Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [281]
In a letter dated July 30, 1987, Ron Witte of the New Jersey Geological Survey told us that the stratum containing the Trenton femur and skull fragments is from the Sangamon interglacial and is about 107,000 years old. According to standard ideas, human beings of modern type arose in southern Africa about 100,000 years ago and migrated to America at most 30,000 years ago.
6.1.2 Some Middle Pleistocene skeletal remains from Europe
During the nineteenth century, several discoveries of human skeletal remains were made in Middle Pleistocene formations in Europe. The reports we have studied raise doubts about the true age of these bones. We have nevertheless included them in our discussion for the sake of completeness. The presence of these skeletons in Middle Pleistocene strata could be attributed to recent intrusive burial, mistakes in reporting, or fraud. Nonetheless, there are reasons for thinking that the skeletons might in fact be of Middle Pleistocene age. We shall now briefly review some of the more noteworthy cases.
6.1.2.1 Galley Hill
In 1888, workmen removing deposits at Galley Hill, near London, England, exposed a bed of chalk. The overlying layers of sand, loam, and gravel were about 10 or 11 feet thick. One workman, Jack Allsop, informed Robert Elliott, a collector of prehistoric items, that he had discovered a human skeleton firmly embedded in these deposits about 8 feet below the surface and about 2 feet above the chalk bed (Keith 1928, pp. 250–266).
According to Elliott, Allsop had removed the skull but left the rest of the skeleton in place. Elliott stated that he saw the skeleton firmly embedded in the stratum: “I carefully examined the section on either side of the remains, for some distance, drawing the attention of my son, Richard, who was with me, and of Jack Allsop to it. It presented an unbroken face of gravel, stratified horizontally in bands of sand, small shingle, gravel, and, lower down, beds of clay and clayey loam, with occasional stones in it—and it was in and below this that the remains were found. We carefully looked for any signs of the section being disturbed, but failed: the stratification being unbroken, and much the same as the section in the angle of the pit remaining to this day” (Keith 1928, p. 253).
Elliott then removed the skeleton and later gave it to E. T. Newton (1895), who published a report granting it great age. An independent observer, a school master named M. H. Heys, reported that he had also seen the bones embedded in undisturbed deposits before Elliott removed the skeleton. Heys did not know Elliott at the time he examined the bones, and in fact he saw the bones before Elliott saw them. Heys reported that he saw the skull in situ just after it was exposed by a workman excavating the deposits and before it was removed from them.
Heys said about the bones: “No doubt could possibly arise to the observation of an ordinary intelligent person of their deposition contemporaneously with that of the gravel, for there was a bed of loam, in the base of which these human relics were embedded. The underneath part of the skull, as far as I could see, was resting on a sandy gravel. The stratum of loam was undisturbed. This undisturbed state of the stratum was so palpable to the workman that he said, ‘The man or animal was not buried by anybody.’ The gravel underneath the skull, of which I took particular notice, was stratified and undisturbed” ( Keith 1928, p. 255).
Numerous stone tools were recovered from the Galley Hill site. Newton (1895, p. 521) reported: “Mr. Elliott has obtained several types of implements from this pit; namely, tongueor spear-shaped forms, ovoid implements, hand hatchets, chipping tools, drills or borers, and flakes of various kinds.” Newton (1895, p. 521) added: “There are also many rude flakes and roughly-chipped flints in this gravel, the human origin of which