Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [205]
4.8 Tools From Black’s Fork River, Wyoming (Middle Pleistocene)
In 1932, Edison Lohr and Harold Dunning, two amateur archeologists, found many stone tools on the high terraces of the Black’s Fork River in Wyoming, U.S.A. We may recall from our discussion of the eoliths of the Kent Plateau, England, that high river terraces are older than lower terraces. The stone implements found by Lohr and Dunning appeared to be of Middle Pleistocene age, which would be anomalous for North America.
Lohr and Dunning showed the tools they collected to E. B. Renaud, a professor of anthropology at the University of Denver. Renaud, who was also director of the Archaeological Survey of the High Western Plains, then organized an expedition to the region where the tools were found. During the summer of 1933, Renaud’s party collected specimens from the ancient river terraces between the towns of Granger and Lyman.
Renaud, who had been trained in Europe under Henri Breuil, characterized the implements as similar to those of the early European Paleolithic (Minshall 1989, p. 86). Among the specimens were crude handaxes and other flaked implements representative of those frequently attributed to Homo erectus. In 1933, Renaud said the tools would “suggest a cultural complex in America similar to that of Europe, and also a possible great antiquity for these artifacts” (Minshall 1989, p. 86).
The reaction from anthropologists in America was negative. Renaud wrote in 1938 that his report had been “harshly criticized by one of the irreconcilable opponents of the antiquity of man in America, who had seen neither the sites nor the specimens” (Minshall 1989, p. 87).
In response, Renaud mounted three more expeditions, collecting more tools, which he studied carefully, comparing them with artifacts of similar age from France and England. Although many experts from outside America agreed with him that the tools represented a genuine industry, American scientists have continued their opposition to the present day.
The most common reaction is to explain that the crude Paleolithic specimens are in fact blanks (unworked flakes) dropped fairly recently by Indian toolmakers. Opposing this hypothesis, Herbert L. Minshall (1989, p. 87) stated that the tools “show heavy stream abrasion” even though they are “fixed in desert pavements on ancient flood plain surfaces that could not have had streams for over 150,000 years.” In 1938, E. H. Stephens, a geologist at the Colorado School of Mines, visited the sites where the tools had been found. According to Stephens, the high flood plain terraces dated to the Illinoian glacial period (Minshall 1989, p. 88). This would mean they were formed from 125,000 to 190,000 years ago, and perhaps even further back in time (Minshall 1989, p. 88).
If found at a site of similar age in Africa or Europe or China, stone tools like those found by Renaud would not be a source of controversy. But their presence in Wyoming is certainly very much unexpected at 125,000 to 190,000 years ago. The view now dominant is that humans entered North America not earlier than about 30,000 years ago at most. And before that there was no migration of any other hominid.
Renaud’s discoveries were therefore either ignored or explained away. Stephens and others suggested that the abrasion on the implements was the result of windblown sand rather than water. In 1957, Marie Wormington stated: “It is true that many of Renaud’s artifacts were found on high terraces and showed definite signs of abrasion. If it could be proven that this was the result of water action