Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [381]
Breuil (1932) also recorded the presence of many other stone tools, including some rounded bola stones. He reported that in some features the stone tool industry was similar to that of the Mousterian period in Europe, although he mentioned that it would be pointless to attempt to fit the Choukoutien stone tool industry exactly into the European classifications. The Mousterian period is identified with the Neanderthals.
Black, along with Teilhard de Chardin, Pei, and Yang (Young), stated in similar fashion: “In a very broad sense, the Choukoutien culture could be defined as an industry of old palaeolithic type, showing some external Mousterian analogies. But no close comparison with any Asiatic or European industry can well be made at present” (Black et al. 1933, p. 133).
Later investigators added considerably to the collection of stone tools from Choukoutien. To date, over 100,000 have been found, including a variety of choppers, scrapers, and small pointed flakes. According to Jia Lanpo, the most common material is quartz, followed by sandstone and opal. Jia (1980, p. 28) described a “mastery of rather complex methods of manufacture.” He further stated: “The assemblage consists mainly of small tools but there are also larger ones, such as bifacial handaxes. . . . Scrapers of various types made on flakes are the most numerous. The blade after secondary working of the edge may be linear, convex, concave, multi-edged or disk-like. . . . The finest of the lot are the ‘points.’ About a hundred of them have been collected . . . their process of manufacture clearly indicates a higher level of skill. To make one, a flake is first struck from a core, then the edges are shaped until a slender point is achieved at one end. Up to now, nowhere in the world has yielded such finds of comparable quantity and workmanship” (Jia 1980, pp. 28–29).
Jia’s description suggests a relatively advanced industry at Choukoutien, but other researchers have expressed differing opinions about the quality of the stone tools found there. David Pilbeam (1972, p. 166) quoted Kenneth Oakley as saying that the stone tools were similar to the crude Oldowan tools from Africa. Paleoanthropologists have highlighted different features of the stone industry at Choukoutien—hence one may get a completely different impression depending upon whose account one reads.
As far as bone tools were concerned, Breuil noted that the ancient population at Choukoutien had systematically employed a sizable industry. Large antlers, too big to be effectively used in one piece, had been cut down into manageable tool shapes. Since deer antlers are extremely difficult to cut, the place where an incision was to be made was first burned with fire, then a V-shaped groove was gouged out, and finally the bone was broken by a blow.
In 1931, Black, apparently embarrassed by the new revelations about fire and tools from Choukoutien, sought to explain how such important evidence had for several years escaped his attention and that of the other researchers at the site. In a report delivered at the same time as that of Breuil, Black (1931, p. 107) tried to cover himself on the critical question of fire: “From time to time since 1929 occasional specimens of apparently charred or partly calcined animal bones have been recovered from among the material excavated from the Main Deposit at Choukoutien. The physical appearance of these specimens left little room for doubt that they had been subjected at some time to the action of fire. But until the present season it has remained a question whether or not such specimens had been burned within the Choukoutien caves while the latter were occupied by Sinanthropus or were altered simply as the result of a surface fire from natural causes and had subsequently been washed within the deposit. In view of this uncertainty no report on these specimens has hitherto been published.”
This seems unusual, especially when considered in the light of the following statement,