Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [203]
4.7 Stone Tools From Burma (Miocene)
At the end of 1894 and beginning of 1895, scientific journals announced the discovery of worked flints in Tertiary formations in Burma, then part of the British Indian empire. The implements were reported by Fritz Noetling, a paleontologist and Fellow of the Geological Society who served as director of the Geological Survey of India in the region of Yenangyaung. Noetling (1894, p. 101) stated in the Record of the Geological Survey of India: “While engaged in mapping out a part of the Yenangyoung [Yenangyaung] oil-field my attention was particularly directed to the collecting of vertebrate remains, which are rather common in certain strata around Yenangyoung. One of the most conspicuous beds . . . is a ferruginous conglomerate, upwards of ten feet in thickness. This bed may be distinguished a long distance off as a dull-red band, running, in a continuous line, across ravines and hills. Besides numerous other vertebrate remains, such as Rhinoceros perimense, etc., one of the commonest species is Hippotherium [Hipparion] antelopinum Caut. and Falc. of which numerous isolated teeth can be found.” Modern authorities still date the Yenangyaung fauna to the Late or Middle Miocene (Savage and Russell 1983, pp. 247, 326).
While picking up a lower molar of Hipparion antelopinum, Noetling noticed a rectangular flint object (Figure 4.44). He later described the object: “The two long edges run nearly parallel and are sharp and cutting. This flake affords particular interest in as much as the two faces must have been produced by an action, which is difficult to explain by natural causes” (Noetling 1894, p. 101).
Each face, one concave and the other convex, has two planes meeting in the middle to form an edge, giving the piece four plane surfaces. Noetling wrote: “Let us consider the convex face [on the left in Figure 4.44] first; it will be seen that one side is smooth, apparently produced by the chipping off of a single flake, while the other side shows that at least four smaller flakes have been chipped off at a right angle to the first one.” Many authorities see chipping at right angles as a good sign of human work, as natural random battering tends to produce chipping at a variety of angles. In addition, such random battering also removes sharp edges. Noetling (1894, pp. 101–102) further stated: “The concave face which is however much damaged at one side must have been produced by the chipping off of two longitudinal flakes. The shape of this specimen reminds me very much of the chipped flint described in Volume I of the Records, Geological Survey of India, and discovered in the Pleistocene of the Nerbudda river, the artificial origin of which nobody seems to have ever doubted.”
Figure 4.44. Two sides of a flint implement from the Miocene Yenangyaung formation in Burma (Noetling 1894, plate 1).
Noetling (1894, p. 101) searched further and found about a dozen more chipped pieces of flint. Some of these he categorized as “irregularly shaped.” According to Noetling (1894, p. 101), the edges were “sharp and cutting.” The remainder were “triangular flakes,” about which he stated: “The lateral edges are straight, sharp, and cutting.” Noetling (1894, p. 101) thought one of the triangular flakes shown in his illustrations (Figure 4.45) was “particularly remarkable” because “it shows that the upper face must have been produced by the repeated chipping off of thin flakes.”
Figure 4.45. A flint tool from the Miocene Yenangyaung formation of Burma (Noetling1894, plate 1).
Analyzing