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To sum it up, the arguments presented by Oakley and Montagu suggest the Galley Hill skeleton may have been a recent burial. But these arguments are not conclusive enough to invalidate the stratigraphic observations of Elliott and Heys, who, like Keith, were convinced the Galley Hill skeleton was genuinely ancient.

As can be seen, old bones point beyond themselves, quite obliquely, to events in the remote and inaccessible past. Controversy about their age is almost certain to arise, and in many cases the available evidence is insufficient to allow disputes to be definitely settled. This would appear to be true of Galley Hill. Since

1949, most scientists have, however, followed the lead of Oakley and Montagu in assigning the Galley Hill skeleton a recent date.

6.1.2.2 The Moulin Quignon Jaw: A Possible Case of Forgery

In 1863, Boucher de Perthes discovered an anatomically modern human jaw in the Moulin Quignon pit at Abbeville, France. He removed it from a layer of black sand and gravel that also contained stone implements of the Acheulean type (Keith 1928, p. 270). This black layer was 16.5 feet below the surface of the pit. According to Gowlett (1984, p. 88), the Acheulean sites at Abbeville are of the same age as the Holstein interglacial, and would thus be about 330,000 years old.

Upon hearing of the discovery of the Abbeville jaw and tools, a group of distinguished British geologists visited Abbeville and were at first favorably impressed (Keith 1928, p. 271). Later, however, it was alleged that some of the stone implements in Boucher de Perthes’s collection were forgeries “foisted on him by the workmen” (Keith 1928, p. 271). The British scientists began to doubt the authenticity of the jaw. Taking a tooth found with the jaw back to England, they cut it open and were surprised at how well preserved and fresh it appeared. Also they determined that it contained 8 percent “animal matter” (organic matter in today’s terms). Sir Arthur Keith pointed out, however, that in the same museum where the scientists met there were animal bones of Pleistocene age, prepared for display by John Hunter in 1792, containing up to 30 percent animal matter.

There are also reports of bones from the Late Pliocene Red Crag formation with up to 8 percent animal matter (Osborn 1921, p. 568).

It is not clear exactly how old the bones prepared by Hunter actually were—they might have been Late Pleistocene, perhaps as little as 10,000 years old. Even so, the general point that Keith was making is relevant. As we show in Appendix 1, there is much evidence that the amount of organic matter remaining in a bone (as measured by nitrogen content) is not always a reliable indicator of a bone’s age. Neither is the degree of fossilization. The rate at which a bone’s organic matter decays, or the rate at which minerals accumulate in a bone, varies greatly from one location to another.

According to Ronald Millar (1972, p. 72), the Moulin Quignon jaw had a coloring “which was found to be superficial” and “was easily scrubbed from one of the portions of bone, revealing a surface which bore little of the erosion common in old bones.” Some took this to be an indication of forgery. But Keith (1928, p. 272) interpreted this differently: “The mandible was originally covered by the black specks of the stratum in which it lay. Mr. Busk found he could brush these specks off; that does not invalidate its authenticity.”

Prestwich was also said to have discovered that the flint tools from Moulin Quignon had a superficial coloring that could easily be washed off. But other pieces of flint (not artifacts) from the same site had a coloring that could not be scrubbed off. This was also taken by British scientists as an indication of forgery.

In May 1863, British geologists met with their French counterparts in Paris to jointly decide the status of the jaw. According to Keith, the French maintained the jaw was authentic despite arguments by the British that it was a forgery.

Keith (1928, p. 271) stated: “French anthropologists continued to believe