Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [321]
6.3 Pre-tertiary Discoveries
We shall now consider rare cases of anatomical evidence for the presence of human beings in pre-Tertiary geological contexts. As we have seen in earlier chapters, some scientists believed ape-men existed as far back as the Miocene and Eocene. A few bold thinkers even proposed that fully human beings were alive during those periods. But now we are going to proceed into times still more remote. Since most scientists had trouble with Tertiary humans, we can just imagine how difficult it would have been for them to give any serious consideration to the cases we are about to discuss. One is tempted not to mention such finds as these because they seem unbelievable. But the result of such a policy would be that we discuss evidence only for things we already believe. And unless our current beliefs represent reality in total, this would not be a wise thing to do.
6.3.1 Macoupin, Illinois (Carboniferous)
In December of 1862, the following brief but intriguing report appeared in a journal called The Geologist: “In Macoupin county, Illinois, the bones of a man were recently found on a coal-bed capped with two feet of slate rock, ninety feet below the surface of the earth. . . . The bones, when found, were covered with a crust or coating of hard glossy matter, as black as coal itself, but when scraped away left the bones white and natural.”
We wrote to the State Geological Survey Division of the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources for information about the age of the coal in which the bones were found. We received the following response from C. Brian Trask of the Geological Survey, who wrote in a letter dated July 9, 1985: “In response to your inquiry concerning age of coal, the youngest bituminous coal beds in Illinois are found in the upper Pennsylvanian system. . . . The coal mined in the 1860’s in Macoupin County is probably the Herrin (No. 6) Coal, although the Colchester (No. 2) Coal occurs at this depth locally in the western part of the county. The Herrin Coal is late Desmoinesian (middle to late Westphalian D) in age.” In North America, the Pennsylvanian makes up the latter half of the Carboniferous, which extends from 286 million to 360 million years ago. From the information provided by Trask, it would thus appear that the coal in which the Macoupin County skeleton was found is at least 286 million years old and might be as much as 320 million years old.
6.3.2 Human Footprints from the carboniferous
Our final examples of anomalous pre-Tertiary evidence are not in the category of fossil human bones, but rather in the category of fossil humanlike footprints. Professor W. G. Burroughs, head of the department of geology at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, reported (1938, p. 46): “during the beginning of the Upper Carboniferous (Coal Age) Period, creatures that walked on their two hind legs and had human-like feet, left tracks on a sand beach in Rockcastle County, Kentucky. This was the period known as the Age of Amphibians when animals moved about on four legs or more rarely hopped, and their feet did not have a human appearance. But in Rockcastle, Jackson and several other counties in Kentucky, as well as in places from Pennsylvania to Missouri inclusive, creatures that had feet strangely human in appearance and that walked on two hind legs did exist. The writer has proved the existence of these creatures in Kentucky. With the cooperation of Dr. C. W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Smithsonian Institution, it has been shown that similar creatures lived in Pennsylvania and Missouri.”
The Upper Carboniferous (the Pennsylvanian) began about 320 million years ago (Harland et