Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [271]
5.5.10 The King Pestle
Although the tools discussed so far were found by miners, there is one case of a stone tool being found in place by a scientist. In 1891, George F. Becker told the American Geological Society that in the spring of 1869, Clarence King, director of the Survey of the Fortieth Parallel, and a respected geologist, was conducting research at Tuolumne Table Mountain. Becker (1891, pp. 193–194) stated: “At one point, close to the high bluff of basalt capping, a recent wash had swept away all talus and exposed the underlying compact, hard, auriferous gravel beds, which were beyond all question in place. In examining the exposure for fossils he [King] observed the fractured end of what appeared to be a cylindrical mass of stone. The mass he forced out of its place with considerable difficulty on account of the hardness of the gravel in which it was tightly wedged. It left behind a perfect cast of itself in the matrix and proved to be part of a polished stone implement, no doubt a pestle [Figure 5.14].” The facts recorded by Becker tend to rule out the phenomenon of secondary deposition—i.e., that the pestle had fallen from a higher, more recent layer and become recemented in the lower, older layer. Becker (1891, p. 194) added: “Mr. King is perfectly sure this implement was in place and that it formed an original part of the gravels in which he found it. It is difficult to imagine a more satisfactory evidence than this of the occurrence of implements in the auriferous, pre-glacial, sub-basaltic gravels.” From this description and the modern geological dating of the Table Mountain strata, it is apparent that the object was over 9 million years old.
Figure 5.14. Left: Broken stone pestle found by Clarence King of the U.S. Geological Survey (Holmes 1899, p. 455). King personally extracted it from Tertiary deposits at Table Mountain, Tuolumne County, California. Right: A modern Indian pestle.
Even Holmes (1899, p. 453) had to admit that the King pestle, which was placed in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, “may not be challenged with impunity.” Holmes searched the site very carefully and noted the presence of some modern Indian mealing stones, but nothing else. He stated: “I tried to learn whether it was possible that one of these objects could have become embedded in the exposed tufa deposits in recent or comparatively recent times, for such embedding sometimes results from resetting or recementing of loose materials, but no definite result was reached” (Holmes 1899, p. 454). One may rest assured that if Holmes had found the slightest evidence of recementing, he would have seized the opportunity to cast suspicion upon the pestle discovered by King.
Unable, however, to find anything to discredit the report, Holmes (1899, p. 454) was reduced to wondering “that Mr. King failed to publish it—that he failed to give to the world what could well claim to be the most important observation ever made by a geologist bearing upon the history of the human race, leaving it to come out through the agency of Dr. Becker, twenty-five years later.” But Becker (1891, p. 194) noted in his report: “I have submitted this statement of his discovery to Mr. King, who pronounces it correct.”
Sinclair (1908, pp. 113–114) nevertheless attempted to raise doubts about the King pestle. He stated: “As a geologist, Mr. King was a reliable observer and able to determine whether or not the implement was in place and formed an integral part of the mass of gravel in which it was imbedded. Secondary cementation does not seem to have been taken into consideration. On many of the outcrops of andesitic sandstone in the vicinity of this locality, secondary cementation is