Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [301]
In 1883, Professor Giuseppe Sergi, an anatomist from the University of Rome, visited Ragazzoni and personally examined the human remains at the Technical Institute of Brescia. After studying the bones, he determined they represented four individuals—an adult male, an adult female, and two children.
Sergi also visited the site at Castenedolo. He wrote (1884, p. 315): “I went there accompanied by Ragazzoni, on the 14th of April. The trench that had been excavated in 1880 was still there, and the strata were clearly visible in their geological succession. In order to see still better, we cut a fresh vertical section down to the bank of coral. . . . The terrain was undisturbed, and Professor Ragazzoni said to me that I was seeing the undisturbed clay just as he had found it when he extracted the skeletons. And what was true of the clay, was also true of the underlying strata, which were also found intact, with no sign of resorting.” In his report, Sergi (1884, p. 315) also wrote: “What is, one might demand, the guarantee of the authenticity of a discovery of this type? I believe that any doubt can be removed if the person who made the discovery adopted the necessary methods and noted all the circumstances with due care and conscientiousness. Professor Ragazzoni is a geologist and was quite familiar with the stratigraphic conditions of that region, and all of Lombardy, and would have been able to immediately recognize any movement of the terrain or signs that the blue clay had been mixed with materials from the overlying strata.”
Sergi (1884, pp. 315–316) added: “It is especially noteworthy that the color and structure of the strata in question are quite different. If a hole had been excavated for a burial, then it would not have been refilled exactly as before. The clay from the upper surface layers, recognizable by its intense red color, would have been mixed in. Such discoloration and disturbance of the strata would not have escaped the notice of even an ordinary person what to speak of a trained geologist. One may also note that we are not talking about just one small area from which the bones of a single individual were taken, but also of a larger area, many square meters in size, from which the remains of three other individuals, lying close together, were taken. If these latter three were burials why was there not observed any artificial displacement of the overlying strata? Were such signs of burial overlooked? That might have happened in the case of a single unexpected discovery, made too suddenly to properly observe the circumstances; but as we have seen, the excavations were planned in advance and carried out with all due caution at different times and in various conditions, allowing sufficient time for observation and examination. Signs of mixing of the strata may have been missed the first time, but certainly not the second, third, and fourth times.”
Gabriel de Mortillet (1883, pp. 71–72) did not believe that the Castenedolo skeletons were truly of Pliocene antiquity. Responding to de Mortillet’s negative opinion, Sergi (1884, p. 316) wrote: “De Mortillet, in connection with this discovery, did not attempt to dispute the fact that there was no sign of disturbance in the strata. He said, however, that this observation was not sufficient to rule out burial, because ‘the action of the sea would have dispersed the bones of the skeletons.’ We note, however, the presence of four individuals—two adults (a male and female) and two children, indicating a family shipwrecked on a Pliocene coastline. The bones of all of the skeletons—except for one—were in fact dispersed, which accounts for the fact that they were discovered at successive times, with the fragments found in diverse parts of an extensive