Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [267]
Hence none of Sinclair’s arguments are strong enough to invalidate the testimony indicating that the Pierce mortar was deposited in the Table Mountain gravels during Tertiary times. The general tone of Sinclair’s paper indicates that he was strongly biased against the possibility of toolmaking humans living in the Tertiary, and that he was searching for any excuse to discredit these discoveries.
According to Sinclair (1908, pp. 116–117), Pierce found another artifact along with the mortar: “The writer was shown a small oval tablet of dark colored slate with a melon and leaf carved in bas-relief. Mr. Pierce claimed to have found this in the same gravels as the mortar, and, he thought, probably at the same time. This tablet shows no signs of wear by gravel. The scratches are all recent defacements. The carving shows very evident traces of a steel knife blade and was conceived and executed by an artist of considerable ability.”
Sinclair stated that this carving could not really have been as old as the Tertiary gravels in which it was discovered. It appears that Sinclair brought the carved tablet into his discussion simply for the purpose of distracting attention from the mortar reported by Pierce. Such tactics are often encountered in critiques of anomalous evidence.
Sinclair provided no account of the exact features of the slate tablet that led him to conclude it had been carved with a steel blade. Therefore, he may have been wrong about the type of implement that was used. Furthermore, the level of human technological achievements in the Tertiary was then, and still is, very much an open question. If the slate tablet was in fact discovered, with the mortar, in prevolanic gravels deep under the latite cap of Tuolumne Table Mountain, beneath a hard layer of “cement,” and if the tablet does in fact display definite signs of carving by a steel blade, then one would be justified in concluding that human beings of a relatively high level of cultural achievement were present between 33 million and 55 million years ago. In fact, the carved tablet could be taken as proof that the artisan used steel tools. Sinclair also said that the tablet showed no signs of wear by gravel. But perhaps it was not moved very far by the action of the Tertiary river and therefore remained unabraded. Or perhaps the tablet could have been dropped into a gravel deposit of a dry channel of a shifting stream. This would also explain why it showed no signs of excessive wear.
5.5.9 The Neale Discoveries
On August 2, 1890, J. H. Neale signed the following statement about discoveries made by him: “In 1877 Mr. J. H. Neale was superintendent of the Montezuma Tunnel Company, and ran the Montezuma tunnel into the gravel underlying the lava of Table Mountain, Tuolumne County. . . . At a distance of between 1400 and 1500 feet from the mouth of the tunnel, or of between 200 and 300 feet beyond the edge of the solid lava, Mr. Neale saw several spear-heads, of some dark rock and nearly one foot in length. On exploring further, he himself found a small mortar three or four inches in diameter and of irregular shape. This was discovered within a foot or two of the spear-heads. He then found a large well-formed pestle, now the property of Dr. R. I. Bromley, and near by a large and very regular mortar, also at present the property of Dr. Bromley.” This last mortar and pestle are shown in Figure 5.13.
Neale’s affidavit continued: “All of these relics were found the same afternoon, and were all within a few feet of one another and close to the bed-rock, perhaps within a foot of it. Mr. Neale declares that it is utterly impossible that these relics can have reached the position in which they were found excepting at the time the gravel was deposited, and before the lava cap formed. There was not the slightest trace of any disturbance of the mass or of any natural fissure into it by which access could have been obtained