Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [489]
If, for example, one interprets a scatter of stones and bones as having been deposited simultaneously, one might talk of a habitation site. But if the bones and artifacts were deposited one by one over the course of hundreds or thousands of years, as animals chanced to die, and scavenging hominids chanced to drop stone tools, the supposition that one has found a habitation site becomes far less likely.
About the reputed living floor at the famous Zinjanthropus site at Olduvai, where remains of Homo habilis were also found nearby, Binford (1981, p. 282) said: “given its demonstrably low integrity and resolution, arguments about base camps, hominid hunting, sharing of food, and so forth are certainly premature and most likely wildly inaccurate. The only clear picture obtained is that of a hominid scavenging the kills and death sites of other predator-scavengers for abandoned anatomical parts of low food utility, primarily for purposes of extracting bone marrow. Some removal of marrow bones from kills is indicated, but there is no evidence of ‘carrying food home.’ Transport of the scavenged parts away from the kill site to more protected locations in a manner identical to that of all other scavengers is all that one need imagine to account for the unambiguous facts preserved in Olduvai.”
Thus, according to Binford, Homo habilis was definitely not a hunter. In fact, Binford has concluded that hunting is an activity exclusively characteristic of modern Homo sapiens. “There are many people,” he said, “who are just outraged because I’ve suggested that early men, including the Neanderthals, weren’t hunters” (A. Fisher 1988a, p. 37).
There are some scientists, such as Henry Bunn of the University of Wisconsin (A. Fisher 1988a, p. 38), who have disputed Binford’s conclusions about the Olduvai sites. Nevertheless, Binford’s analysis provides a refreshing alternative to the usual overly humanized presentation of “Homo” habilis.
“There were all these wonderful renderings in popular magazines and books of little bands of bushmanlike people sitting around with daddy off hunting and momma gathering plant foods and grandma teaching the baby. But that was just a projection of modern man onto ancient man,” declared Binford in an interview (A. Fisher 1988a, p. 37). “We have had far too much of what I tend to think of as the National Geographic approach to research,” said Binford (1981, p. 297).
Binford’s revised view of the cultural evidence at Homo habilis sites, together with the revised view of Homo habilis anatomy, raises many questions about how humanlike Homo habilis really was.
Finally, we should remember that Homo habilis is not the only creature that could have been responsible for the stone tools found at sites yielding Homo habilis fossils. The same is true of the circle of stones found at Olduvai site DK, interpreted by some as part of a shelter. Mary Leakey said that living African tribal people make and use the same kinds of tools and erect the same kinds of shelters (Section 3.7.3). This suggests that beings like modern Homo sapiens, rather than Homo habilis, could have made both the tools and the shelter about 1.5 million to 2.0 million years ago in the Early Pleistocene.
11.7.5 Does Homo Habilis Deserve To Exist?
In light of the contradictory evidence connected with Homo habilis, some researchers have proposed that there was no justification for “creating” this species in the first place.
Doubts about the taxonomic reality of Homo habilis arose right from the start. Even Tobias and Napier, who had joined Louis Leakey in proposing the new species in April of 1964, expressed