Forbidden Archaeology

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Many years ago Michael Cremo and Richard L. Thompson wrote a book entitled Forbidden Archaeology. Cremo discusses it here

They claim that humans in their modern anatomical form have existed for millions of years and that “knowledge filtration” occurs where the evidence supporting the dominant theories of the time pass through with ease whereas contradictory evidence is filtered out.

An NBC broadcast narrated by Charlton Heston based on the book can be viewed here

At the end of an interview given in the making of the film, Thompson had this to say:

…our basic point of view is that one should look at all of the evidence and then be able to make a reasonable decision. The main outcome that we would like to see from our publication of Forbidden Archaeology is that we would like to see an opening up of our serious scientific enquiries into the nature and origin of human beings and also other forms of life. We feel that the mainstream scientific position on these questions has been too narrowly constricted for a very long period of time. Much important evidence has been left out of the picture and many important ideas have also been excluded. We would like to see a much deeper investigation into all of the available evidence and in this way we could learn more about what we are and about what our real purpose in life should be.

In his book, “Hidden History of the Human Race”, Cremo concludes:

that the total evidence, including fossil bones and artifacts, is most consistent with the view that anatomically modem humans have coexisted with other primates for tens of millions of years.

I agree with these conclusions. I do not go along with the view that human evolution has proceeded from a crude primitive condition to increasingly sophisticated modern culture. I believe that some very ancient human cultures have matched and even exceeded modern humans in their technological sophistication.

I’m fairly confident this post will generate much criticism. I look forward to this so long as it relates to the evidence and an attempt is made to back it up.

96 thoughts on “Forbidden Archaeology”

  1. John Harshman: Even if the dating at 250,000 years turned out to be correct, all it would do is put the arrival of hominids in America at a much earlier date than we think. It would not change our ideas of the age of modern humans and would certainly not support Charlie’s main idea (since abandoned, apparently) that modern humans were around in the Eocene.

    I have not come across any evidence whatsoever for the ‘tens of millions of years’ claim. Perhaps CharlieM can present some of it to us?

  2. faded_Glory: I have not come across any evidence whatsoever for the ‘tens of millions of years’ claim. Perhaps CharlieM can present some of it to us?

    Perhaps, but he hasn’t tried yet. He seems to be backing away from the claim. Now he appears to say that the antiquity of modern humans is in a spiritual, non-fossilizable form only. So he’s abandoned Cremo & Thompson.

  3. faded_Glory: Ok then.

    Can you give us a few examples of where these millions-of-years old human artefacts have been found, who found them, what they look like, and how they have been dated?

    Carlos Ribeiro, the chief government geologist of Portugal found hundreds of human artifacts dated to the early Miocene period. Cremo presented a paper on this subject at a meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Lisbon in the year 2000. This is the paper:
    Cremo, M.A. (2009) The discoveries of Carlos Ribeiro: a controversial episode in nineteenth-century European archeology. Journal of Iberian Archaeology, vol. 12: pp. 69-89.

    All of this and more can be found in the video I linked to..

  4. dazz: I checked and there is no silencing going on, there are multiple papers published and readily available on the subject, including McIntyre’s, for fuck’s sake!

    The archaeologists at Hueyatlaco refused to publish the dates arrived at by the geologists so McIntyre et al decided to publish their findings independently. After doing so they received a severe backlash from their scientific colleagues which prompted Steen-McIntyre to write to the associate editor of “Quaternary Research” where it had been published. She wrote:

    Not being an anthropologist, I didn’t realize … how deeply woven into our thought the current theory of human evolution has become. Our work at Hueyatlaco has been rejected by most archaeologists because it contradicts that theory, period.

    So how many papers which are pro Steen-McIntyre’s figures have you found?

  5. J-Mac: dazz…
    We all have our own beliefs… until they are proven wrong…we are allowed to let our imagination wonder…You have yours….and Charlie has his… that what forums or blogs are about…Charlie may be trying to reconcile something what he thinks is a piece of evidence and he has come up with this…
    His idea is abnormal but it is not prohibited….

    Yes, we all have our prior beliefs, Dazz has his, Cremo has his and I have mine. My beliefs are not the same as Cremo’s but I admire what he is trying to do and it’s my opinion that he is sincere in his efforts.

    He has set himself the task of examining all archaeological reports on human origins from the time of Darwin to the present starting with the primary scientific literature. It is no wonder that he has spent such a long time in this pursuit.

  6. John Harshman: I don’t know much about any of these. Can you reference the actual scientific publications that back up each claim? Pending that, I doubt every claim. The actual science would seem to show that anatomically modern humans evolved somewhere around 100,000 years ago, in Africa.

    Here are some references for you:

    1. Details on the footprints can be found at: Ashton et al. Feb. 2014 PloS One (Vol.9. issue2)

    2. Buenos Aires skull found at about a depth of 45 feet below a layer of volcanic ash. Reported in the primary scientific literature by Florentino Ameghino. Cremo presented a paper which included details on this case ; “Forbidden Archeology of the Early and Middle Pleistocene: Evidence for Physiologically and Culturally Advanced Humans.” World Archeological Congress 4, Cape Town, January 9-14, 1999.

    3 Skeleton found by Hans Reck in 1913 buried in Upper Bed II of Olduvai Gorge. This bed has been dated to 1.15 to 1.7 million years ago. This induced decades of debate. The debate was thought to be settled in favour of a much younger age when it was carbon dated by Reiner Protsch, a professor at Frankfurt University. He was subsequently dismissed from the university and Cremo disputes his findings.

    4. “The Fossil Human Jaw From Suffolk” by Robert H Collyer, MD. From:
    “Anthropological Review”, Vol V. No. XVII, 1867, pp 221-229. The Red Crag formation has been dated to 2-3 million years old by C.O. Hunt in the “Journal of the Geological Society” October 1989; V. 146; No5; p. 743-745.

    5. “Laetoli footprints are indistinguishable from modern human footprints.” Leakey, M.D. (1979) “Footprints in the ashes of time.” National Geographic 155: 446-457 (P.453)

    Also from paleontologist Tim White: “Make no mistake about it. They are like modern human footprints.”, Johanson D. and M. A. Edey, 1981. “Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind.” New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 250.
    In relation to this case, Cremo said: “I think we have to remain open to the possibility she found evidence that humans like us were present almost 4 million years ago.” The footprints were found in solidified volcanic ash that were potassium argon dated.

    Cremo presented evidence on this case at a meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists 1999 in Bournemouth, England..

    6. The Italian geologist, G. Ragazzoni reported finding these remains. Cremo visited Ragazzoni and was given a copy of the report detailing this discovery. It is written in Italian and he states that it is very rare.

  7. John Harshman: Are you now rejecting the claim that anatomically modern humans appeared in the Eocene? If so, that’s progress.

    Yes I am now rejecting that claim. I do not know when anatomically modern humans began to walk the earth. I would think that they existed well before the time reckoned from any palaeontological evidence of them. They would have been so few in number at the beginning. I have not claimed that they have existed as far back as the Eocene. I believe that we humans have existed from before the time that primates first appeared but not in our modern anatomical form.

    What about your claim that there are lots of modern species also known from the Eocene?

    I did not claim that.

    It was you who began the discussion of the Eocene. I was merely trying to determine how you know what was actually present in the Eocene given the small percentage of organisms that are actually fossilized.

    Here is one paper on insects preserved in amber.

    Abstract
    Six new fossils of Micromalthus (Coleoptera: Archostemata) from Dominican amber are compared with extant and previously described fossil micromalthid beetles. The amber inclusions are well preserved and all important morphological features are visible. Taking into account the morphological variability of the extant species Micromalthus debilisLeConte, 1878, it is not possible to find any morphological features that distinguish the fossils from the extant species. This also applies to the Dominican amber inclusion described as Micromalthus anasi Perkovsky, 2008, which therefore is considered a junior synonym of M. debilis. The lack of morphological change in M. debilis over time might possibly be explained by unusually stable environmental conditions, as this species occupies a very specialized ecological niche in decaying timber. A general survey of fossil insects indistinguishable from extant species is presented.

    The only reason I can see for presuming the fossilized insects and morphologically identical extant insects are different species is that it does not accord with theories based on DNA evidence. Just one example of a species lasting from the Eocene until now would nullify your apparent claim that there have not been any.

  8. CharlieM: Here are some references for you:

    The majority are not references at all, some of those that are references do not support your claims, and only one is older than Pleistocene. Is this the best you can produce? If so, you need to retract your major claim, explicitly.

    1. Details on the footprints can be found at: Ashton et al. Feb. 2014 PloS One (Vol.9. issue2)

    That, at least, is a real citation. But it doesn’t support the presence of modern humans, as the foot structure was present in earlier hominins.

    2. Buenos Aires skull found at about a depth of 45 feet below a layer of volcanic ash. Reported in the primary scientific literature by Florentino Ameghino. Cremo presented a paper which included details on this case ; “Forbidden Archeology of the Early and Middle Pleistocene: Evidence for Physiologically and Culturally Advanced Humans.” World Archeological Congress 4, Cape Town, January 9-14, 1999.

    Not a real citation. And note that Ameghino didn’t think it was a modern human.

    3 Skeleton found by Hans Reck in 1913 buried in Upper Bed II of Olduvai Gorge. This bed has been dated to1.15 to 1.7 million years ago. This induced decades of debate. The debate was thought to be settled in favour of a much younger age when it was carbon dated by Reiner Protsch, a professor at Frankfurt University. He was subsequently dismissed from the university and Cremo disputes his findings.

    Not a citation at all. Considering that other hominins found in that stratum are habilines and other evidence, it’s likely an intrusive burial.

    4. “The Fossil Human Jaw From Suffolk” by Robert H Collyer, MD. From:
    “Anthropological Review”, Vol V. No. XVII, 1867, pp 221-229. The Red Crag formation has been dated to 2-3 million years old by C.O. Hunt in the “Journal of the Geological Society” October 1989; V. 146; No5; p. 743-745.

    Somewhat resembles a real citation, but not closely enough. There is no evidence that the jaw was even found in that formation.

    5. “Laetoli footprints are indistinguishable from modern human footprints.” Leakey, M.D. (1979) “Footprints in the ashes of time.” National Geographic 155: 446-457 (P.453)

    Now that’s quote-mining, though at least it’s sort of a real citation. Leakey doesn’t assert that the footprints were made by modern humans, only that they resemble those of modern humans. But so would the footprints of any hominin.

    Also from paleontologist Tim White: “Make no mistake about it. They are like modern human footprints.”, Johanson D. and M. A. Edey, 1981. “Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind.” New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 250.

    More quote-mining. Shame on Cremo and shame on you.

    In relation to this case, Cremo said: “I think we have to remain open to the possibility she found evidence that humans like us were present almost 4 million years ago.”The footprints were found in solidified volcanic ash that were potassium argon dated.

    Cremo is being disingenuous here, which is a polite word for “lying”. The date is not in dispute, but what suggests the footprints weren’t made by the hominins whose bones are found in the area?

    Cremo presented evidence on this case at a meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists 1999 in Bournemouth, England..

    Not a citation at all.

    6. The Italian geologist, G. Ragazzoni reported finding these remains. Cremo visited Ragazzoni and was given a copy of the report detailing this discovery. It is written in Italian and he states that it is very rare.

    Not a citation at all.

    If that’s the best Cremo can do, he has no support for his major claim, and neither do you.

  9. CharlieM: Yes I am now rejecting that claim. I do not know when anatomically modern humans began to walk the earth. I would think that they existed well before the time reckoned from any palaeontological evidence of them. They would have been so few in number at the beginning. I have not claimed that they have existed as far back as the Eocene. I believe that we humans have existed from before the time that primates first appeared but not in our modern anatomical form.

    Clearly, those beliefs are not based on evidence. Why should anyone care about your unsupported musings?

    And since you have now rejected the major premise of your OP, Cremo’s claim, have we not disposed of your reasons for putting it up?
    I did not claim that.

    It was you who began the discussion of the Eocene. I was merely trying to determine how you know what was actually present in the Eocene given the small percentage of organisms that are actually fossilized.

    No, you began that discussion by quoting Cremo: “tens of millions of years”; “tens” would be at least 30.

    Here is one paper on insects preserved in amber.

    Miocene, not Eocene. And all that says is that it can be hard to tell some insect species apart. Still, it’s possible that there are insect species (by some definition of the term) that are that old. Valid point. Now find something like that for a mammal and you might have a case.

  10. CharlieM: . I believe that we humans have existed from before the time that primates first appeared but not in our modern anatomical form.

    Surely nothing could be more indicative of dogmatic materialistic ideology than the refusal to take seriously beliefs for which there is no evidence.

  12. CharlieM: I would think that they existed well before the time reckoned from any palaeontological evidence of them. They would have been so few in number at the beginning.

    Hidden assumptions, hidden assumptions everywhere!

  13. John Harshman:
    The majority are not references at all, some of those that are references do not support your claims, and only one is older than Pleistocene. Is this the best you can produce? If so, you need to retract your major claim, explicitly.

    This is an informal blog where we can disvuss our opinions and generally argue for pleasure. I am not writing a doctoral dissertation or thesis so I am not overly concerned with meeting your expectations as to what constitutes a reference or citation.

    I haven’t made any major claims, I have provided some links that I think are worth discussing. And I have already retracted my belief that humans have existed in the modern form for tens of millions of years.

    John Harshman:

    1. Details on the footprints can be found at: Ashton et al. Feb. 2014 PloS One (Vol.9. issue2)

    That, at least, is a real citation. But it doesn’t support the presence of modern humans, as the foot structure was present in earlier hominins.

    I asked you if you agreed that the footprints were consistent with anatomically modern footprints. The fact that they could possibly have been made by earlier hominins does not answer my question.

    John Harshman:

    2. Buenos Aires skull found at about a depth of 45 feet below a layer of volcanic ash. Reported in the primary scientific literature by Florentino Ameghino. Cremo presented a paper which included details on this case ; “Forbidden Archeology of the Early and Middle Pleistocene: Evidence for Physiologically and Culturally Advanced Humans.” World Archeological Congress 4, Cape Town, January 9-14, 1999.

    Not a real citation. And note that Ameghino didn’t think it was a modern human.

    And neither does Cremo say that Ameghino thought it belonged to a modern human. From the book, “Forbidden Archaeology”, they write:

    As previously mentioned, Ameghino thought his Diprothomo represented an ancestral form of human. According to Hrdlicka (1912, p. 323), he believed the skull’s capacity was only 1100 cc, compared to 1400 cc for an average Homo sapiens, and that it had a low vault. Hrdlicka (1912, p. 325) stated: “The writer reached Buenos Aires with the foregoing data before him and in consequence thereof with very eager expectations. But when the specimen itself was placed before him by Professor Ameghino there followed a rapid disenchantment.”
    Hrdlicka (1912, p. 326) noted: “In a detailed study of the specimen it soon became plain that almost the entire original description by Ameghino had miscarried by reason of the fragment having been placed and considered in a wrong position. . . . The accidental and faulty position of the fragment . . . had caused the forehead to appear much lower than it is. . . . these results of faulty orientation combined have helped to make the specimen look extraordinary and primitive, even unhuman.” Hrdlicka’s views on the positioning of the skull fragment were supported in an independent report by G. Schwalbe of Germany (Hrdlicka 1912, p. 343).

    Obviously the book goes into greater detail.

    John Harshman:

    3 Skeleton found by Hans Reck in 1913 buried in Upper Bed II of Olduvai Gorge. This bed has been dated to1.15 to 1.7 million years ago. This induced decades of debate. The debate was thought to be settled in favour of a much younger age when it was carbon dated by Reiner Protsch, a professor at Frankfurt University. He was subsequently dismissed from the university and Cremo disputes his findings.

    Not a citation at all. Considering that other hominins found in that stratum are habilines and other evidence, it’s likely an intrusive burial.

    Again from the book, “Forbidden Archeaology”

    discoveries. The available evidence suggests that Reck’s skeleton (OH 1) should be assigned a probable date range extending from the late Early Pleistocene (1.15 million years) to the late Upper Pleistocene (10,000 years). There is much evidence that argues in favor of the original Bed II date proposed by Reck. Particularly strong is Reck’s observation that the thin layers of Bed II sediment directly around the skeleton were undisturbed. Also arguing against later burial is the rocklike hardness of Bed II. Reports favoring a Bed V date seem to be founded upon purely theoretical objections, dubious testimony, inconclusive test results, and highly speculative geological reasoning. But even these reports yield dates of up to 400,000 years for the skeleton.

    I will continue replying in my next post.

  14. CharlieM: This is an informal blog where we can disvuss our opinions and generally argue for pleasure. I am not writing a doctoral dissertation or thesis so I am not overly concerned with meeting your expectations as to what constitutes a reference or citation.

    The point of a citation is to enable one to find the primary literature and see whether it actually supports a claim. I can see how you might not like that sort of thing.

    I haven’t made any major claims,

    “‘…that the total evidence, including fossil bones and artifacts, is most consistent with the view that anatomically modem humans have coexisted with other primates for tens of millions of years.’

    I agree with these conclusions.”

    That’s a claim, whether you think so or not, and it’s pretty major.

    I have provided some links that I think are worth discussing. And I have already retracted my belief that humans have existed in the modern form for tens of millions of years.

    As I have said, progress. Now you need to make a new claim and support it with something. If the links are worth discussing, you should be able to tell us why they’re worth discussing. What do you think they show?

  15. CharlieM: Again from the book, “Forbidden Archeaology”

    discoveries. The available evidence suggests that Reck’s skeleton (OH 1) should be assigned a probable date range extending from the late Early Pleistocene (1.15 million years) to the late Upper Pleistocene (10,000 years). There is much evidence that argues in favor of the original Bed II date proposed by Reck. Particularly strong is Reck’s observation that the thin layers of Bed II sediment directly around the skeleton were undisturbed. Also arguing against later burial is the rocklike hardness of Bed II. Reports favoring a Bed V date seem to be founded upon purely theoretical objections, dubious testimony, inconclusive test results, and highly speculative geological reasoning. But even these reports yield dates of up to 400,000 years for the skeleton.

    Seems like a very outdated viewpoint and one Reck rejected as well:

    Reck had believed that the deposits above the skeleton were undisturbed. However, the skeleton was in a contracted position and virtually complete. This is very different from the usual condition of hominin fossils, which tend to be of body parts rather than complete skeletons. This is made all the more complicated by the fact that the Bed II deposits are water-lain, as Reck had established. A body falling into water will either be dispersed by the movement of water or by scavenging animals, unless it is covered rapidly in silts. It is very unlikely that a corpse falling (or even being laid) in water would remain in a contracted position before being covered in silt, no matter how rapidly it had formed.

    The difficulty with accepting Reck’s skeleton as being as old as he claimed is that his work was done without any appreciation of archaeological stratigraphy. Although the deposit was of Middle Pleistocene date, geological analysis of the material surrounding the skeleton showed it to contain red pebbles and limestone chips. These are not found in Bed II, but occur higher up in the sequence, which shows that they are later than it. This makes it certain that the skeleton was intrusive. In other words, it lay in a grave cut down from a higher layer. Reck himself came to accept this explanation.

    The ancient date was dismissed by Percy Boswell (1886-1960) in a letter to Nature (13 August 1932: “The Oldoway Human Skeleton”, volume 130, pp 237-8). The notoriously stubborn Louis Leakey agreed with Boswell’s critique. Had there been anatomically modern humans at this date in the Gorge, we would expect to find other remains in Bed II. As we do not, we must question Reck’s original judgement. Most estimates now put the burial at around 20,000 years old.

    The ever-useful TalkOrigins website contains a useful (and fully annotated) rebuttal of the claims.

    http://www.badarchaeology.com/out-of-place-artefacts/anomalous-human-remains/‘oldoway-man’/

    from the talk origins site:

    Oldoway Man: a complete skeleton found by Hans Reck at Olduvai Gorge in 1913. In 1932 it was shown to be a modern Homo sapiens, buried 20,000 years ago in older deposits that had been exposed by faulting (Johanson and Shreeve 1989). Taylor (1992) writes “Some have suggested this skeleton is an intrusive burial”, when in fact this explanation has been unanimously accepted (even by Reck and the notoriously stubborn Louis Leakey). Bowden (1981) disputes this, as Reck had originally claimed the skeleton could not be an intrusive burial because of the undisturbed layers above it. It was later shown, however, that the layer above the skeleton had been misidentified by Reck, and instead of being very old, had been laid down recently, after the skeleton had been buried (Morell 1995). The completeness of the skeleton and its contracted position were also consistent with a burial rather than a natural fossilization.

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_anomaly.html

    You need to do a bit more on the due diligence part, Charlie. Your claims (the heart is not a pump, ect.) are so outlandish they have become a reliable, and predictable, source for mockery and provide nothing in the way of meaningful discussion. Are you certain this is the way you want your contributions to reflect on your assessment of reality?

  16. Continuing from my previous post,,,

    John Harshman:

    4. “The Fossil Human Jaw From Suffolk” by Robert H Collyer, MD. From:
    “Anthropological Review”, Vol V. No. XVII, 1867, pp 221-229. The Red Crag formation has been dated to 2-3 million years old by C.O. Hunt in the “Journal of the Geological Society” October 1989; V. 146; No5; p. 743-745.

    Somewhat resembles a real citation, but not closely enough. There is no evidence that the jaw was even found in that formation.

    From “Forbidden Archaeology”

    American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, writing in the 1920s about Moir’s finds of flint tools in the same area where the Foxhall jaw was uncovered, wondered why the above-mentioned scientists did not take the trouble to visit the site. They disbelieved, said Osborn (1921, p. 568), “probably because the shape of the jaw was not primitive and the degree of mineralization was not such as positively to prove it a fossil. He [Collyer] had a chemical analysis made that showed that the jaw was largely mineralized, but retained 8 per cent of animal matter.” But Moir reported that chemical analysis of bones from the Red Crag demonstrated that many of them had up to 6.5

    Unfortunately the present whereabouts of the jaw bone is unknown.

    John Harshman

    5. “Laetoli footprints are indistinguishable from modern human footprints.” Leakey, M.D. (1979) “Footprints in the ashes of time.” National Geographic 155: 446-457 (P.453)

    Now that’s quote-mining, though at least it’s sort of a real citation. Leakey doesn’t assert that the footprints were made by modern humans, only that they resemble those of modern humans. But so would the footprints of any hominin.

    It might have been quote mining if Cremo had been claiming that Mary Leakey was asserting the footprints to be made by a modern like human. But in “Forbidden Archaeology they state quite clearly Leakey’s views on the footprints:

    Mary Leakey (1979, p. 453) wrote: “at least 3,600,000 years ago, in Pliocene times, what I believe to be man’s direct ancestor walked fully upright with a bipedal, free-striding gait. . . . the form of his foot was exactly the same as ours.”
    Who was the ancestor? Here we once more confront the debate, between the Leakeys on one hand and Johanson and White on the other, about the number and type of species represented by the fossil materials from Hadar and Laetoli.
    Taking the Leakeys’ point of view, the Laetoli footprints would have been made by a nonaustralopithecine ancestor of Homo habilis. Taking the JohansonWhite point of view, the Laetoli footprints would have been made by Australopithecus afarensis. In either case, the creature who made the prints would have had an apelike head and other primitive features.
    But why not a creature with fully modern feet and fully modern body? There is nothing in the footprints that rules this out. Furthermore, we have compiled in this book quite a bit of fossil evidence, some of it from Africa, that is consistent with the presence of anatomically modern human beings in the Early Pleistocene and the Late Pliocene.

    The point the authors were making was that even according to experts who did not believe the footprints were made by the feet of modern type humans, they were indistinguishable from modern footprints. And this is exactly what Leakey said, so why is it a quote mine?

    Do you not believe that the footprints are indeed indistinguishable from modern footprints?

    John Harshman

    Also from paleontologist Tim White: “Make no mistake about it. They are like modern human footprints.”, Johanson D. and M. A. Edey, 1981. “Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind.” New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 250.

    More quote-mining. Shame on Cremo and shame on you.

    The same answer I gave above applies to this quote.

    From, “Forbidden Archaeology”:

    Could an australopithecine walking with curled toes have made the humanlike prints? Tuttle (1985) found this extremely unlikely. If the Laetoli hominid had long toes, then, said Tuttle, one would expect to find two patterns of toe impressions—long extended toes and short curled toes, with extra-deep knuckle marks. Tuttle (1985, p. 132) observed: “Neither pattern exists at Laetoli G so we can infer that their lateral toes were quite short.” This meant the long-toed afarensis foot could not have made the prints.
    Even Tim White, who believed Australopithecus afarensis made the footprints, stated: “The Stern and Susman (1983) model of toe curling ‘as in the chimpanzee’ predicts substantial variation in lateral toe lengths seen on the Laetoli prints. This prediction is not borne out by the fossil prints” (White and Suwa 1987, p. 495).

    So Cremo makes quite clear White’s opinion on the footprints. And again, White also regards the footprints as being indistinguishable from modern footprints, and that is all that Cremo is claiming.

    Which fossil hominins do you think are the most like those who made the footprints?

    Here is a quote from a paper regarding the footprints:

    Using an experimental design, we show that the Laetoli hominins walked with weight transfer most similar to the economical extended limb bipedalism of humans. Humans walked through a sand trackway using both extended limb bipedalism, and more flexed limb bipedalism. Footprint morphology from extended limb trials matches weight distribution patterns found in the Laetoli footprints.

    Conclusions
    These results provide us with the earliest direct evidence of kinematically human-like bipedalism currently known, and show that extended limb bipedalism evolved long before the appearance of the genus Homo. Since extended-limb bipedalism is more energetically economical than ape-like bipedalism, energy expenditure was likely an important selection pressure on hominin bipeds by 3.6 Ma.

    Laeotoli is regarded as the type locality for Australopithecus afarensis. From Wikipedia footprints may not have been made by Australopithecus.[21] Many scientists also doubt the suggestion of bipedalism, and argue that even if Australopithecus really did walk on two legs, it did not walk in the same way as humans.

    John Harshman

    In relation to this case, Cremo said: “I think we have to remain open to the possibility she found evidence that humans like us were present almost 4 million years ago.”The footprints were found in solidified volcanic ash that were potassium argon dated.

    Cremo is being disingenuous here, which is a polite word for “lying”. The date is not in dispute, but what suggests the footprints weren’t made by the hominins whose bones are found in the area?

    It is possible that the footprints could have been made by these hominins, and Cremo doen’t argue against this. He is arguing that, likewise, it cannot be ruled out that they were not made by humans with a modern like anatomy.

    This is precisely his argument. That if there is ambiguity about the anatomy of the ancient hominin the standard line is that the hominin that produced the evidence in question must have been of an early form. Because? Well, “everyone knows that modern-like humans did not exist at that time”.
    Cremo is not arguing here that there is deliberate deception by conventional scientists, it’s just that there is a certain bias in conventional thinking.

    John Harshman

    Cremo presented evidence on this case at a meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists 1999 in Bournemouth, England..

    Not a citation at all.

    No, just a fact.

    6. The Italian geologist, G. Ragazzoni reported finding these remains. Cremo visited Ragazzoni and was given a copy of the report detailing this discovery. It is written in Italian and he states that it is very rare.

    Not a citation at all.

    Just another fact.

    John Harshman
    If that’s the best Cremo can do, he has no support for his major claim, and neither do you.

    I don’t know if that is his best, it’s just a selection I picked at random. I am not making any major claims.

  17. CharlieM: It is possible that the footprints could have been made by these hominins, and Cremo doen’t argue against this. He is arguing that, likewise, it cannot be ruled out that they were not made by humans with a modern like anatomy.

    It’s a pointless argument. You were advancing the footprints as evidence that there were modern humans millions of years ago. Yet the only fossils in the area are of australopithecines, whose foot anatomy is the same as modern humans’. The simplest explanation is that the australopithecines made the footprints. It’s not evidence for Cremo’s claims in any case, and that’s what he wants it to be. It also can’t be ruled out that robots with human feet at the ends of their legs made the footprints, but that’s not an argument in favor of robots with human feet either.

    This is precisely his argument. That if there is ambiguity about the anatomy of the ancient hominin the standard line is that the hominin that produced the evidence in question must have been of an early form. Because? Well, “everyone knows that modern-like humans did not exist at that time”.

    There is no such ambiguity. The footprints are consistent with species that we know existed at that place and time. That’s quite different from what you say is the justification.

    I don’t know if that is his best, it’s just a selection I picked at random. I am not making any major claims.

    You’re not making any claims now that you’re recanted them. There seems no reason for you to cite evidence for anything now that you’re making no claims. Maybe you’d like to make some claims and then provide support for them; that’s the expected way to go. And if you do, try to pick the best support rather than picking words at random.

  18. John Harshman: Clearly, those beliefs are not based on evidence. Why should anyone care about your unsupported musings?

    I would say my beliefs are based on evidence that is consistent with an overarching spiritual dimension, whereas your beliefs are based on evidence that is consistent with a constraining material dimension. IMO those who think that reality is limited to the material dimension are basing this belief on their normal, restricted physical senses. This would mean that reality is totally dependent on human constitution and awareness. I would say that reality extends to much higher dimensions than present human capability allows us to experience.

    And since you have now rejected the major premise of your OP, Cremo’s claim, have we not disposed of your reasons for putting it up?

    It is not the major premise of my OP. One important aspect of the OP is to discuss the claim that certain findings in the field of archaeology gets ignored or suppressed whether deliberately or not.

    No, you began that discussion by quoting Cremo: “tens of millions of years”; “tens” would be at least 30.

    Why do you not think ’10s’ applies to 20?

    2 x 10 is 20, and as far as I’m aware 2 is plural

    Miocene, not Eocene. And all that says is that it can be hard to tell some insect species apart. Still, it’s possible that there are insect species (by some definition of the term) that are that old. Valid point. Now find something like that for a mammal and you might have a case.

    I am not trying to make the case that living forms should or have remained unchanged over millions of years. I would say that everything evolves, the cosmos evolves, the earth evolves. and living forms evolve. Fish have retained a more ancestral form than mammals and so have not progressed as far. Mammals have gone through a past fish-like stage and have moved on from this stage of evolution.

    There is a complex array of animal life. Some forms have changed considerably while others have remained basically unchanged over the same period of time. If we think how hominins and their ancestors have evolved and how Coelacanths and their ancestors have evolved over the past few hundred million years we can see that one group has remained quite static compared to the other.

    Fish have become more rigid in their form at an earlier stage of evolution than mammals. Animal life had to progress through all the developmental stages before a form capable of housing self awareness could appear.

    This is reflected in the development of an individual human. We do not expect embryos or new born babies to have the quality of awareness of an adult, The form of the body has to be gradually built up before we progress to self consciousness. In the same way the living form of animals has to be built up to a condition where self consciousness can be achieved.

  19. Kantian Naturalist: Surely nothing could be more indicative of dogmatic materialistic ideology than the refusal to take seriously beliefs for which there is no evidence.

    It is up to each individual to acquire evidence of higher reality for her/himself.

  20. CharlieM: I would say my beliefs are based on evidence that is consistent with an overarching spiritual dimension,

    Yes, you would say that, but it’s just another example of your unsupported musings. Your claim that your beliefs are based on evidence is itself not based on evidence.

    Why do you not think ’10s’ applies to 20?

    Because it’s not what people mean when they say that.

    I am not trying to make the case that living forms should or have remained unchanged over millions of years.

    Good, you’ve abandoned that claim. What follows is vacuous and vapid, so no response is useful.

  21. dazz: There are at least two more just in the wikipedia entry of Hueyatlaco. How come you couldn’t find them on your own?

    http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.456.4253&rep=rep1&type=pdf

    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10933-006-0008-4

    Both of those links lead to papers by Sam L. VanLandingham, a well respected expert on diatoms. He writes in the report published in 2006.

    The main purpose of the present report is to demonstrate with freshwater diatom biostratigraphy that the age of the Dorenberg skull and associated Hueyatlaco artifacts is Sangamonian, and not, as suggested elsewhere, a much later date.

    This means that the strata is a minimum of 80 million years old.

    He is featured in the video Forbidden Archeology: SUPPRESSED New Evidence of Early Man. In the video, Michael Waters, a critic of the early age of the artefacts has this to say.

    Sam does great work, I don’t have any problems with diatom work. But the only thing I’m concerned about is redeposition of diatoms from the older deposits into the younger deposits which is entirely possible and that is probably exactly what happened…That evidence is very weak compared to the geochronological evidence

    It was pointed out to him that on Sam VanLanden’s findings the diatoms in both sides of his supposed divide between younger and older material were both the same. There were no younger diatoms on either side.

    Waters replied:

    Yea, the diatom evidence, I haven’t digested it completely. I have seen some critiques of the diatom evidence and there is some harsh criticism of the diatom analysis, but I don’t want to go into those here.

    Marshall Payn, Hueyatlaco project leader said:

    Now I told Mike (Waters) years ago that he better learn about diatoms because if he doesn’t its going to come back and bite him.. He assured me he would. He never did.

    I would say that this is a case of brushing the evidence aside because it doesn’t fit the orthodox belief.

  23. CharlieM: This means that the strata is a minimum of 80 million years old.

    Hey, what’s three orders of magnitude between friends?

    Sangamonian = ~80,000 yr BP : perhaps a problem for some anthropologists, but not for hominid evolution.

  24. John Harshman: The point of a citation is to enable one to find the primary literature and see whether it actually supports a claim. I can see how you might not like that sort of thing.

    I referred to the a video and book in the OP which I think would make them primary sources to study if you wanted to deal with Cremo’s claims. You didn’t think it worth your effort. You wrote “Most people, me included, are unwilling to read the book or watch the video for you.”

    I did’t ask anyone to do this for me. I just presented Cremo’s claims so they could be discussed.

    “‘CharlieM:…that the total evidence, including fossil bones and artifacts, is most consistent with the view that anatomically modem humans have coexisted with other primates for tens of millions of years.’

    I agree with these conclusions.”

    That’s a claim, whether you think so or not, and it’s pretty major.

    The claim was made by Cremo, not me. I stated my views on the conclusions of both Thompson and Cremo. During the discussion I changed my opinion on Cremo’s claim about the antiquity of anatomically modem humans as on giving it more thought I decided that I could not agree with the “anatomically modem” part of his statement. So as you say below, progress has been made, I have moved closer to your view that anatomically modem humans have not existed for tens of millions of years.

    If you want more primary sources, we could discuss the papers that dazz linked to. They were authored by Sam L. VanLandingham, who was directly involved in the research at the Hueyatlaco Archaeological Site.

    As I have said, progress. Now you need to make a new claim and support it with something. If the links are worth discussing, you should be able to tell us why they’re worth discussing. What do you think they show?

    I don’t need to make any claims. All I wish to do is present an interesting topic to people. Being convinced that many who read it will have disagreements with my position I really want to hear what they have to say. I do not claim that my beliefs are correct and hearing opposing points of views allows me to make more informed judgements.

    Continuing on this theme another video I have recently watched is, “Forbidden Archeology Proves Advanced Civilizations Existed Before the Last Ice Age”, By Graham Hancock. According to Wikipedia he “is a British author and reporter. Hancock specialises in pseudoscientific theories”

    This immediately tells me that the authors of the Wikipedia article are hostile to anything Hancock has to say. And IMO such hostility shows itself when cherished beliefs are questioned.

  25. What makes you think that anyone on this site is competent to have a discussion about diatoms?

    All we’ll end up doing is duelling with people’s credentials. A totally pointless exercise.

  27. CharlieM: This immediately tells me that the authors of the Wikipedia article are hostile to anything Hancock has to say. And IMO such hostility shows itself when cherished beliefs are questioned.

    Or when someone is just peddling bullshit.

  28. PeterP:

    CharlieM: Again from the book, “Forbidden Archeaology”

    discoveries. The available evidence suggests that Reck’s skeleton (OH 1) should be assigned a probable date range extending from the late Early Pleistocene (1.15 million years) to the late Upper Pleistocene (10,000 years). There is much evidence that argues in favor of the original Bed II date proposed by Reck. Particularly strong is Reck’s observation that the thin layers of Bed II sediment directly around the skeleton were undisturbed. Also arguing against later burial is the rocklike hardness of Bed II. Reports favoring a Bed V date seem to be founded upon purely theoretical objections, dubious testimony, inconclusive test results, and highly speculative geological reasoning. But even these reports yield dates of up to 400,000 years for the skeleton.

    Seems like a very outdated viewpoint and one Reck rejected as well:

    Reck had believed that the deposits above the skeleton were undisturbed. However, the skeleton was in a contracted position and virtually complete. This is very different from the usual condition of hominin fossils, which tend to be of body parts rather than complete skeletons. This is made all the more complicated by the fact that the Bed II deposits are water-lain, as Reck had established. A body falling into water will either be dispersed by the movement of water or by scavenging animals, unless it is covered rapidly in silts. It is very unlikely that a corpse falling (or even being laid) in water would remain in a contracted position before being covered in silt, no matter how rapidly it had formed.

    The difficulty with accepting Reck’s skeleton as being as old as he claimed is that his work was done without any appreciation of archaeological stratigraphy. Although the deposit was of Middle Pleistocene date, geological analysis of the material surrounding the skeleton showed it to contain red pebbles and limestone chips. These are not found in Bed II, but occur higher up in the sequence, which shows that they are later than it. This makes it certain that the skeleton was intrusive. In other words, it lay in a grave cut down from a higher layer. Reck himself came to accept this explanation

    .

    From the book Human Evolution and Prehistory by Dr William A. Haviland. (see the image below)

    In northern Europe, human bodies periodically recovered from bogs were so well preserved that they were commonly mistaken for recent corpses. Shown here is “Tolland Man” mistaken in 1950 for a lost Danish schoolboy. In fact, he died by hanging more than 2000 years ago.

    Now I don’t pretend that this find is anything like the Olduvai fossil, but it does provide evidence that a creature can fall or be placed in a wet location and remain virtually intact for thousands of years. Enough time to ensure that it will eventually fossilize in that position. And I believe that for a time Reck had thought that the Olduvai fossil had been buried at the time when Bed II had been laid down. Although to begin with he assumed it had been an intrusive burial. From Forbidden Archeology

    After reproducing statements from Reck’s original reports, Hopwood (1932, p. 194) stated: “It is clear that Professor Reck, when he found the skeleton, thought it possible that he might be dealing with an intrusive burial, that he was careful to look for evidence for this, and that he failed to find it.”
    Hopwood (1932, p. 195) concluded: “it seems to follow from the original evidence of Professor Reck that the skeleton lay in undisturbed sediment without trace of foreign matter. The ethnological evidence appears to show, that despite physical resemblances, the skeleton is not of the Masai, who inhabit the country today, and that in pre-Masai days the actual part of the bed was in such a position that it was inaccessible to a tribe only with native tools. Hence the conclusion of my colleagues and myself that the skeleton was enclosed in Bed II before that bed was covered by later deposits; and in that sense we regard the skeleton as contemporary with Bed II.”

    Around this time, Sir Arthur Keith, who initially thought Reck’s skeleton recent, also adopted the Bed II date. But not everyone agreed with the conclusion that Leakey and Hopwood reached after their 1931 expedition.,,

    Leakey, however, agreed with Cooper and Watson that Reck’s skeleton had arrived in its position in Bed II by burial, but he did not think the burial was recent. “My own personal belief,” wrote Leakey, “is that contemporary man, living on the edge of the then existing Oldoway lake, buried the skeleton into the muddy, clayey edge of the lake whilst Bed No. 2 was in the process of being deposited, for Bed No. 2 is essentially a shallow water deposit at the place where the skeleton was found” (L. Leakey 1932a, p. 721).

    Cremo, Michael. Forbidden Archaeology (Kindle Locations 16332-16335). Torchlight Publishing Inc. Kindle Edition.

    Reck, Leakey and Hopwood visited the actual site in 1931 and did not find any evidence of intrusive burial, there was no evidence of red pebbles around the skeleton. The red pebbles only became associated with the skeleton when P. G. H. Boswell, a geologist from the Imperial College in England, was sent by Professor Mollison in Munich a sample of what was claimed to be from the matrix surrounding Reck’s skeleton.

    Cremo states:

    The presence of the bright red Bed III pebbles and Bed V limestone chips in the sample sent by Mollison certainly calls for some explanation. Reck and Leakey had both carefully examined the matrix at different times over a period of 20 years. They did not report any mixture of Bed III materials or chips of limestone-like calcrete, even though they were specifically looking for such evidence. So it is remarkable that the presence of red pebbles and limestone chips should suddenly become apparent.

    Cremo, Michael. Forbidden Archaeology (Kindle Locations 16408-16412). Torchlight Publishing Inc. Kindle Edition.

    Boswell had examined the sample in isolation from any of the skeletal remains and there are no reports indicating precisely in relation to the skeleton where this sample was taken from.

    Cremo:

    E. J. Wayland (1932), head of the Geological Survey of Uganda, wrote in a letter to Nature: “The fact that the matrix . . . contained bits of concretionary limestone containing a mineral characteristic of Bed 4 does not prove the burial to be post-Bed 5, for Bed 4 contains concretionary limestone, and for that matter so do the other beds, not excluding Bed 2.”

    And:

    The debate about the age of Reck’s skeleton became more complicated when Leakey brought new soil samples from Olduvai. Boswell and J. D. Solomon studied them at the Imperial College of Science and Technology. They reported their findings in the March 18, 1933 issue of Nature, in a letter signed also by Leakey, Reck, and Hopwood.

    The letter contained this very intriguing statement: “Samples of Bed II, actually collected at the ‘man site,’ at the same level and in the immediate vicinity of the place where the skeleton was found consist of pure and wholly typical Bed II material, and differ very markedly from the samples of matrix of the skeleton which were supplied by Prof. Mollison from Munich” (L. Leakey et al. 1933, p. 397). This adds to our suspicion that the matrix sample supplied by Mollison to Boswell may not have been representative of the material closely surrounding Reck’s skeleton.

    Cremo, Michael. Forbidden Archaeology (Kindle Locations 16435-16442). Torchlight Publishing Inc. Kindle Edition.

    It is stated in your quote about that it is, “certain that the skeleton was intrusive”.

    No it isn’t certain at all.

    Here is the 2000 year old corpse from northern Europe:

  29. Charlie, do you know what a peat bog is and why it isn’t just “a wet location” with respect to preservation? And are you accusing Mollison and/or Boswell of fraud, or what?

  30. John Harshman: It’s a pointless argument. You were advancing the footprints as evidence that there were modern humans millions of years ago. Yet the only fossils in the area are of australopithecines, whose foot anatomy is the same as modern humans’.

    I do not agree that the foot anatomy of australopithecines is the same as modern humans. I would say that they have an anatomy somewhere intermediate between apes and humans depending on the species. The big toes of A. afarensis were more mobile and they are purported to have had a less well developed arch. See here.

    While Au. sediba “is apelike in possessing a more gracile calcaneal body and a more robust medial malleolus than expected.”

  31. John Harshman: You’re not making any claims now that you’re recanted them. There seems no reason for you to cite evidence for anything now that you’re making no claims. Maybe you’d like to make some claims and then provide support for them; that’s the expected way to go. And if you do, try to pick the best support rather than picking words at random.

    In this review of HUMAN DEVOLUTION: A VEDIC ALTERNATIVE TO DARWIN’S THEORY, by Cremo, he is quoted as making the following claim:

    “We did not evolve up from matter; instead we devolved, or came down, from the realm of pure consciousness, spirit,” says Cremo. He bases his response on modern science and the world’s great wisdom traditions, including the Vedic philosophy of ancient India. Cremo proposes that before we ask the question, “Where did human beings come from? we should first contemplate, “What is a human being?” Cremo asserts that humans are a combination of matter, mind, and consciousness (or spirit).

    My claim would be that Cremo’s first statement and final purported assertion are a better fit than the orthodox Darwinian explanation regarding the current evidence for evolution. I am not claiming that he is correct and orthodox Darwinians are wrong, only that his views are closer to mine and so are IMO closer to the truth.

  33. CharlieM: My claim would be that Cremo’s first statement and final purported assertion are a better fit than the orthodox Darwinian explanation regarding the current evidence for evolution. I am not claiming that he is correct and orthodox Darwinians are wrong, only that his views are closer to mine and so are IMO closer to the truth.

    Great. So now that you have made a claim, if only a weaselly, hedging one, provide what you think is the best evidence for your claim.

  34. CharlieM: I do not agree that the foot anatomy of australopithecines is the same as modern humans.

    Would these differences show up in a footprint, do you suppose?

  35. faded_Glory:
    What makes you think that anyone on this site is competent to have a discussion about diatoms?

    All we’ll end up doing is duelling with people’s credentials. A totally pointless exercise.

    Anyone and everyone should be free to discuss anything and everything. It is the way we learn. So long as our discussions involve listening to what others have to say as well talking about what we have to say.

  38. John Harshman:
    Charlie, do you know what a peat bog is and why it isn’t just “a wet location” with respect to preservation?

    Yes, and if a corpse was buried at a lakeside during the period when bed II was deposited might that not also help to preserve the remains in a way that kept it relatively intact?

    And are you accusing Mollison and/or Boswell of fraud, or what?

    No. but we don’t know from where Mollison took the sample. The crate containing the skeleton had arrived in Germany years before the sample was sent. How do we know what was in the crate apart from the skeleton? In what way had the contents been disturbed during those intervening years? As far as I am aware Mollison never gave any information about the precise source of the sample. There are many unanswered questions.

  40. CharlieM: Anyone and everyone should be free to discuss anything and everything. It is the way we learn. So long as our discussions involve listening to what others have to say as well talking about what we have to say.

    Discussing anything and everything is not ‘the way we learn’. It is only one part of the way we learn. When it comes to science, a far more important one is to carefully study the work already done by others in the field (and in related fields), and to do hands-on work ourselves. Only with a sound foundation based on these (admittedly time consuming and often difficult) activities can our discussions rise above the level of mere conversations.

  41. CharlieM: Yes, and if a corpse was buried at a lakeside during the period when bed II was deposited might that not also help to preserve the remains in a way that kept it relatively intact?

    You ignore the point: your appeal to peat bogs is bogus.

    No. but we don’t know from where Mollison took the sample. The crate containing the skeleton had arrived in Germany years before the sample was sent. How do we know what was in the crate apart from the skeleton? In what way had the contents been disturbed during those intervening years? As far as I am aware Mollison never gave any information about the precise source of the sample. There are many unanswered questions.

    So you’re accusing him of incompetence?

  42. John Harshman: Great. So now that you have made a claim, if only a weaselly, hedging one, provide what you think is the best evidence for your claim.

    Cremo states that we did not evolve up from matter; instead we devolved, or came down, from the realm of pure consciousness, spirit; and that humans are a combination of matter, mind, and consciousness (or spirit).

    There is no answer I can give that will satisfy a person who believes that reality is constricted by materialism or physicalism.

    Because our beliefs overlap somewhat we use the same evidence to argue for opposing positions. I think that we can both agree that there is a certain truth in Darwin’s statement, “…from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved”. The difference lies in that the physicalist position holds that life emerges from nothing but material substance. I hold that physical life emerges in a similar way to the formation of crystals in solution. Living forms have condensed to gross matter out of a realm which is not accessible to the normal human senses. Reality is not dictated by any stage that we humans happen to reach in the evolutionary process.

    One aspect of science that is pointing in this direction is the discovery that the vacuum of “empty space” is in reality not empty at all. In fact there is probably more activity in “empty space” than in the matter we perceiive to be within it.

    I am a great believer in the Goethean method of, “gentle empiricism”. Here is a paper on this method as it relates to music therapy. Unfortunately it is behind a paywall. (I often wonder what the justification is for so many scientific papers to be behind paywalls). Anyway, from the abstract:

    This paper challenges what typically counts as evidence by exploring a distinctive alternative empirical research tradition.

    Science has historically been practised in a way that tries to exclude the researcher from the subject being studied. Goethe believed that the human mind is the most exact scientific instrument and should be an integral part of any scientific investigation. He did not use his mind to invent the archetypal plant, he used his mind to discover it.

    By expending a great deal of effort in studying a plant in all its manifestations, running together its whole existence through birth, death, decay and growth he was rewarded by being able to perceive the archetype. It is not a case of adding anything by speculation. It is more a case of performing deep meditation and concentration of all aspects of the plant and letting the plant reveal its true nature. In this way he developed his mind to act as a sense organ, an organ of perception.

    I find that to meditate on the phrase, “as above, so below”, or as Blake put it, “to see the world in a grain of sand”, opens up a greater understanding of the world. This form of meditation involves focusing the mind as opposed to trying to empty the mind. The peliminary preparation of the mind is just as important if not more important than the act of meditation itself.

    We can study the life of an individual ccompared to earthly life as a whole. We can see the former as a reflection of the latter. We develop from a single cell to a point where self consciousness can make an appearance. And by self consciousness I don’t just mean recognizing our own reflection in a mirror which is just the very early, redimentary form of self consciousness. Our current human self consciousness is at a higher stage than this but it is still at a relatively basic stage.

    Both ourselves as individuals and life as a whole must go through various stages of preparation before higher consciousness can make an appearance. We do not come to think rationally about the evolution of life from a position that is outside of this evolution. This thinking is within and is the culmination of physical evolution in the same way that the flower is the culmination of the growing life of the plant. The growth of the plant is a preparation for the appearance of the flower and the evolution of life is a preparation for the appearance of rational thinking consciousness.

    We look at the fossil record to try to determine the path that human evolution took and it is assumed that the appearance of certain traits caused subsequent traits to develop. For example being able to grunt gave birth to language. But it is a mistake to assume that individual features evolved in isolation in a linear cause and effect relationship.

    We are the ones who separate and isolate that which is in reality a unity. We do this legitimately in order to order to study the parts. Our mistake is in taking for reality that which is of our making. We forget that the world which we have dissected is in reality a unity.

    From Saving the Appearances Barfield notes:

    p65
    By treating the phenomena of nature as objects wholly extrinsic to man, with an origin and evolution of their own independent of man’s evolution and origin, and the by endeavouring to deal with these objects as astronomy deals with the celestial appearances or physics with the particles, nineteenth-century science, and nineteenth-century speculation, succeeded in imprinting on the minds and imaginations of men their picture of an evolution of idols. One result of this has been to distort very violently our conception of the evolution of human consciousness. Or rather it has caused us virtually to deny such an evolution in the face of what must otherwise have been accepted as unmistakable evidence.

    For the biological picture of evolution was imprinted, no less deeply than on other men’s, on the minds of those scholars–etymologists, mythologists, anthropologists–who made it their business to study the human past, and it was accepted by them, not as speculation or hypothesis, but as established fact. It was the given framework into which they had to fit any theory they chose to form. It was treated as part of the appearances they were setting out to save. Consequently, in their endeavours to explain the mind of early or primitive man, they set him down, in fancy, in front of phenomena identical to their own, but with his mind, “tabula rasa”, and supposed the origin of human consciousness to lie in his first efforts to speculate about those phenomena. In this way was evolved the doctrine of ‘animism’, according to which the fancy of primitive men had ‘peopled’ nature with spirits. Now, in order that nature may be peopled with spirits, nature must first be devoid of spirit; but this caused the scholars no difficulty, because they never supposed the possibility of any other kind of nature.

    Pre-historic humans have been assumed to have thinking minds which are the same as our modern minds but in a more simplified form. But it should be understood that their thinking is of a different nature to our own. Barfield highlights this difference in his study of the way that language has developed. Early language was very figurative, it was poetic. There is no evidence that language arose from primitive humans pointing at objects and grunting in a particular way.

    Don Cruse writes:

    His (Barfield’s) reference to the misuse of the “impressive vocabulary of technological investigation” is nowhere more evident than in the now all but universal misapplication of the term ‘mechanism,’ a misapplication so widespread that it has become a dictionary definition: e.g. Mechanism – “the theory that the workings of the universe can be explained by physics and chemistry.” If challenged, a materialist will likely claim that this usage only tells us that everything in the universe is law-abiding, but in fact it does much more. It places the entire vocabulary of human intelligent creativity at the disposal of a world-view which asserts that the universe is not intelligently created. Through its language, Darwinism wrongfully universalizes human creativity, and puts it in the place of the now supposedly absent divine Designer. In Darwin’s theory, therefore, God is dead, but man is silently and unconsciously elevated to divine status.

    This logical error, perhaps more than any other factor, has permitted Darwinism to give the impression of being scientific when in fact, as Barfield suggests, it represents the total breakdown of the scientific method. Real science is critical causal enquiry; Darwinian theory is at best hypothetical speculation about the origin of life and consciousness based upon ‘mechanistic’ assumptions which perversely fail to take into account the two-factor nature of all mechanisms – natural law plus design. That the idea of mechanism must contain these two factors, and not just natural law, was conscientiously argued by the late Michael Polanyi in his article, ‘Life’s Irreducible Structures’. The logical contradiction I have referred to above is inescapable. All that one can do to counter it, is to ponder the irony of the fact that creative language cannot be logically used to support materialism. Perhaps this is because language itself is spiritual in origin as religious tradition has long suggested, but this possibility goes beyond the scope of this present article. Here I wish to focus only on the consequences of what I believe to be an undeniable historic error, perpetrated unconsciously at a time when we were not awake to its consequences.

    Darwinian, blind processes have been given the task of producing forms of life which are far beyond its capabilities.

    Nested hierarchies show the connections between the variety of life throughout evolution, but it doesn’t show that the evolutionary process is blind to the future. Our somatic cells lie within a nested hierarchy but our developmental process is not blind to the future, our potential form is determined from the moment of conception.

    Individual development and earthly life as a whole go through a matching overall process. Initial growth, then differentiation, sentience makes its appearance, followed by the ability to broadcast inner feelings and finally the ability to communicate rational thoughts.

    From “After the Future”

    Lest there be any confusion, let me be clear: I’m not saying there is no extra-subjective reality; I am saying there is no extra-collective mental reality. I know that I haven’t proved it yet, and that I am only suggesting the outline for a larger argument that Mind, not matter, is the ultimate stuff of the universe, and once one accepts that, everything begins to look differently, not the least of which our ideas about evolution. Consciousness is not some epiphenomenon of matter; rather, matter is very much the production of mind. This idea is not really all that unusual. It is in fact supported by the metaphysics of the Hinduism, Buddhism, and the idealist philosophical tradition in the West dating back to Heraclitus and Plato. And it’s not in contradiction to the facts, as we currently understand them, of biological evolution. It just provides a larger context in which to understand them. It’s just that it has become hard for Westerners since the mid 19th century to imagine because of their materialist habits of mind.
    Or another way of saying it is that we live in a world of symbols which for the modern mind has lost its referent. We see only the object, not what it symbolizes, we have come to inhabit a hopelessly flat and prosaic and disenchanted world, even though it is anything but. It’s not the world that has become disenchanted, but rather our collective perceptual habits of mind that have created filters that have all but blocked out the soul qualities that are there whether we filter them out or not.

    Neoteny is sometimes posited as the cause of modern human evolution. I would say that the opposite is the case. Prehistoric hominids are the result of a developmental process in which ageing occurs at too fast a rate to allow maturation to reach its full potential.

  44. faded_Glory: Discussing anything and everything is not ‘the way we learn’. It is only one part of the way we learn. When it comes to science, a far more important one is to carefully study the work already done by others in the field (and in related fields), and to do hands-on work ourselves. Only with a sound foundation based on these (admittedly time consuming and often difficult) activities can our discussions rise above the level of mere conversations.

    You are painting a picture of a future in which everyone specialises in their own narrow field and people are unable communicate effectively with each other. And my fear is that this is in danger of becoming a reality.

  45. John Harshman:

    CharlieM: No. but we don’t know from where Mollison took the sample. The crate containing the skeleton had arrived in Germany years before the sample was sent. How do we know what was in the crate apart from the skeleton? In what way had the contents been disturbed during those intervening years? As far as I am aware Mollison never gave any information about the precise source of the sample. There are many unanswered questions.

    So you’re accusing him of incompetence?

    That all depends on whether or not he recorded exactly where he took the samples from. Cremo said that he couldn’t find any such information. Did it ever exist? I don’t know.

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