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a detailed treatment of the Harrison eoliths. There are several good reasons for doing so. The authors have discovered that modern students of paleoanthropology are generally not at all acquainted with many nineteenth-century discoveries demonstrating the presence of humans of the modern type in Tertiary times. And when these discoveries are brought to the attention of modern students, they tend to categorize them as “crackpot” or “oddball” cases that somehow gained some public notoriety and were quickly dismissed when brought to the attention of scientific authorities. We have also noted a strong prejudice against anomalous evidence that is “old.” Old accepted evidence is honored— for example, Java man, highlighted in all modern textbooks, was a nineteenth-century discovery. But the less familiar nineteenth-century evidence, which goes against the theories presented in modern textbooks, is tainted with suspicion, more so if one has never even heard of it before. In such cases, one often encounters in modern students a very strong assumption that if one has not even heard of some anomalous evidence, then it must have been completely rejected on purely scientific grounds long ago. One reason for presenting a detailed account of anomalous evidence is to show that it was not always of a marginal, crackpot nature. Rather anomalous evidence was quite often the center of serious, longstanding controversy within the very heart of elite scientific circles, with advocates holding scientific credentials and positions just as prestigious as those of the opponents. By presenting detailed accounts of the interplay of conflicting opinion, we hope to give the reader a chance to answer for himself or herself the crucial question—was the evidence actually rejected on purely scientific grounds, or was it dropped from consideration and forgotten simply because it did not lie within the parameters of certain circumscribed theories?

In his book Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives, W. J. Sollas of Oxford rejected Harrison’s finds ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 298 ). In response, Harrison sent him an eolith. On February 1, 1912, Sollas wrote to Harrison: “The specimen you send for my inspection is one of the most interesting of your finds that I have seen. I read its history as follows: (1) Natural agencies detached it as an irregular flake from a flint nodule. . . . (2) It lay in the bed of a stream with the rough side uppermost and was battered on the exposed surface by pebbles, which have left percussion cones as their mark. . . . (3) Still later, it was chipped in a remarkable manner over a portion of its margin” ( E. Harrison 1928, p. 298 ). Here Sollas attributed a remarkable sequence of manufacturing steps to purely natural forces. The end result was a sharp-edged flint implement, something not usually to be expected from the movement of stones in a stream, the random battering of which, as modern authorities point out and anyone can see, tends to produced rounded pebbles.

Sollas then observed: “It is the chipping which is of especial interest to both of us. Two explanations may be given: (1) That the chipping is the result of superincumbent pressure acting upon a yielding substratum. In favour of this it may be pointed out that the chipping is confined to the margin, which we might judge from the general shape of the stone to have thinned off a blunt edge. (2) That the chipping was done by man. In favour of this is the fact that over one part of the specimen the chipping is such as to remove all sharp edges, as if it had been intended for a comfortable hold for the hand . . . while on the opposite side the chipping has produced a projecting point which would be very effective if the flint were used as a weapon for striking a blow. In fact this flint would make a splendid ‘knuckle duster.’ I should not wonder if this was its true nature. But I should not like to commit myself to the assertion that it was” (E. Harrison 1928, pp. 298–299). One wonders why he should not like to commit himself. The points raised here by Sollas himself