OM 8-1: Anomalous Evidence

Even among the fossils already discovered are a great many anomalies that contradict the currently held theory of evolution. And how scientists have treated this anomalous evidence leads to the conclusion that perhaps they are not being quite as objective and impartial in the search for the truth as they would like us to believe.

For example, some researchers have reported finding pollen of higher plants in strata shown by standard dating methods to be extremely old. These findings call into question the whole conventional account of the evolution of plants. In one instance, parties of scientists in Venezuela reported finding pollen of flowering plants in Precambrian rock formations judged to be 1.7-2.0 billion years old.7 This posed a serious problem, because according to current theory the flowering plants evolved fairly recently, only 100 million years ago.

To resolve the difficulty, one group of scientists decided that although the dates of the rock were correct the pollen must have been a recent intrusion, even though entry of the pollen into those layers defies simple explanation. The second group held that the pollen had been there since the rock had formed, but concluded that the dating was wrong and the rock was of recent origin. The two groups thus contradicted each other in their interpretations of the evidence. The real significance of this treatment is that both groups felt compelled to look for ways to avoid contradicting the standard story of evolution, to which they were strongly committed.

This is not the only case in which fossil pollen of higher plants has been found in strata belonging to an age in which such plants, according to current evolutionary theory, could not yet have evolved. For example, paleontologist S. Le Clercq of the University of Liege, Belgium, has written a review article citing a number of cases of evidence of this kind.8

How do scientists deal with this evidence? It is of course possible for them to revise their theory of evolution so as to accommodate this material, but that would be somewhat embarrassing and time-consuming, since every textbook would have to be rewritten. It also would be possible for them to simply present their accepted theory and honestly and objectively point out the existence of contradictory evidence and interpretations. One can find accounts of such evidence and interpretation in widely scattered technical articles, but in standard textbooks and popular presentations this contrary evidence is simply not mentioned at all. Thus a person reading these accounts would not have the faintest idea that such evidence ever existed.

Anomalous evidence concerning human remains raises major questions about evolutionary theory. According to the conventional view, hominids, or manlike creatures, began to evolve from apelike ancestors in Africa about 4 million years ago. The early hominids from this period (4-2 million years ago) are known as australopithecenes, beings with manlike bodies and apelike heads. There is a further development of australopithecus to homo habilis, which appeared about 2 million years ago. Homo erectus evolved from homo habilis about 1. 5 million years ago and migrated to Europe and Asia.

About 200,000-300,000 years ago, the very first representatives of homo sapiens appear, but these are not quite like modern human beings. From this species, about 100,000 years ago, Neanderthal man develops and spreads throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. About 40,000 years ago fully modern man is thought to have evolved in the Near East or Asia. Called homo sapiens sapiens, the new species then enters Europe and replaces Neanderthal man, who disappears from the scene. The rudiments of modern civilization begin 10, 000 years ago. According to the standard accounts, this whole development took place in the Old World. The only humans ever to have existed in the New World are fully modern men who migrated there from Asia no earlier than 30,000 years ago.

This is the standard scenario, yet much evidence has turned up that challenges it. We shall now review some of this evidence and examine how scientists have responded to it, beginning with that calling for the least amount of change in current views.

At Border Cave in South Africa paleontologists have made fossil discoveries that push back the date and change the locale for the origin of modern man. They concluded that "anatomically modern homo sapiens [homo sapiens sapiens] originated at some as yet uncertain time prior to about 110 thousand years before the present." This differs substantially from the standard version, with its date of 40,000 years ago for the origin of modern man in Asia or the Near East.

Moving to the New World, we come to the archaeological site at Valsequillo in southern Mexico. There, in 1962, archaeologist Cynthia Irwin-Williams excavated stone artifacts, including spearpoints, representative of a technology usually associated with fully modern (Cro-Magnon) man in Europe. In 1972 and 1973 a team of dating experts, including geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey, using several independent dating techniques, found that the layers in which the artifacts were found were about 250,000 years old.

The Valsequillo artifacts thus present far greater challenge to the accepted view of human evolution than the Border Cave finds. The date is twice as old and it places anomalously ancient men on the wrong continent.

At the very least the find would mean some drastic rethinking of the history of man in the New World. The authors of the dating study said in their report that they were "painfully aware that so great an age poses an archaeological dilemma."10 The authors knew what they meant when they used the word painfully, for they had met with an extremely hostile reception from archaeologists nationwide, one of whom accused the team of ruining Dr. IrwinWilliams' career.11 There is indeed a dilemma here, because man is generally thought to have arrived in the New World no earlier than 12,000 years ago, although some extend the date to 30,000 years. The mainstream scientists' resolution of this dilemma is typical-the Valsequillo find is simply not mentioned in standard textbooks and popular accounts of human evolution. There are numerous other controversial finds of ancient man in the New World that are conspicuous by their absence from the standard accounts. Recent examples include the Calico Hills, California, early man site (500,000 years old), the Flagstaff, Arizona find (100,000-170,000 years old), and the Mission Valley find in San Diego, California (100,000 years old).12

The kind of suppression of evidence that one can encounter in promoting unorthodox archaeological views is illustrated by the excavations at Sheguiandah. At this site near Lake Huron in Canada, Dr. Thomas Lee, the director of the National Museum of Canada, uncovered stone tools that geologists dated at 150,000 years old. On the advice of an expert, Dr. Ernst Antevs of Arizona, Lee reported a lesser date of 30,000 years. But even this was too much for the traditionalists, who adhered strongly to their own date of 12,000 years as the maximum limit for human presence in North America. Lee wrote in the Anthropological Journal of Canada, "The site's discoverer was hounded from his Civil Service position into prolonged unemployment; publication outlets were cut off; the evidence was misrepresented by several prominent authors among the Brahmins [scientific establishment]; the tons of artifacts vanished into storage bins of the National Museum of Canada; for refusing to fire the discoverer, the Director of the National Museum (Lee), who had proposed having a monograph on the site published, was himself fired and driven into exile. … Sheguiandah would have forced embarrassing admissions that the Brahmins did not know everything. It would have forced the rewriting of almost every book in the business. It had to be killed. It was killed."13