Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [24]
As a result, the best way to arrive at a quantitative date for a nineteenth century site with Villafranchian (or later) fauna is to refer to modern estimates for the age of that site in years, and we have tried to do this as much as possible.
For sites with pre-Villafranchian fauna, the period will be Early Pliocene or earlier, and it is adequate for the purposes of this book to arrive at a date using Table 1.1 and the period presently assigned to the site.
In this book, we will take the modern system for granted, accepting it, for the sake of argument, as a fixed reference frame to use in studying the history of ancient humans and near humans. However, it is clear on closer examination that this reference frame is by no means fixed, and it may be that further study will reveal as much ambiguity in the evidence for its different time divisions and fossil markers as we have found in the evidence for ancient humans.
Certainly, experts in geology have sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with the established geological time divisions. For example, Edmund m. Spieker (1956, p. 1803) made the following remarks in a lecture delivered to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists: “I wonder how many of us realize that the time scale was frozen in its present form by 1840. . . . How much world geology was known in 1840? A bit of Western Europe, none too well, and a lesser fringe of eastern North America. All of Asia, Africa, South America, and most of North America were virtually unknown. How dared the pioneers assume that their scale would fit the rocks in these vast areas, by far most of the world? Only in dogmatic assumption. . . . And in many parts of the world, notably India and South America, it does not fit. But even there it was applied! The founding fathers went forth across the earth and in Procrustean fashion made it fit the sections they found, even in places where the actual evidence literally proclaimed denial. So flexible and accommodating are the ‘facts’ of geology.”
1.8 The Appearance of the Hominids
The first apelike beings appeared in the Oligocene period, which began about 38 million years ago. The first apes thought to be on the line to humans appeared in the Miocene, which extends from 5 to 25 million years ago. These include the dryopithecine ape Proconsul africanus and Ramapithecus, which is now thought to be an ancestor of the orangutan.
Then came the Pliocene period. During the Pliocene, the first hominids, or erect-walking humanlike primates, are said to appear in the fossil record. The term hominid should be distinguished from hominoid, which designates the taxonomic superfamily including apes and humans. The earliest known hominid is Australopithecus, the “southern ape,” and is dated back as far as 4 million years, in the Pliocene.
This near human, say scientists, stood between 4 and 5 feet tall and had a cranial capacity of between 300 and 600 cubic centimeters (cc). From the neck down, Australopithecus is said to have been very similar to modern humans, whereas the head displayed some apelike and some human features.
One branch of Australopithecus, known as the “gracile” or lighter branch, is thought to have given rise to Homo habilis around 2 million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene period. Homo habilis appears similar to Australopithecus except that his cranial capacity is said to have been larger, between 600 and 750 cc.
Homo habilis is thought to have given rise to Homo erectus (the species that includes Java man and Peking man) around 1.5 million years