RECENT EXAMPLES OF EOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS FROM THE AMERICAS

RECENT EXAMPLES OF EOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS FROM THE AMERICAS

Despite the best efforts of Barnes and Breuil, the eolith question continues to haunt archeologists. Several anomalously old crude stone tool industries of Eolithic type hav 737p1519h e been discovered in the Americas.

Most archeologists say Siberian hunters crossed into Alaska on a land bridge that existed when the last glaciation lowered sea levels. During this period, the Canadian ice sheet blocked southward migration until about 12,000 years ago, when the first American immigrants followed an ice free passage to what is now the United States. These people were the so-called Clovis hunters, famous for their characteristic spear points. These corre­spond to the highly evolved stone implements of the later Paleolithic in Europe.

Nevertheless, many sites, excavated with modern archeological methods, have yielded dates as great as 30,000 years for humans in America. These sites include El Cedral in northern Mexico, Santa Barbara Island off California, and the rock-shelter of Boquierao do Sitio da Pedra Furada in northern Brazil. Other controver­sial sites are far older than 30,000 years.

GEORGE CARTER AND THE TEXAS STREET SITE

A good example of a controversial American early stone tool industry reminiscent of the European eoliths is the one discovered by George Carter in the 1950s at the Texas Street excavation in San Diego. At this site, Carter claimed to have found hearths and crude stone tools at levels corresponding to the last interglacial period, some 80,000-90,000 years ago. Critics scoffed at these claims, referring to Carter's alleged tools as products of nature, or "cartifacts," and Carter was later publicly defamed in a Harvard course on "Fantastic Archeology." However, Carter gave clear criteria for distinguishing between his tools and naturally broken rocks, and lithic experts such as John Witthoft have endorsed his claims.

In 1973, Carter conducted more extensive excavations at Texas Street and invited numerous archeologists to come and view the site firsthand. Almost none responded. Carter stated: "San Diego State University adamantly refused to look at work in its own backyard."

In 1960, an editor of Science, the journal of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, asked Carter to submit an article about early humans in America. Carter did so, but when the editor sent the article out to two scholars for review, they rejected it.

Upon being informed of this by the editor, Carter replied in a letter, dated February 2, 1960: "I must assume now that you had no idea of the intensity of feeling that reigns in the field. It is nearly hopeless to try to convey some idea of the status of the field of Early Man in America at the moment. But just for fun: I have a correspondent whose name I cannot use, for though he thinks that I am right, he could lose his job for saying so. I have another anonymous correspondent who as a graduate student found evidence that would tend to prove me right. He and his fellow student buried the evidence. They were certain that to bring it in would cost them their chance for their Ph.D' s. At a meeting, a young professional approached me to say, 1 hope you really pour it on them. I would say it if I dared, but it would cost me my job.' At another meeting, a young man sidled up to say, 'In dig x they found core tools like yours at the bottom but just didn't publish them.'"

The inhibiting effect of negative propaganda on the evaluation of Carter's discoveries is described by archeologist Brian Reeves, who wrote with his co­authors in 1986: "Were actual artifacts uncovered at Texas Street, and is the site really Last Interglacial in age? . . . Because of the weight of critical 'evidence' presented by established archaeologists, the senior author [Reeves], like most other archaeologists, accepted the position of the skeptics uncritically, dismissing the sites and the objects as natural phenomena." But when he took the trouble to look at the evidence himself, Reeves changed his mind. He concluded that the objects were clearly tools of human manufacture and that the Texas Street site was as old as Carter had claimed.

LOUIS LEAKEY AND THE CALICO SITE

Early in his career, Louis Leakey, who later became famous for his discoveries at Olduvai Gorge in Africa, began to have radical ideas about the antiquity of humans in America. At that time, scientists thought the entry date for the Siberian hunters was no greater than 5,000 years ago.

Leakey recalled: "Back in 1929-1930 when I was teaching students at the University of Cambridge ... I began to tell my students that man must have been in the New World at least 15,000 years. I shall never forget when Ales Hrdlicka, that great man from the Smithsonian Institution, happened to be at Cambridge, and he was told by my professor (I was only a student supervisor) that Dr. Leakey was telling students that man must have been in America 15,000 or more years ago. He burst into my rooms-he didn't even wait to shake hands."

Hrdlicka said, "Leakey, what's this I hear? Are you preaching her­esy?"

"No, Sir!" said Leakey. Hrdlicka replied, "You are! You are telling students that man was in America 15,000 years ago. What evidence have you?"

Leakey answered, "No positive evidence. Purely circumstantial evi­dence. But with man from Alaska to Cape Horn, with many different languages and at least two civiliza­tions, it is not possible that he was present only the few thousands of years that you at present allow." Leakey continued to harbor unorthodox views on this matter, and in 1964 he made an effort to collect some definite evidence at the Calico site in the Mojave Desert of California. This site is situated near the shore of now-vanished Pleistocene Lake Manix. Over a period of eighteen years of excavation under the direction of Ruth D. Simpson, 11,400 eolith like artifacts were recovered from a number of levels. The oldest artifact-bearing level has been given an age of 200,000 years by the uranium series method.

However, as happened with Texas Street, mainstream archeologists rejected the artifacts discovered at Calico as products of nature, and the Calico site is passed over in silence in popular accounts of archeology. Leakey' s biographer Sonia Cole said, "For many colleagues who felt admiration and affection for Louis and his family, the Calico years were an embarrassment and a sadness."

Yet the artifacts of Calico also have their defenders, who give elaborate arguments showing that they were human artifacts, not geofacts resulting from natural processes. Phillip Tobias, the well-known associate of Raymond Dart, discoverer of Australopithecus, declared in 1979: "When Dr. Leakey first showed me a small collection of pieces from Calico... I was at once convinced that some, though not all, of the small samples showed unequivocal signs of human authorship."

Ruth D. Simpson stated in 1986: "It would be difficult for nature to produce many specimens resembling man-made unifacial tools, with completely unidirec­tional edge retouch done in a uniform, directed manner. The Calico site has yielded many completely unifacial stone tools with uniform edge retouch. These include end scrapers, side scrapers, and gravers." Flake tools with unifacial, unidirectional chipping, like those found at Calico, are typical of the European eoliths. Examples are also found among the Oldowan industries of East Africa. Among the best tools that turned up at Calico was an excellent beaked graver. Bola stones have also been reported.

In general, however, the Calico discoveries have met with silence, ridicule, and opposition in the ranks of mainstream paleoanthropology. Ruth Simpson never­theless stated: "The data base for very early man in the New World is growing rapidly, and can no longer simply be ignored, because it does not fit current models of prehistory in the New World.. .. there is a need for flexibility in thinking to assure unbiased peer reviews."

TOCA DA ESPERANCA, BRAZIL

Support for the authenticity of the Calico tools has come from a find in Brazil. In 1982, Maria Beltrao found a series of caves with wall paintings in the state of Bahia. In 1985, a trench was cut in the Toca da Esperansa (Cave of Hope), and excavations in 1986 and 1987 yielded crude stone tools associated with Pleis­tocene mammals. When the bones were tested by the uranium series method, ages in excess of 200,000 years were obtained. The maximum age was 295,000 years.

The discovery was reported to the scientific world by Henry de Lumley, a famous French archeologist.

The tools were fashioned from quartz pebbles and were somewhat like those from Olduvai Gorge. The nearest source of quartz pebbles is about 10 kilometers from the cave site.

De Lumley and his coworkers said in their report: "The evidence seems to indicate that Early Man entered into the American continent much before previously thought." They went on to say: "In light of the discoveries at the Toca da Esperanga, it is much easier to interpret the lithic industry of the Calico site, in the Mojave Desert, near Yermo, San Bernardino County, California, which is dated at between 150,000 and 200,000 years."

According to de Lumley and his associates, humans and human ancestors entered the Americas from northern Asia several times during the Pleistocene. The early migrants, who manufactured the tools in the Brazilian cave, were, they said, Homo erectus. While this view is in harmony with the consensus on human evolution, there is no reason why the tools in the Toca da Esperanga could not have been made by anatomically modern humans. As we have several times mentioned, such tools are still being manufactured by humans in various parts of the world.

MONTE VERDE, CHILE

Another archeological site that has bearing on the evaluation of crude stone tools is the Monte Verde site in south central Chile. According to a report in Mammoth Trumpet (1984), this site was first surveyed by archeologist Tom Dillehay in 1976. Although the age of 12,500 to 13,500 years for the site is not highly anomalous, the archeological finds uncovered there challenge the standard Clovis hunter theory. The culture of the Monte Verde people was completely distinct from that of the Clovis hunters. Although the Monte Verde people made some advanced bifacial implements, they mostly made minimally modified pebble tools. Indeed, to a large extent, they obtained stone tools by selecting naturally occurring split pebbles. Some of these show signs of nothing more than usage; others show signs of deliberate retouching of a working edge. This is strongly reminiscent of the descriptions of the European eoliths.

In this case, the vexing question of artifacts versus nature facts was resolved by a fortunate circumstance: the site is located in a boggy area in which perishable plant and animal matter has been preserved. Thus two pebble tools were found hafted to wooden handles. Twelve architectural foundations were found, made of cut wooden planks and small tree trunks staked in place. There were large communal hearths, as well as small charcoal ovens lined with clay. Some of the stored clay bore the footprint of a child 8 to 10 ye»s old. Three crude wooden mortars were also found, held in place by wooden stakes. Grinding stones (metates) were uncovered, along with the remains of wild potatoes, medicinal plants, and sea coast plants with a high salt content. All in all, the Monte Verde site sheds an interesting light on the kind of creatures who might have made and used crude pebble tools during the Pliocene and Miocene in Europe or at the Plio-Pleistocene boundary in Africa. In this case, the culture was well equipped with domestic amenities made from perishable materials. Far from being subhuman, the cultural level was what we might expect of anatomically modern humans in a simple village setting even today.

By an accident of preservation, we thus see at Monte Verde artifacts represent­ing an advanced culture accompanying the crudest kinds of stone tools. At sites millions of years older, we see only the stone tools, although perishable artifacts of the kind found at Monte Verde may have once accompanied them.

RECENT PAKISTAN FINDS

Eolith like implements that do not fit into standard ideas of human evolution continue to be found in parts of the world outside the Americas. Some fairly recent finds by British archeologists in Pakistan provide an example. These crude chopping tools are about 2 million years old. But according to the dominant African homeland idea, the human ancestor of that time period, Homo habilis, should have been confined to Africa.

Some scientists considering the Pakistan tools tried to discredit the discovery. Anthropologist Sally McBrearty complained in a New York Times report that the discoverers "have not supplied enough evidence that the specimens are that old and that they are of human manufacture." Our review of anomalous stone implements should make us suspicious of this sort of charge. Scientists typically demand higher levels of proof for anomalous finds than for evidence that fits within the established ideas about human evolution.

A 1987 report from the British journal New Scientist suggests that McBrearty was being overly skeptical. Concerning doubts expressed about the stratigraphical context and age of the stone tools, the New Scientist stated: "Such doubts do not apply in the case of the stone pieces from the Scan Valley southeast of Rawalpindi, argues Robin Dennell, the field director of the Paleolithic Project of the British Archaeological Mission and the University of Sheffield. He and his colleague Helen Rendell, a geologist at the University of Sussex, report that the stone pieces, all of quartzite, were so firmly embedded in a deposit of conglomerate and grit stone called the Upper Siwalik series, that they had to chisel them out." According to the New Scientist, the dating was accomplished using a combination of paleomagnetic and stratigraphic studies.

What about McBrearty's suggestion that the stone objects were not made by humans? The New Scientist gave a more balanced view: "Of the pieces that they extracted, eight, Dennell believes are 'definite artifacts.' In Dennell's view, the least equivocal artifact is a piece of quartzite that a hominid individual supposedly struck in three directions with a hammer stone, removing seven flakes from it. This multifaceted flaking together with the fresh appearance of the scars left on the remaining 'core' make a 'very convincing' case for human involvement."

So what is going on with the find in Pakistan? Scientists holding the view that Homo erectus was the first representative of the Homo line to leave Africa, and did so about a million years ago, were apparently quite determined to discredit stone tools found in Pakistan, about 2 million years old, rather than modify their ideas. We can just imagine how such scientists would react to stone tools found in Miocene contexts.

SIBERIA AND INDIA

Many other discoveries of stone implements around 2 million years old have been made at other Asian sites, in Siberia and northwestern India.

In 1961, hundreds of crude pebble tools were found near Gorno-Altaisk, on the Ulalinka river in Siberia. According to a 1984 report by Russian scientists A. P. Okladinov and L. A. Ragozin, the tools were found in layers

1.5-2.5 million years old.

Another Russian scientist, Yuri Mochanov, discovered stone tools re­sembling the European eoliths at a site overlooking the Lena River at Diring Yurlakh, Siberia. The forma­tions from which these implements were recovered were dated by potas­sium-argon and magnetic methods to 1.8 million years before the present. Recent evidence from India also takes us back about 2 million years. Many discoveries of stone tools have been made in the Siwalik Hills region of northwestern India. The Siwaliks de­rive their name from the demigod Shiva (Sanskrit Siva), the lord of the forces of universal destruction. In 1981, Anek Ram Sankhyan, of the Anthropological Survey of India, found a stone tool near Haritalyangar village, in the late Pliocene Tatrot Formation, which is over 2 million years old. Other tools were recovered from the same formation.

The above-mentioned Siberian and Indian discoveries, at 1.5 -2.5 million years old, do not agree very well with the standard view that Homo erectus was the first representative of the Homo line to emigrate from Africa, doing so about a million years ago. Here is an example from an even more remote time. In 1982, K. N. Prasad of the Geological Survey of India reported the discovery of a "crude unifacial hand-axe pebble tool" in the Miocene Nagri formation near Haritalyangar, in the Himalayan foothills of northwest India. Prasad stated in his report: "The implement was recovered in situ, during remeasuring of the geological succession to assess the thickness of the beds. Care was taken to confirm the exact provenance of the material, in order to rule out any possibility of its derivation from younger horizons."

Prasad thought the tool had been manufactured by a very apelike creature called Ramapithecus. "The occurrence of this pebble tool in such ancient sediments," said Prasad, "indicates that early hominids such as Ramapithecus fashioned tools, were bipedal with erect posture, and probably utilized the implements for hunting." But today most scientists regard Ramapithecus not as a human ancestor but as the ancestor of the living orangutans. This newly defined Ramapithecus was definitely not a maker of stone tools.

So who made the Miocene tool reported by Prasad? The makers could very well have been anatomically modern humans living in the Miocene. Even if we were to propose that some primitive creature like Homo habilis made the Miocene tool, that would still raise big questions. According to current ideas, the first tool makers arose in Africa about 2 million years ago.