Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [221]
1912, p. 46). Willis attributed this particular specimen to a process of chemical dehydration, but admitted that its “coloring might have been occasioned by a fire burning on the surface that is now red” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 46).
It would, however, have taken an extraordinarily hot fire to produce the observed effects. Wright and Fenner stated: “The assumption that the large specimens of tierra cocida were formed simply by the action of open fires is hardly possible in view of the quantity of heat involved, which must have acted through a period of time on large masses of material to have produced the effects observed” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 85). They further stated: “Many of the specimens of tierra cocida are so large and compact that one is forced, in explaining their mode of formation, to assume long-continued and confined heating at a fairly high temperature, such as would be encountered near the contact of an intrusive igneous or volcanic mass, but not beneath an open fire made of grass or small timber” (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 89). But there was no evidence of intrusive volcanic masses at the sites under consideration, and “long-continued and confined heating at a fairly high temperature” is characteristic of a kiln or furnace.
The furnace hypothesis would explain the dark gray rather than red color of some of the scoria. Wright and Fenner, in conducting thermal experiments, noted that when small samples of loess were burned they turned red because all the loess particles were exposed to oxygen. But when larger masses were burned, oxygen did not reach the interior, which remained gray, like some of the Argentine scoria (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 88). As we have seen, the smelting process outlined by Mallery involved burning large masses of ore, the interior of which may have remained gray. Furthermore, the primitive furnaces operated on the principle of reduction rather than oxidation, which would also account for grayish rather than reddish slag.
In summary, we propose the following. While some types of tierra cocida might have been produced by grass fires, campfires, or perhaps even chemical dehydration, the thick, hard, red pieces of tierra cocida at the Argentine sites might well have been the burned earth that lined the bottom of primitive smelting furnaces. Samples of this burned earth were, according to Wright and Fenner, generally of low iron content (Hrdlicka 1912, pp. 88–89). Also found at the Argentine sites were pieces of brown ferruginous earths, which might represent unburned ore. Wright and Fenner did not give a chemical analysis of these earths, but they would appear to be of high iron content. The gray scoria and the gray-and-red scoria, as indicated by their iron content of about 10 percent, could represent the slag from primitive iron smelting furnaces operated on the Argentine coast several million years ago. Other specimens of scoria might have been produced in connection with pottery kilns.
5.1.8 Ameghino on the South American Origins of Hominids
Florentino Ameghino proposed that human beings evolved on the South American continent and then migrated first to North America, and thence by separate routes to Europe and Asia. At this point, many will doubtlessly conclude that Ameghino was simply an overly patriotic Argentine nationalist promoting the totally absurd view that humans originated in the country of his own birth.
But the same skeptics accept without similar reserve the claims of scientists such as Leakey, Broom, and Dart, who resided in former British possessions in Africa and proposed that the human race just happened to originate there.
In fact, paleoanthropologists the world over have a tendency to claim their homelands as the cradle