The hidden history of human evolution

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This article appeared in the Independent(a UK National daily)

The hidden history of human evolution

 

Taken from a paper given to the Royal Institution by Michael Cremo,

the historian of archaeology at the Bhaktivedanta Institute in

America

 

4 May 2000

 

Recently archaeologists have come to recognise that the way we see

the past is to a large extent influenced by our present conceptions,

particularly our present conception of time. They have therefore come

to see the value of looking at the past through different time

lenses.

 

I proposed to examine the entire archaeological record through a time

lens derived from the ancient Sanskrit writings of India, especially

the Puranas, or histories. The writings contradict the dominant view

that anatomically modern humans arose between 100,000 and 200,000

years ago from more ape-like ancestors.

 

An examination of the entire archaeological record accumulated since

the time of Darwin should reveal two things: extensive archaeological

evidence for extreme human antiquity, and a process of knowledge

filtration whereby this evidence was edited from the record because

it violated evolutionary conceptions. Both predictions came true.

Here is a representative case. In 1880, Harvard University published

a monograph by geologist JD Whitney titled the "The Auriferous

Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California". In this work, Whitney

recorded discoveries of anatomically modern human bones and artefacts

in the California gold mines. According to modern geological reports,

the oldest of the discoveries come from layers of rock more than 50

million years old. We do not hear much about these discoveries today

because of the process of knowledge filtration.

 

William B Holmes, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution,

said in the Smithsonian Institution Annual Report (1899), "Perhaps if

Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human evolution

as it is understood today, he would have hesitated to announce the

conclusions formulated, notwithstanding the imposing array of

testimony with which he was confronted." In other words, if the facts

did not fit the theory of human evolution, they had to be set aside.

And that is what happened.

 

In the 1970s, American archaeologists were conducting excavations at

Hueyatlaco in central Mexico and uncovered stone tools and weapons,

including projectile points. They were the kinds of artefacts

archaeologists attribute to humans like us, not any kind of ape-man.

 

To date the site, the archaeologists called in a team of American

geologists, including Virginia Steen-McIntyre. Using several of the

latest methods, the geologists arrived at an age in excess of 250,000

years for the site. The archaeologists refused to publish the date.

Steen-McIntyre, operating independently of the archaeologists,

eventually found a scientific journal (Quaternary Research) that

would publish the dates she and her colleagues from the United States

Geological Survey had obtained.

 

On 30 March 1981, Virginia Steen-McIntyre wrote to Estella Leopold,

the associate editor of Quaternary Research: "The problem as I see it

is much bigger than Hueyatlaco. It concerns the manipulation of

scientific thought through the suppression of 'Enigmatic Data', data

that challenges the prevailing mode of thinking. Hueyatlaco certainly

does that! Not being an anthropologist, I didn't realise the full

significance of our dates back in 1973, nor how deeply woven into our

thought the current theory of human evolution had become. Our work at

Hueyatlaco has been rejected by most archaeologists because it

contradicts that theory, period."

 

Multiply these two cases by several hundred, some of which go back

tens of millions of years (as I have documented in my book The Hidden

History of the Human Race), and we can begin to sense the true

dimension of the problem.

 

Only the other day, I saw a BBC report that archaeologists were

puzzling about evidence for aesthetic painting found in Zambia at a

site thought to be perhaps 400,000 years old. Too old for humans like

us? Maybe not.