Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [323]
Burroughs also consulted a sculptor. Kent Previette (1953) wrote: “The sculptor said that carving in that kind of sandstone could not have been done without leaving artificial marks. Enlarged photomicrographs and enlarged infrared photographs failed to reveal any ‘indications of carving or cutting of any kind.’”
If the prints were not carvings, were they left by a nonhuman Carboniferous species? The most advanced land animals then existing were amphibians that resembled crocodiles and moved about on four legs. But Burroughs (1938, p. 47) wrote: “There are no indications of front feet although the rock is large enough to have recorded front feet if front feet had been used to move about. In the pair of footprints that show the left and right feet about parallel to each other, the distance between the feet is about the same as that of a normal human being. Nowhere on this rock nor on another rock outcrop that also has numerous similar tracks upon its surface, is there any sign that these creatures had tails.” Nor were there any belly marks (Previette 1953).
Burroughs (1938, p. 47) added: “The creatures that made the tracks have not as yet been identified, but a name for these creatures has been chosen by the writer with the co-operation of Dr. Frank Thone, Editor in Biology, Science Service, Washington, D.C., Dr. C. W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Smithsonian Institution, and Miss Charlotte Ludlum, Professor of Latin, Berea College. The name chosen is Phenanthropus Mirabilis.” The word phenanthropus means “looks human,” and mirabilis means “remarkable.”
Burroughs himself stopped short of claiming that the prints were made by humans, but his presentation leaves one with the strong impression that they were human. When asked about them, Burroughs said, “They look human. That is what makes them especially interesting, as man according to some textbooks has been here only a million and a half years” (Previette 1953). But mainstream science reacted predictably to any suggestion, that the prints were made by humans. Science News Letter (1938b) published an article titled “Human-Like Tracks in Stone Are Riddle to Scientists.” A subtitle stated: “They Can’t Be Human Because They Are Much Too Old —But What Strange Biped Amphibian Can Have Made Them?” Despite the doubts of scientists, the Burroughs footprints continued to attract public attention, which might explain why geologist Albert G. Ingalls felt compelled to set matters straight in Scientific American.
Ingalls (1940, p. 14) stated that a scientist, confronted with the suggestion that the tracks were human, would have little choice but to reply: “What? You want man in the Carboniferous? Entirely and absolutely— totally and completely— impossible. We admit we don’t know exactly what made the prints, but we do know one agency that didn’t, and that is man in the Carboniferous.”
But what about scientific detachment—the willingness to give up established ideas or tentative hypotheses when confronted with contrary evidence? Ingalls (1940, p. 14) wrote: “Science is like the streets of New York: it is never finished, and is always being torn up, often in a major way. . . . Nevertheless, asking the scientist for man in the Carboniferous is like asking the historian for Diesel engines in ancient Sumeria. The comparison is no exaggeration but an understatement. If man, or even his ape ancestor, or even that ape ancestor’s early mammalian ancestor, existed as far back as in the Carboniferous Period in any shape, then the whole science of geology is so completely wrong that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving. Hence, for the present at least, science rejects the attractive explanation that man made these mysterious prints in the mud of the Carboniferous with his