Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [216]
Some scientists thought the Miramar tierra cocida and slag were the product of volcanoes. But Whitman Cross of the U.S. Geological Survey had conducted studies of the slag and burned earth. Willis stated: “According to Mr. Cross . . . they are probably not volcanic” ( Hrdlicka 1912, p. 47). Some authors suggested grass fires as the cause. Cross tested this idea by burning the most common Pampas grass (cortadera) on samples of earth, but this produced only a very thin layer of hardened earth, with no bricklike tierra cocida or melted scoria. But Willis, while visiting the Rio Colorado region of Argentina, observed another kind of grass, called esparto, that grows more deeply into the earth, and saw a place where it had burned. At this location, he observed one could pick up pieces of brick-colored earth up to 10 centimeters [4 inches] in diameter. Some of the pieces were penetrated with grass roots and carbonized grass, as in the case of some of the specimens described by F. Ameghino (Hrdlicka 1912, pp. 46– 48).
In his reports about Monte Hermoso and other Argentine sites, Ameghino had noted the presence of similar specimens. He said that Dr. Gustave Steinmann came to Argentina during an expedition to South America, and in 1906 visited the barrancas of the Atlantic coast near Cabo Corrientes, accompanied by Santiago Roth and Robert Lehmann-Nitsche. F. Ameghino (1908, p. 106) stated: “These gentlemen discovered in the barrancas pieces of burned and partially vitrified earth, reporting specimens resembling or identical to those from the beds at Monte Hermoso, which I had attributed to the action of man and presented as proof of his existence in that distant epoch.”
But Steinmann believed that humans had appeared in South America only in recent times. F. Ameghino (1908, p. 106) noted: “In a report presented during the course of the past year by Dr. Steinmann at the Geological Society of Berlin, he stated that these reputed vestiges of Homo americanus were in fact natural productions that appeared to be caused artificially only in the imaginations of recent immigrants of the species Homo europaeus. According to Dr. Steinmann, the specimens were pieces of volcanic lava which had arrived there through the air or more probably by means of water currents.” The nearest volcanoes, however, were a thousand kilometers (621 miles) from the Atlantic coast, in the Cordillera, the mountain range running the length of western Argentina. Still, Steinmann believed that small pieces of scoria were transported by rivers.
F. Ameghino (1911, pp. 68– 69) responded: “Although all the strange affirmations of M. Steinmann will be refuted in detail in a monograph I am preparing, the facts have been so misrepresented by him that I cannot restrain myself from remarking that all that he has said in connection with the relative antiquity of man in South America and Europe is a natural result of his preconceived ideas. For Steinmann, the presence in true geological formations of scoria is an illusion, and the supposed formations do not actually exist. The pieces of scoria he encountered may be no bigger than nuts or somewhat bigger. But I have found masses of burned earth weighing many kilograms, the transport of which from the Cordillera to the places in which they are found, by means of movement through the air or by rivers, is impossible. Contrary to his statements, the scoria are accompanied by, that is to say, they are embedded in the same strata with, other vestiges of the activity of man (burned and broken bones, etc.).”
F. Ameghino (1908, p. 106) further stated about Steinmann’s hypothesis: “Fantastic though it may be, this opinion is not completely new; I mentioned it 18 years ago, but did not consider it worth much discussion. Dr. Steinmann, in characterizing these vestiges