Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [457]
Oakley had to stretch even further to account for the Kanam jaw. After pointing out that Tobias had said the Kanam jaw was comparable to the Middle Pleistocene Rabat jaw, Oakley (1975, p. 152) said: “I suggest that during some interval in Middle Pleistocene times the jaw lay on a surface littered with fossils weathered out from the Kanam beds and it became embedded with these derived fossils in a block of surface limestone which was eventually down-faulted or trapped in a fissure penetrating the Kanam Beds. This would explain the low uranium content and the high degree of calcification, and at the same time take into account L. S. B. Leakey’s statement in his memoirs . . . that Juma Gitau discovered the Kanam jaw fragment while engaged on extracting a molar of tooth of Deinotherium. As he expressed it to me: ‘the jaw was in the same block as an undoubted Lower Pleistocene fossil.’”
Oakley had no trouble inventing special geological scenarios to explain away the stratigraphic evidence. But he offered no proof, such as positive signs of faulting, that these scenarios were correct. Operating as Oakley did, one can easily dispose of any unwanted stratigraphic evidence whatsoever.
But even if we do grant stratigraphic resorting, this does not necessarily show that the hominid fossils at Kanam and Kanjera were younger than the mammalian fossils at these sites. For example, Tobias (1968, p. 181) said: “The low radiometric values of the Kanam mandible do not necessarily bespeak a recent age for the jaw, but only a different history and probably a different age as compared with the other Kanam fauna.” In fact, if the Kanam jaw had been washed in from a Late Pliocene deposit with a low uranium content, it could be older than the Early Pleistocene animal fossils in the Kanam bed.
Tobias, however, chose a more comfortable alternative. “Nothing in these results,” he said “would rule out the possibility that the Kanam mandible was derived from Middle Pleistocene beds in the vicinity, such as those of Rawe close to Kanam West” (Tobias 1968, p. 181). A late Middle Pleistocene date would be favorable for his view that the jaw is neanderthaloid.
Significantly, the uranium content values that Oakley reported in 1974 were apparently not the first he had obtained. In a paper published in 1958, Oakley said, immediately after discussing the uranium content testing of the Kanam jaw: “Applied to the Kanjera bones our tests did not show any discrepancy between the human skulls and the associated fauna” (1958, p. 53). It would appear that Oakley was not satisfied with these early tests and later performed additional tests on the Kanjera bones, obtaining results that were more to his liking.
Our review of the chemical testing of the Kanam and Kanjera fossils leads us to the following conclusions. The fluorine and nitrogen content tests gave results consistent with the human bones being as old as their accompanying faunas. This interpretation can nevertheless be challenged. The uranium content test gave results consistent with the human bones being younger than their accompanying faunas. But here again, if one chooses to challenge this interpretation, one will find ample grounds to do so.
All in all, the results of chemical and radiometric tests do not eliminate the possibility that the Kanam and Kanjera human fossils are contemporary with their accompanying faunas. The Kanjera skulls, said to be anatomically modern (Groves 1989, p. 291), would thus be equivalent in age to Olduvai Bed IV, which is 400,000 to 700,000 years old. The taxonomic status of the Kanam jaw is uncertain. Recent workers hesitate to call