A Mutant Ape? The Origin of Man's Descent by Michael Pitman

Author:Michael Pitman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: merops press
Published: 2016-03-07T22:00:00+00:00

19.5 Stenheim Skull (side and front)

Is there any more time for archaic humans, other than Broken Hill Man, in Africa? There is. A complete skeleton was found by Hans Reck at Olduvai Gorge in 1913. The first Olduvan fossil, it was laboriously chipped from Bed II’s hard rock confirmed at ~0.5myr - far too old for evolutionary sapiens. Both Reck and Louis Leakey72 state clearly there was no evidence of intrusive burial though Leakey doubted such age. At a later date he and colleagues, including Sir Vivian Fuchs and Arthur Hopwood from the Natural History Museum, revisited the site and confirmed the ‘non-burial’ assessment73 but re-dated to ~700 kyr (as Java Man). The anomaly then, in 1932, created a flurry of correspondence in Nature. During this time Professor Percy Boswell received samples of material brought back by Louis Leakey from several layers on the site. Subsequent analysis by Berlin Professor Mollinson seems to have employed a mixed bag as he reports elements from Beds V, IV and III above as well as the fossil’s own Bed II below. Whether misleading or not these tests convinced Reck and the others to recant and adopt the ‘intrusive burial’ refrain. By 1974 the skeleton had disappeared (!) but, using the skull, the accuracy of Mollinson’s tests was criticised. Radiocarbon measurement demonstrated an age of ~20 kyr or less although, admittedly, inaccuracy or contamination may have occurred due to using samples of calcrete from Bed V, freshwater shells and only a small amount of fossil bone. This bone was found at the boundary of Beds III and II and thus laid, it was presumed, 400 kya. Clearly, H. sapiens of 400 kyr is unacceptable from an evolutionary point of view but it has been claimed that older deposits were exposed by faulting (Johanson and Shreeve 1989) so that intrusive burial could, despite the early assurances, have occurred; also (by Morell, 1995) that Bed III is of recent origin. Thus Reck’s very early human has lately been, it may appear, comprehensively dissed!

The Leakey family has, supported by the National Geographic Magazine, famously collected fossils from Kenya and Tanzania. A Kanam Jaw and Kanjera skull fragments (contemporaries of Swanscombe Man) were discovered by Louis Leakey near Lake Victoria in 1932 and claimed by him to be a very old but anatomically modern human ancestor viz. modern humans buried in older sediments. Unfortunately Leakey failed to document the exact site. His confused evidence meant that a 27-man committee was highly critical of the archaeology.74

Most people learn from their mistakes and the Leakeys went on to produce a mass of evolution-interpreted material from Olduvai. This includes some old material and, you may have begun to observe, with more interested parties than fossil fragments populating the subject, how speculative an art is palaeoanthropology. There is little consensus as to family trees but, when it comes pieces that, by scientific date and character, could threaten evolutionary paradigms you might expect them to attract fierce materialistic, pseudoscientific exertion to revision in

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