mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ 
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================

Give Me Shelter:

A Forbidden Archaeology Report from Michael A. Cremo

On March 1, 2000 the New Scientist web site carried a report on a
discovery of evidence for a hominid habitation site at Chichibu,
Japan. At a hillside at Chichibu, north of Tokyo, Japanese
archaeologists reported finding the remains of what the report called
"the world's oldest artificial structure." The evidence for the
structure took the form of ten post holes drilled into solid rock. The
ten holes were arranged in two roughly pentagonal shapes, indicating
that poles inserted into the holes formed the superstructures of two
huts. Stone tools were also found at the site, which was given an age
of 500,000 years.

The making of artificial shelters is something usually considered
characteristic of anatomically modern humans. But because anatomically
modern humans are thought not to have existed 500,000 years ago (the
oldest skeletal evidence for humans of our type goes back about
100,000 years), archaeologists attributed the huts to the apeman Homo
erectus. Chris Stringer, of the human origins group at the Natural
History Museum in London, England, said, "it is the first good
evidence from 500,000 years ago of a hut structure made by these
people [i.e., Homo erectus]."

Other archaeologists shared Stringer's sense of surprise that Homo
erectus could have achieved this level of culture. "If you have post
holes, this is a rather exceptional situation in terms of what we know
about hominid archaeology," says John Rick, an anthropologist at
Stanford University. "Half a million years ago, we don't have any
concept of what our ancestors were capable of doing at all."

But this sense of surprise may be based on incomplete knowledge of the
history of our human species. In my book Forbidden Archeology, I have
documented evidence for an anatomically modern human presence in Asia
at the time represented by the newly discovered Chichibu site in
Japan. For example, in 1958 workers found human bones in the Liujiang
cave in southern China. In 1985, two prominent Chinese scientists, Han
Defen and Xu Chunhua, identified the bones as belonging to the
anatomically modern human species Homo sapiens sapiens. On this basis,
they assigned the bones a fairly recent date. But the human bones were
found in the same layers as bones of fossil animals from the Middle
Pleistocene period, which extends from 100,000 to 1 million years ago.
From elsewhere in the world, there is abundant evidence that
anatomically modern humans were present at 500,000 years ago and
earlier. The anatomically modern human skeleton found by German
scientist Hans Reck at Olduvai Gorge in 1913 was solidly embedded in
Upper Bed II, which is over 1 million years old. An anatomically
modern human skull was found at a depth of over 45 feet, in Buenos
Aires, in layers also over 1 million years old. This discovery was
reported by the Argentine geologist Florentino Ameghino in 1909. These
are just two of the many cases that could be cited.

So it is not necessary for archeologists to elevate Homo erectus to
human status when they find evidence for huts in Japan at 500,000
years. If we consider all the available evidence, the Chichibu
discoveries are best interpreted as evidence for anatomically modern
humans in Japan at 500,000 years ago.

For further information visit:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns222834

Return to the Articles section

Return to News Page

Home