Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [207]
5.1 Discoveries Of Florentino Ameghino In Argentina
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Florentino Ameghino thoroughly investigated and described the stratigraphy and fossil fauna of the coastal provinces of Argentina. He thereby became an internationally known and respected paleontologist. Ameghino’s controversial discoveries of stone implements, carved bones, and other signs of a human presence in Argentina during the Pliocene, Miocene, and earlier periods served to increase his worldwide fame.
5.1.1 Monte Hermoso (Middle and Early Pliocene)
Among the most significant examples of human work reported by Florentino Ameghino are those he discovered in 1887 at Monte Hermoso, on the coast of Argentina about 60 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of Bahia Blanca. Here is how F. Ameghino (1908, p. 105) recounted the circumstances of his first discoveries at Monte Hermoso, which were made in a formation he regarded as Miocene: “During an exploratory visit, which lasted from the end of February to the beginning of March of 1887, we had the good fortune to find remains that demonstrated the existence of an intelligent being contemporary with . . . extinct fauna at this site. These vestiges consisted of fragments of tierra cocida (burned earth), fogones (hearths), escoria (glassy, melted earth), bones that had been split and burned, and worked stone. These discoveries caused me such surprise and appeared so important that I immediately wrote up my impressions and sent them to the journal La Nación, which published them on March 10,
1887.”
In another description of the initial discoveries made at Monte Hermoso, written in 1889, F. Ameghino (1911, p. 74) commented: “I was occupied in extracting part of a skeleton of Macrauchenia antiqua [a camellike Pliocene mammal] when I was surprised to see a piece of yellow-red stone among the bones. I picked it up and immediately recognized it as an irregular fragment of quartzite, displaying positive and negative bulbs of percussion, a striking platform, and eraillure. These features indicated in an irrefutable manner that I had found a stone object worked by an intelligent being during the Miocene period. I continued my work and soon found similar objects. Doubt was not possible, and on the same day, March 4, 1887, I communicated to La Nación the discovery of objects evidently worked by an intelligent being in the Miocene formations of Argentina.” F. Ameghino (1911, p. 74) added: “Later, at my instigation, the Museum of La Plata sent to the same place, for the purpose of collecting fossils, the preparator Santiago Pozzi, who found objects similar to mine.”
Summarizing the Monte Hermoso evidence, F. Ameghino (1911, pp. 52–53) said: “The presence of man, or rather his precursor, at this ancient site, is demonstrated by the presence of crudely worked flints, like those of the Miocene of Portugal, carved bones, burned bones, and burned earth proceeding from ancient fireplaces, in which earth containing a substantial quantity of sand came in contact with fire so intense that it was partially vitrified.”
Regarding the fireplaces, F. Ameghino (1911, p. 52) stated: “In this part of the formation there are no traces of volcanic activity, nor deposits of lignite, nor any vestiges of vegetation that might have sustained accidental fires with the rare property of occurring at intervals consecutive with the successive depositing of the strata at the site. Furthermore, these fireplaces, by the rarest of coincidences, are accompanied by burned bones. The temperature of the fires was so high, that in the pieces of burned earth there have formed spherical cavities, resulting from the expansion of air or the special gases produced by combustion