Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [294]
Hrdlicka (1912, p. 326) noted: “In a detailed study of the specimen it soon became plain that almost the entire original description by Ameghino had miscarried by reason of the fragment having been placed and considered in a wrong position. . . . The accidental and faulty position of the fragment . . . had caused the forehead to appear much lower than it is. . . . these results of faulty orientation combined have helped to make the specimen look extraordinary and primitive, even unhuman.” Hrdlicka’s views on the positioning of the skull fragment were supported in an independent report by G. Schwalbe of Germany (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 343).
Describing the skull in its new orientation, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 332) wrote: “It was fairly but not very high; its capacity was surely not below 1,350, more probably between 1,400 and 1,500 cc.” Hrdlicka (1912, p. 332) further stated: “Every feature shows it to be a portion of the skull of man himself; it bears no evidence of having belonged to an early or physically primitive man, but to a well-developed and physically modern-like human individual.”
A firm believer in evolution and the recent origin of the human species, Hrdlicka (1912, p. 2) stated: “no conclusion can be more firmly founded than that man is the product of an extraordinary progressive differentiation from some anthropogenic stock, which developed somewhere in the later Tertiary, among the primates.”
Hrdlicka therefore believed that fossils of human ancestors from the Tertiary and Quaternary should be to a greater or lesser degree apelike, as confirmed by the discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus in Java in 1891. Any fossils of anatomically modern human appearance from the Tertiary and Quaternary had to be explained away as intrusive burials or hoaxes. Hrdlicka’s prejudice is evident in the following statement (1912, p. 2): “to establish beyond doubt the geological antiquity of human remains, it should be shown conclusively that the specimen or specimens were found in geologically ancient deposits, whose age is confirmed by the presence of paleontologic remains; and the bones should present evidence of organic as well as inorganic alterations, and show also morphologic characteristics referable to an earlier type. In addition, it is necessary to prove in every case by unexceptional evidence that the human remains were not introduced, either purposely or accidentally, in later times into the formation in which discovered.”
Hrdlicka (1912, p. 2) amplified this view in another statement: “On the basis of what is positively known to-day in regard to early man, and with the present scientific views regarding man’s evolution, the anthropologist has a right to expect that human bones, particularly crania, exceeding a few thousand years in age, and more especially those of geologic antiquity, shall present marked morphological differences, and that these differences shall point in the direction of more primitive forms.”
Hrdlicka (1912, p. 3) further stated: “The antiquity, therefore, of any human skeletal remains which do not present marked differences from those of modern man may be regarded, on morphologic grounds, as only insignificant geologically, not reaching in time, in all probability, beyond the modern, still unfinished, geologic formations. Should other claims be made in any case, the burden of proof would rest heavily on those advancing them.” Here we have a very clear formulation of the dubious principle of dating by morphology. We also see the application of a double standard in the treatment of evidence, with finds contrary to evolutionary expectations being subjected to much more rigorous scrutiny than finds conforming to evolutionary expectations.
Hrdlicka