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In addition to debating whether or not the cut marks on the Old Crow bones were made by stone tools or natural forces, scientists were concerned about the age of the bones. If the bones were seen as bearing signs of human work and if they were also dated to the Early Wisconsin period, that would challenge the date for the earliest entry of humans into North America. The view now dominant is that Siberian hunters crossed the Bering Strait land bridge in the latest Pleistocene and passed through an ice-free corridor into what is now the United States about 12,000 years ago. Nevertheless, as we shall see throughout this book, there is a lot of controversial, hotly debated evidence showing that human beings were present in the Americas far before 12,000 years ago. Those scientists favoring the 12,000-year date tend to believe the marks on the Old Crow bones were caused by geological action of some kind, even though the marks have in some cases been judged identical to those caused by stone tools. This is something we shall encounter again and again. Similarly, preconceptions about the relatively recent origin of anatomically modern humans often influence scientists to reject evidence that they would otherwise take as proof of a human presence.

2.3 The Anza-Borrego Desert, California (Middle Pleistocene)

Another recent example of incised bones like those found at St. Prest, again related to the presence of humans in the New World, is a discovery made by George Miller, curator of the Imperial Valley College Museum in El Centro, California. Miller, who died in 1989, reported that six mammoth bones excavated from the Anza-Borrego Desert bear scratches of the kind produced by stone tools. Uranium isotope dating carried out by the U.S. Geological Survey indicated that the bones are at least 300,000 years old, and paleo-magnetic dating and volcanic ash samples indicated an age of some 750,000 years (Graham 1988).

One established scholar said that Miller’s claim is “as reasonable as the Loch Ness Monster or a living mammoth in Siberia,” while Miller countered that “these people don’t want to see man here because their careers would go down the drain” (Graham 1988). Here, perhaps, we see preconceptions influencing the established scholar to reject evidence which, if given a more suitably recent date, he might have accepted.

The incised mammoth bones from the Anza-Borrego Desert came up in a conversation we had with Thomas Deméré, a paleontologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum (May 31, 1990). Deméré said he was by nature skeptical of claims such as those made by Miller. He called into question the professionalism with which the bones had been excavated, and pointed out that no stone tools had been found along with the fossils. Furthermore, Deméré suggested that it was very unlikely that anything about the find would ever be published in a scientific journal, because the referees who review articles probably would not pass it. We later learned from Julie Parks, the present curator of George Miller’s specimens, that Deméré had never inspected the fossils or visited the site of discovery, although he had been invited to do so (Parks, personal communication, June 1, 1990).

As of June 1990, the Anza-Borrego mammoth bones were still under study. Deposits of sandy matrix were being painstakingly removed from the incisions on the bones, so that the incisions could be examined by a scanning electron microscope. Hopefully, inspection of the minute striations on the surfaces of the cuts under high magnification will confirm whether or not they are characteristic of stone tools. Parks (personal communication, June 1, 1990) said that one incision apparently continues from one of the fossil bones to another bone that would have been located next to it when the mammoth skeleton was articulated. This is suggestive of a butchering mark. Accidental marks resulting from movement of the bones in the earth after the skeleton had broken up probably would not continue from one bone to another