Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [455]
According to Tobias (1968, pp. 190–191), all of these mandibles displayed “neanderthaloid” features. He placed them, along with other neanderthaloid fossils, in the subspecies Homo sapiens rhodesiensis, which he regarded as transitional between Homo erectus and more developed African Neanderthals.
In 1960, Louis Leakey (1960d, p. xix), retreating from his earlier view that the Kanam jaw was sapiens-like, wrote: “it becomes highly probable that the Kanam mandible represents, in fact, a female of Zinjanthropus.”
Leakey had found Zinjanthropus in 1959, at Olduvai Gorge (Section 11.4.1). He briefly promoted this apelike creature as the first toolmaker, and thus the first truly humanlike being. Shortly thereafter, fossils of Homo habilis were found at Olduvai. Leakey quickly demoted Zinjanthropus from his status as toolmaker, placing him among the robust australopithecines (A. boisei ).
In the early 1970s, Leakey’s son Richard, working at Lake Turkana, Kenya, discovered fossil jaws of Homo habilis that resembled the Kanam jaw. Since the Lake Turkana Homo habilis jaws were discovered with a fauna similar to that at Kanam, the elder Leakey changed his mind once more, suggesting that the Kanam jaw could be assigned to Homo habilis (L. Leakey 1972, p. 36; Cole 1975, p. 362).
That scientists have attributed the Kanam jaw to almost every known hominid (Australopithecus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Neanderthal man, Early Homo sapiens, anatomically modern Homo sapiens) shows the difficulties involved in properly classifying hominid fossil remains.
Tobias’s suggestion that the Kanam jaw came from a variety of early Homo sapiens, with neanderthaloid features, has won wide acceptance. Yet as can be seen in Figure 11.4, which shows outlines of the Kanam mandible and other hominid mandibles, the contour of the Kanam mandible’s chin region is similar to that of the Border Cave specimen (f ), recognized as Homo sapiens sapiens, and to that of a modern South African native (g). All three share two key features of the modern human chin, namely, an incurvation toward the top and a swelling outward at the base.
Figure 11.4 The outlines of the mandibles shown here (not to scale) were traced from published photographs, except for (a) and (g), which were traced from a drawing. (a) Australopithecus, Omo, Ethiopia (Eckhardt 1972, p. 103); (b) Homo erectus, Heidelberg (Mauer), Germany (Osborn 1916, p. 98); (c) Early Homo sapiens, Arago, France (Stringer et al. 1984, p. 64); (d) Neanderthal, Shanidar, Iraq (Gowlett 1984, p. 104); (e) Homo sapiens rhodesiensis (“neanderthaloid” according to P. V. Tobias), Cave of Hearths, South Africa (Tobias 1971, p. 338); (f ) Homo sapiens sapiens, Border Cave, South Africa (Bräuer 1984, p. 381); (g) Homo sapiens sapiens, modern South African native (Zuckerman 1954, p. 308); (h) the Kanam mandible (Tobias 1962, p. 345).
But even if one were to accept Tobias’s view that the Kanam jaw was neanderthaloid, one would still not expect to discover Neanderthals in the Early Pleistocene, over 1.9 million years ago. Neanderthaloid hominids came into existence at most 400,000 years ago (Bräuer 1984, p. 394) and persisted until about 30,000 or 40,000 years ago, according to most accounts. We note that some workers (Bräuer 1984) confine the Neanderthal line to Eurasia and a small area of North Africa adjacent to Europe. These workers would not expect to find Neanderthals at Kanam in East Africa.
11.2.8 Chemical Testing Of the Kanam And Kanjera Fossils
To ascertain the age of the Kanam jaw and Kanjera skulls, K. P. Oakley of the British Museum performed fluorine, nitrogen, and uranium content tests.
The Kanam jaw and the Kanjera skulls had about the same fluorine content as other bones from