Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [292]
The workers who found the skull gave it to Mr. Junor, their supervisor, a senior member of the public works division of the Port of Buenos Aires (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 318). Information about the skull was furnished to the Argentine paleontologist Florentino Ameghino by Mr. Edward Marsh Simpson, an engineer for Charles H. Walker & Co. of London, the company contracted to excavate the port of Buenos Aires (Ameghino 1909, p. 108; Hrdlicka 1912, p. 319). In the opinion of Ameghino, the skull removed from the rudder pit belonged to a Pliocene precursor of Homo sapiens. He called this precursor Diprothomo platensis.
Figure 6.1. Human skull taken from an Early Pleistocene formation in Buenos Aires, Argentina (Hrdlicka 1912, plate 49).
A. Hrdlicka (1912, p. 319) wrote: “Professor Ameghino [1909, p. 121] concludes from the information obtained from Mr. Simpson alone that the fragments of the skull came from the lower portion of the rudder-pit in Dry Dock No. 1 and from beneath the tosca. He states further, however, that beneath the tosca was found a layer of quartzy sand followed by a stratum of grey clay, and that it was in this layer of grey clay, 50 cm. [about 20 inches] below the floor of the dry dock, that the skull-cap of the Diprothomo was discovered.” Hrdlicka (1912, p. 321)
said about Ameghino’s opinion on the age of the deposits below the tosca: “The gray clay he identifies as belonging to the upper-most portion of the Pre-Ensenadean stratum, which is the most inferior part of the Pampean formation, and belongs to the base of the Pliocene.” The base of the Pliocene is now dated at approximately 5 million years before the present. But modern authorities say that the Ensenadan began 1.5 million years ago (Anderson 1984, p. 41) or 1 million years ago (Marshall et al. 1982, p. 1352). The Pre-Ensenadan stratum in which the Buenos Aires skull was found would thus be at least 1.0 –1.5 million years old. Even at 1 million years, the presence of a fully modern human skull anywhere in the world—what to speak of South America—is highly anomalous.
In the course of his investigation, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 319) found Mr. Simpson and Mr. Junor, and through them located Mr. J. E. Clark of Bahia Blanca, the foreman of the laborers who found the skull. Simpson revealed that he had not been present at the dry dock at the time the discovery had been made. He had simply received a report, but noted that he had been told there was more than one skull (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 319).
Hrdlicka (1912, p. 320) then reported the substance of the discussion he had with Mr. Junor: “Mr. Junor states that he did not see the find, but was told of it the next day, or perhaps the second day after, by the foreman, Mr. Clark. . . . The foreman brought Mr. Junor two pieces of the skull, and the latter saved them because they were said to have come from beneath the tosca, giving them later to the Museo Nacional. . . . As to the place from which the bones came, he remembers having been informed that the workmen had gotten through the floor of the dock into a sort of quicksand when the bones were encountered. . .
. The bones must have been just beneath the tosca, for a small quantity of tosca was adhering to them. . . . He did not examine the site from which the skull fragments given him were supposed to have come. No inquiries were made of the laborers.”
Relating the testimony of Clark, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 320) stated: “Mr. Clark states in his letter that the skull ‘was found at the commencement of the Rudder Pit at dock bottom’; he ‘is quite sure the skull was found at the Rudder Pit and under tosca’; and ‘it was the only one found in that locality, but there was another skull found in the sand at the entrance to Dock No. 4.’”
Bailey Willis, the geologist who accompanied Hrdlicka on his expedition to Argentina, related this account of the interviews they had made: “Mr. Junor was found at his home in Flores, a suburb of Buenos Aires, on the evening of May 7, 1910, and we were most courteously received. He appeared to be about 70 years of age, of sanguine temperament,