Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [64]
2.16 Bone implements From Below the Red Crag, England (Pliocene to Eocene)
In the early twentieth century, J. Reid Moir, the discoverer of many anomalously old flint implements (Section 3.3), described “a series of mineralised bone implements of a primitive type from below the base of the Red and Coralline Crags of Suffolk” (1917a, pp. 116–131). The top of the Red Crag in East Anglia is now considered to mark the boundary of the Pliocene and Pleistocene, and would thus date back about 2.0–2.5 million years (Romer 1966, p. 334; Nilsson 1983, p. 106). The older Coralline Crag is Late Pliocene and would thus be at least 2.5–3.0 million years old. The beds below the Red and Coralline Crags, the detritus beds (Table 2.1, p. 78), contain materials ranging from Pliocene to Eocene in age (Section 3.3.2). Objects found there could thus be anywhere from 2 million to 55 million years old. One group of Moir’s specimens is of triangular shape (Figure 2.7). In his report, Moir (1917a, p. 122) stated: “These have all been formed from wide, flat, thin pieces of bone, probably portions of large ribs, which have been so fractured as to now present a definite form. This triangular form has, in every case, been produced by fractures across the natural ‘grain’ of the bone.” Moir (1917a, p. 116) then began to describe some of his attempts to reproduce the specimens: “having conducted a number of experiments in which mineralised and unmineralised bones were subjected to the effects of fortuitous blows and pressure, and after having fractured numerous modern shank bones of the bullock by striking and cutting them with flints and other stones held in the hand with a view of thus shaping them to the forms of the sub-Crag examples, he [the author] is compelled to regard these latter specimens as undoubted works of man.” According to Moir, the triangular pieces of fossilized whale bone discovered in the strata below the Coralline Crag might have once been used as spear points.
Figure 2.7. Three bone tools from the detritus bed beneath the Coralline Crag, which contains materials ranging from Pliocene to Eocene in age. These implements could thus be anywhere from 2 to 55 million years old (Moir 1917a, plate 26).
Moir had himself collected most of the specimens, but he also described one discovered by another naturalist, a Mr. Whincopp, of Woodbridge in Suffolk, who had in his private collection a “piece of fossil rib partially sawn across at both ends” (Moir 1917a, p. 117). This object came from the detritus bed below the Red Crag and was “regarded by both the discoverer and the late Rev. Osmond Fisher as affording evidence of human handiwork” (Moir 1917a, p. 117). Indications of sawing would be quite unexpected on a fossil bone of this age. A piece of sawn wood was recovered from the more recent Cromer Forest Bed in the same region (Section 2.20).
Osmond Fisher, who was a Fellow of the Geological Society, made some interesting discoveries of his own. In a review published in The Geological Magazine, Fisher (1912, p. 218) wrote: “When digging for fossils in the Eocene of Barton Cliff I found a piece of jet-like substance about 9½ inches square and 2¼ inches thick. . . . It bore on at least one side what seemed to me marks of the chopping which had formed it into its accurately square shape. The specimen is now in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge.” Jet is a compact velvety-black coal that takes a good polish and is often used as jewelry. The Eocene period dates back about 38–55 million years from the present.
2.17 Dewlish Elephant Trench, England (Early Pleistocene to Late Pliocene)
Osmond Fisher also discovered an interesting feature in the landscape of Dorsetshire—the elephant trench at Dewlish. Fisher (1912, pp. 918 – 919) stated in his 1912 review: “This trench was excavated in chalk and was 12 feet deep, and of such a width