically modern human beings but of another human species, probably representative of a genus of human precursors that fills the gap between humans and animals” (de Quatrefages 1884, pp. 81–82).
De Mortillet called this precursor genus Anthropopithecus, existing in three species, the oldest, that of Thenay, being the link with the apes. The other two species were the makers of flint tools found by Ribeiro in Portugal (Section 4.1) and by Rames at Aurillac in southern France (Section 4.3.2).
“For de Mortillet,” stated de Quatrefages (1884, pp. 82–83), “the existence of the anthropopitheques in Tertiary times is a necessary consequence of Darwinist doctrines. Their successive appearances and disappearances are equally indispensable for maintaining the accord between the progressive development of the human type and that of mammalian fauna. Encountering in the ancient layers of the earth flints bearing signs of intentional work, it was natural for him to interpret them as the first manifestations of primitive industry by a precursor of modern humans.” De Mortillet’s objections to anatomically modern humans in the Tertiary were, it seems, primarily theoretical, based on his Darwinian preconceptions.
Looking back on this formative era of modern paleoanthropology, one should carefully note the great strength of de Mortillet’s faith in the existence of an apelike precursor of modern human beings. Darwinists were awaiting the appearance of the missing link just as expectantly as others awaited the coming of the Messiah. We may well ask: was it perhaps this strong faith and conviction, more than any other factor, that motivated later paleoanthropologists to designate certain apelike fossil creatures as the biological ancestors of the modern human type?
De Quatrefages (1884, p. 83) then continued: “De Mortillet is the first to admit that no one has as yet found the slightest remains of the anthropopitheques; and he combats the theory of Mr. Gaudry, who is disposed to attribute the worked flints of Thenay to the Miocene ape Dryopithecus fontani. But it remains for de Mortillet to reveal to us the exact character of that being, which evidently has, except in his own eyes, nothing but a completely theoretical existence. Others, however, are more daring. Haeckel and Darwin, on the basis of diverse considerations, have indicated some characteristics which would, in their opinion, enable us to recognize their ape-men. Finally Hovelacque, carrying to extremes the theory of transformationism, has compared point for point the corresponding traits of the highest anthropoid apes with those of the lowest forms of humanity; from this exercise, he has derived an intermediate form and believes he is able to trace a fairly complete portrait of the being that immediately preceded the first human of the modern type.”
Such speculative visualization continues even today. Whereas Hovelacque had not a single fossil bone to work with, paleoanthropologists of later years had at least some starting point. But even so, the few fragments of bone they came to possess were, as we shall see in later chapters, quite insufficient to justify the countless elaborate technicolor