Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [236]
Boman (1921, pp. 347–348) then went on to cast doubt on another discovery made at Miramar: “In the Museo de La Plata, I have made an experiment of a similar nature, relative to a specimen discovered in the Chapadmalalan of Miramar—the femur of toxodon which has embedded in its trochanter the point of an arrow made of quartzite. I searched the museum collection for a toxodon femur of the same size and state of fossilization, and drove a similar quartzite point into the corresponding region of the bone. C. Heredia, then secretary of the museum, who studied this piece for a long time on his desk, said he could not distinguish it from the original.” However, Boman (1921, p. 348) himself admitted: “But this experiment does not demonstrate anything other than the possibility of an exact imitation, and is not a conclusive proof that the point of the arrowhead was introduced into the femur of Miramar when it was already in a fossil state.”
Boman (1921, p. 348) added: “Concerning the question of the authenticity of the finds from the Chapadmalalan strata at Miramar, in the final analysis there undoubtedly exists no conclusive proof of fraud. On the contrary many of the circumstances speak strongly in favor of their authenticity.”
Despite this remarkable admission, Boman (1921, p. 348) could not resist once more raising the possibility of fraud or incompetence: “Nevertheless, the manner in which the discoveries were made, and above all, the continuous involvement of a person such as Parodi, necessarily give rise to suspicions. I do not believe that there is anyone in the world of science who could accept without the most careful consideration the above-mentioned discoveries as authentic proofs of nothing less than the existence of humans in South America during the Tertiary epoch.”
Boman (1921, pp. 348–349) then wrote: “In North America many analogous discoveries have been unanimously and definitively rejected because they were made by illiterate workers, miners, or prospectors of various kinds. Modern science requires stringent scientific control of the facts that serve as the foundations of its conclusions. It does not admit the affirmations and stories of ordinary persons, and stories in newspapers convince no one.” Here Boman footnoted a negative report by Holmes on the auriferous gravel finds in California. We shall consider the California discoveries in some detail later in this chapter (Section 5.5), but for now we shall simply forewarn the reader that Holmes’s dismissals are themselves open to question.
It is difficult to see why Boman should have been so skeptical of Parodi.
One could argue that Parodi would not have wanted to jeopardize his secure and longstanding employment as a museum collector by manufacturing fake discoveries. In any case, the museum professionals insisted that Parodi leave any objects of human industry in place so they could be photographed, examined, and removed by experts. This procedure is superior to that employed by scientists involved in many famous discoveries that are used to uphold the currently accepted scenario of human evolution. For example, most of the Homo erectus discoveries reported by von Koenigswald in Java were made by native diggers, who, unlike Parodi, did not leave the fossils in situ but sent them in crates to von Koenigswald, who often stayed in places far from the sites. Also, many fossil hominid discoveries in Africa were made in a manner similar to that employed at Miramar—native diggers uncovered fossils or stone tools and left them in place to be examined by professional scientists. It may further be noted that the famous Venus of Willendorf, a Neolithic statuette from Europe, was discovered by a road workman. It is obvious that if one were to apply Boman’s extreme skepticism across the board one could raise suspicions of fraud about almost every paleoanthropological discovery ever made. Boman himself recognized this.
Boman admitted that his principal reasons for not accepting the Miramar discoveries were theoretical. Boman (1921,