Secrets of the Lost Races #6
From the book by the same name
Solving the Enigma of the Cave Man
As the eight world civilization centers destroyed one
another, the suffering planet throbbed with pain and terror.
Everywhere death rained from the skies. Dense arrows of flame and
mushrooming clouds of fire unleashed by the Agneya weapon spewed
radiating waves of death over the battlefields, vaporizing both
men and machines. The knowledge that had been so carefully
preserved and carried through the Flood now became the tool of
destruction. Death ruled, and its horrifying stench of decay hung
heavy where once proud cities had stood. Gone was the global
unity-confusion was rampant.
With knowledge fractured, communications nonexistent, and
distrust and hatred the common denominator among the warring
nations, ideas and concepts could no longer be exchanged, and the
flow of inventiveness and technical advancement abruptly ceased.
It was as if a giant hand had suddenly demolished the nations,
grabbed the strings of knowledge and pulled them back.
The world was to be changed for a second time. Abandoning
the nightmare of the molten cities, leaving them in the clutches
of atomic radiation, small groups of panic-stricken survivors set
out to begin life once again in the mountains and jungles which
were untouched by the holocaust. Finding refuge in caves and
crevices marked the beginning of a new existence, far different
from the dubious blessings society had brought them. And while
the crumbled civilizations sought ways to reestablish themselves,
the people trying to recall from memory what had once been
entrusted to scrolls and metal plates, the "cave men" isolated
themselves from the mainstream. Their remains are still found
today, contributing to the conflict called evolution.
The new framework of history, based on discovery and
manuscript translation covering the activities of the human race
since the Flood, indicates that there really was no progressive
succession. Instead the developments of the Stone Age and the
cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia were merely discontinuous
offshoots of the world fragmentation after the building of the
Babel World Center. Limited (primitive) and advanced
civilizations existed at the same time, with each one aware of
the others' existence.
Death of the "Ape-Man"
To prove their theory, scientists up until a few years ago
were classifying various prehistoric human skeletal remains into
various positions on a hypothetical line of ascent, beginning
with the so-called ape-man and ending with modern man. More
recent finds, however, have revealed the disconcerting fact that
the basic human has always existed, not as the offspring of apes
or primitive beings, but as a man, since time began. Those known
to us as ape-men were simply humans who had degenerated from the
main human stock. Bjorn Kurten, author of Not from the Apes,
says: "It has been possible in the last decade to demonstrate
that the human lineage can be followed back into far more distant
times where it still retains its unique character. Indeed, we may
doubt that our ancestor was ever what could properly be called an
ape. This makes excellent sense zoologically. The contrasts
between apes and men in anatomy . . . are too great to be
reconciled with a relatively recent common origin, and the same
is true of behavior."
This is truly the age of discovery, even though not everyone
agrees with the conclusions reached. The "evolution" of man, as
seen through his technological regression, indicates that man did
not evolve; rather, he regressed. For nearly a century,
Neanderthal man, whose partial skeletal remains have been
discovered throughout Europe, was thought by the evolutionists to
have been a direct ancestor of modern man. But more recent
Neanderthal finds in the Middle East are more advanced, almost
like Homo sapiens in appearance, yet they are older than those
found in western Europe, forcing the paleontologists to concede
that the West European Neanderthalers constituted a step
backward. The most satisfactory explanation for the degeneracy of
the European Neanderthalers is as follows.
By their own volition the people severed their contacts with
the civilization centers, and they presently found themselves cut
off from the rest of mankind by the Ice Age glaciers that
blanketed northern and central Europe. Because of this isolation
and their limited numbers, considerable inbreeding occurred. With
such a limited gene pool, the appearance of bad genetic traits
was significantly increased, leading to birth defects and
physical mutations which produced the structures characteristic
of West European Neanderthal remains.
There are some paleontologists who are already beginning to
believe that this explanation may apply not only to Neanderthal
man but to the rest of the primitive "ape-men" as well. Harold G.
Coffin, Research Professor of the Geoscience Research Institute
in Berrien Springs, Michigan, comments: "Neanderthal man and
Cro-Magnon man are not a very useful support for evolution, for
they are so much like modern human beings. This is especially
true since the recent discovery that the classic descriptions of
Neanderthal man were based in large part on the remains of a
Neanderthal skeleton of a man suffering from severe
osteoarthritis."
An article entitled "Pathology and the Posture of the
Neanderthal Man," by researchers William L. Straus, Jr., and A.
J. A. Cove, lends considerable weight to this evaluation: "There
is thus no valid reason for the assumption that the posture of
Neanderthal man of the fourth glacial period differed
significantly from that of present-day man," they point out.
"This is not to deny that his limbs, as well as his skull,
exhibit distinctive features - features which collectively
distinguish him from all groups of modern men. . . . It may be
that the arthritic 'old man' of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, the
postural prototype of Neanderthal man, did actually stand and
walk with something of a pathological kyphosis; but, if so, he
has his counterparts in modern men similarly afflicted with
spinal osteoarthritis. He cannot, in view of his manifest
pathology, be used to provide us with a reliable picture of a
healthy, normal Neanderthalian. Notwithstanding, if he could be
reincarnated and placed in a New York subway - provided that he
were bathed, shaved, and dressed in modern clothing - it is
doubtful whether he would attract any more attention than some of
its other citizens."
There are already some paleontologists who are beginning to
believe that this explanation, as well as that of recessive
genetic traits, may apply not only to Neanderthal man but to the
rest of the primitive "ape-men" as well. Two defects associated
with recessive genetic traits are endocrine and thyroid disorders
affecting the development of bones and other tissue, and
resulting in acromegaly and cretinism. The medical descriptions
of these two disorders are similar to the modern paleontological
descriptions of "ape-men" remains.
Such conditions occur rarely among populations with wide
ranges of breeding choice, but, as mentioned above, they can
become predominant in a people closely inbred because of
isolation. With this in mind, it is interesting to note in what
locations the remains of major prehistoric "ape-men" types have
been found:
Pithecanthropus was located in Indonesia
Sinanthropus in east China
Australopithecus in South Africa
Most primitive Neanderthalers in the western part of Europe
When we look at these localities in terms of the population
dispersal from Ararat following the Flood, we see that Ararat
constituted a central starting point, and the primitive men's
remains are found on the outer fringes.
While the designation "Stone Age" clearly does not apply to
these remnants of a chaotic culture who carved out a meager
existence far from the mainstream of civilization, it will have
to suffice for want of a more appropriate description. The
remains of these survivors are usually found in close proximity
to the materials that were most durable, stone or bone, hence
this name. Yet this does not preclude their having worked with
these materials exclusively; in fact, there is evidence that
they, like their more civilized neighbors, not only knew about,
but worked with metals. It is true that no actual metal tools
have ever been discovered among Stone Age relics, but this is
understandable, as metal tools will not last much longer than a
few thousand years when exposed to the weathering processes of
time. That the survivors indeed knew of the value of metal
becomes evident when we consider the many prehistoric mines that
have been located throughout the world. On the Mediterranean
island of Elba, there are iron-ore mines whose origins are lost
in antiquity. The Greeks considered the mines already ancient in
their own day and ascribed their origin to the Pelasgians, a
prehistoric people who inhabited the eastern Mediterranean
region.
Beyond Europe, a number of recently excavated sites have
greatly increased our knowledge of prehistoric mining operations.
Investigations conducted in 1967 and 1969 at Lion Cavern, near
Ngwenya in Swaziland, southern Africa, have shown that long
before the present Negroid population of Bantus, Bushmen and
Hottentots inhabited the area, at a time when local Neanderthal
types such as Rhodesian, Boskop and Florisbad man were extinct,
someone had already mined deposits of hematite and specularite,
forms of iron ore. This hematite has been found in conjunction
with Neanderthal remains at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France and
dates back to the same period as the Ngwenya mines. It is now
believed that the "bloodstone" (hematite) was used as a cosmetic
and also for ritual purposes as a substitute for human blood in
burial ceremonies. The use of hematite in this specific manner
has been discovered as far away as Tasmania, off southern
Australia, and Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South
America - always in coastal areas. It is possible that the use of
bloodstone, and perhaps the material itself, may have been
exported over a considerable area in prehistoric times. This
extensive trade, of course, was totally out of keeping with modem
theories of the primitiveness of early man.
Not far from Ngwenya, at Border Cave in South Africa,
diggings in 1972 conducted by Adrian Boshier and Peter Beaumont
uncovered ten filled-in prehistoric mining pits, some up to 45
feet in depth. Again, hematite had been extracted. Associated
with the Border Cave remains were remains of both Neanderthal and
modern types of primitive man. Also found were agate knives still
sharp enough to cut paper, as well as evidence that the miners
used mathematics and kept records by making etchings on bone. It
would appear that the ore had sufficient economic value to prompt
the primitive diggers to keep track of what they produced.
Interestingly, some of the most fascinating evidence of
prehistoric mining is found in North America. In the Keweenaw
Peninsula and on Isle Royale in Michigan, in the copper-rich Lake
Superior region, there are ancient mines whose origins are
completely unknown even to the Indians. There are signs that
several thousand tons of copper were removed at a very early
date, yet not a single cultural artifact remains that could tell
us who the miners were. The American Antiquarian (vol. 25, p.
258) remarks, "There is no indication of any permanent settlement
near these mines. Not a vestige of a dwelling, nor a skeleton,
nor a bone has ever been found." What is known is that the
prehistoric miners had the means not only of extracting the ore,
but also of transporting it to a distant location, for not one
ounce of the ore was ever uncovered for use within a thousand
miles of the mine sites.
The first discovery of the prehistoric mining shafts was
made in 1848 by S.O.Knapp, an agent of the Minnesota Mining
Company. In passing over a portion of the company's grounds, he
observed a continuous depression in the soil, which he surmised
was formed by the disintegration of a vein. The depressions led
him to a cavern, where he noticed evidence of artificial
excavation. After clearing away the debris, he discovered
numerous stone hammers, and at the bottom of the hole was a vein
of ore which the ancient miners evidently had not finished
unearthing.
Two and a half miles east of the Ontonagon River, today the
center of the copper region of Michigan, Knapp discovered a
second mine. This shaft was situated in a rock wall: The
excavation, which reached a depth of 26 feet, had later been
filled in with clay and a tangled mass of vegetation - indicative
of an extremely old mine. At a depth of 18 feet, Knapp uncovered
a detached mass of copper weighing six tons. This mass had been
raised on timbers and wedges to about five feet above its
break-off point. The timbers were from six to eight inches in
diameter, and the ends showed the marks of a cutting tool. The
copper mass itself had been pounded smooth, and what had been
protruding pieces were broken off to facilitate transportation.
The shaft contained other copper masses, charcoal and other
evidence of fire, and a stone hammer weighing 36 pounds.
On Isle Royale, near the northern shore of Lake Superior,
prehistoric excavations are extensive, with some pits reaching 60
feet in depth. Upon opening one of the island pits, searchers
discovered that the mine had been worked to a depth of nine feet
through solid rock before a vein of copper 18 inches thick was
uncovered at the bottom. Obviously the miners were highly
intelligent and experienced both in the observation of locating
the veins and then in following them underground when their
course on the surface was interrupted. Many of the excavations
were connected underground, and drains were cut into the rock to
remove excess water. At one point, the Isle Royale excavations
extend for two miles in an almost straight line.
Still more curious than the Michigan copper mines is this
find reported in the February 1954 issue of Coal Age. During the
preceding year, miners at the Lion Coal Mine in Wattis, Utah,
broke into a preexisting tunnel system, of which there was no
modern record. The tunnels were so old, in fact, that the coal
residue in them had already oxidized to a great extent and could
no longer be of commercial value. On August 13, 1953, John E.
Wilson of the Department of Engineering and Jesse D. Jennings of
the Department of Anthropology of the University of Utah began an
exploration of the prehistoric coal mines. They found not only
tunnels, but also centralized coal rooms where the material had
been brought before being transported to the surface. The tunnels
averaged five to six feet in height and extended for several
hundred feet, following seams of coal in patterns similar to
modern mine layouts. The scientists were unable to find the
surface entrance of the old mine system, but they did trace an
eight-foot-high tunnel to a depth of 8,500 feet. Subsequent
investigation revealed that no local Indian tribe had ever used
coal or had a recollection of anyone who did. As with the
Michigan mines, some enterprising prehistoric people not only had
possessed the technology for mining the ore, but also had the
means of transporting the material to some unknown location.
Construction Techniques of the Stone-Age Man
A lack of metal artifacts certainly does not prove that the
people of the Stone Age did not use metals, nor does the fact
that most Paleolithic remains have been found in caves mean that
they were the single mode of habitation among Stone Age men.
Le-Grand-Pressigny in France has the most extensive deposits of
stone tools in the world - millions of cores and scrapers from
the Paleolithic Age are scattered over 10,000 acres, at depths
averaging three to six feet - yet there is not a single cave in
the area. At Charroux is another tool center of considerable
size, where even today one can pick up prehistoric stone axes
over twenty-five acres. Within three miles of the Charroux site,
in the hillsides along the Charente River, there are 49 caves,
but excavations have revealed no sign that any of these caverns
was ever inhabited by men.
Evidence that Stone Age men lived in well-constructed houses
is slowly surfacing and has upset preconceived views of how they
lived and flourished. In the Lascaux Caverns, world-renowned for
their Magdalenian paintings, one can still see the holes in the
rock that supported wooden crossbeams. Probably looking similar
to what Michelangelo utilized many millennia later, these
crossbeams held scaffolding that enabled the Cro-Magnon artists
to execute their works on the cave ceilings, ten to twelve feet
above the cavern floor. The evidence for this scaffolding is
significant, for in the opinion of Professor Doru Todericiu of
the University of Bucharest, the history of architecture shows
that scaffolding did not precede knowledge of masonry. If the
Lascaux artists constructed scaffolds, it is probable that they
also knew how to construct walls. "To deny this," Professor
Todericiu states, "would be like saying that the candle was
invented before anyone knew how to kindle fire."
Several examples of simple prehistoric stone construction
have been found which show a remarkable degree of sophistication.
The Abbe Breuil and Professor Lantier, in their book "Les hommes
de Page de la pierre ancienne," discuss the finding of a
prehistoric oven at Noailles: "[It was] made of squared stones
held in place by a packing of chalky clay and sand." In other
words, the Stone Age oven had been constructed using stones
shaped like bricks and mortared with cement.
Even in eastern Europe, where the early inhabitants did not
share the higher culture of the Magdalenian people of France, we
also find indications of a sophisticated knowledge of
construction.
The remnants of three huts of that period were recently
excavated at Vestonice on the lower slopes of the Pavlov hills in
Czechoslovakia. The largest of the three was 30 by 40 feet in
size, and its floor had been covered with limestone grit, a crude
form of cement. The smaller huts had been built in similar
fashion, using circular walls covered with limestone and clay.
These are considered to be among the oldest true walls surviving
in the world. What is also significant about the Vestonice site
is that a well-constructed beehive-shaped kiln containing
remnants of fired clay was found in one of the huts. Fragments of
sculptured clay heads of a fox and two bears were also unearthed.
Thus the use of fired clay was not beyond the scope of
Paleolithic culture, as had previously been thought.
What are perhaps the most disturbing prehistoric
construction and civilization finds were uncovered in 1965 by
archaeologist Dragoslav Srejovic at a site now called Starveco,
on the Danube River, on the Yugoslavian and Rumanian border.
Digging into the Yugoslavian bank, Srejovic first
encountered traces of a Roman road; beneath this were fragments
of proto-Greek pottery, and below these were Neolithic remnants
and traces of Mesolithic cultural artifacts.
Deeper still, Srejovic came upon something totally out of
place: the remains of a cement floor. More specifically, the
material was an amalgam of local limestone, sand and water,
considered a feat of chemistry and construction several millennia
ahead of its time. The cement surfaces were not placed
haphazardly, but were carefully laid out in large slabs to form
the foundations of houses. Several foundations were built one on
top of another, indicating that buildings had been constructed
and reconstructed over an indeterminate period. Yet there was
also remarkable uniformity. The layout of the houses in the later
periods was the same as that in the earlier periods - there was
no evidence of a gradual development from a simple to a complex
pattern. Rather, the Starveco village suddenly appeared, fully
mature, flourished, then decayed and was abandoned in the same
advanced state.
In addition to the foundations, the individual Starveco
buildings also showed a high order of architectural
sophistication. They all had one side larger in size than the
other three, with proportions of either 3:1 or 4:1. The larger
side was shaped like a 60-degree segment of a circle. This larger
side always faced toward the river, providing the occupants with
the maximum view of the Danube and the surrounding hilly country.
Inside each house, the shape of the dwelling was repeated in the
hearth or oven, which was bounded by carefully shaped stone slabs
and always located in the eastern or sunny end of the house.
Srejovic noted that the position of the hearth was significant,
as it was situated in the exact center of an equilateral triangle
if the lines of the house were extended. What the architectural
purpose of this was is not clear, but the implications of the
mathematical and geometrical knowledge indicated cannot be
ignored.
The same precision and order evident in the architecture is
also found in the arrangement of the dwellings at the Starveco
site.
The structures are laid out in what appears to have been a
planned fan shape, opening toward the riverbank. The larger
buildings, presumably those belonging to members of a higher
class or governing body, were located toward the center,
surrounding a paved plaza believed by Srejovic to have been a
marketplace or assembly square.
The Starveco site has yielded a number of other cultural
characteristics previously thought to have been developed
thousands of years later, in the Middle East. Behind the hearth
in each house, laborers unearthed the remains of altars,
indicating religious beliefs and practices. Each altar was
composed of a flat stone, with a cup impression for burning a
sacrifice, which faced two or more upright stones of reddish
sandstone. This sandstone had been excavated from an outcrop,
located in a ravine several miles away, and many of the stones
had carved wavy lines or chevrons in low relief, considered the
oldest examples of architectural decoration. Even more
significant was the discovery of twenty sculpted life-sized human
faces of stone. The faces were goggle-eyed, open-mouthed and
small-nosed, with some of the statues showing a suggestion of
shoulders, arms and a bust. The Starveco sculptures are believed
to be the oldest such life-sized, handfashioned stone works known
today.
An interesting aspect of the site was the evidence of very
good health among the Starveco population. There was a striking
absence of deformed or diseased bones, and the women were so
robustly built that it was difficult to tell their skeletal
remains from those of the men. Both sexes lived unusually long
lives - some into their eighties. This was indeed an increase
over the lifespans of those who inhabited the region during the
later Neolithic, Greek and Roman periods, when fifty years of age
was considered old.
Community Life and Trade
Among both the cavern and constructed habitations that
existed during the Stone Age, we find ample evidence that the
inhabitants brought with them concepts of community cooperation
and communication. At Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne region of
France, numerous caves and rock shelters are clustered together;
all were inhabited at the same time. Evidence of cooperation
among the cave dwellers begins early, with the Aurignacian
period, when the region was occupied by just a few individuals.
Larger hearths indicated not only an increased population, but
also more complex social units. Similar kinds of tools were found
together, indicative of a specialization in both labor and the
sites of labor. A number of the sites were used only
occasionally, and the tools and bones uncovered were associated
with hunting spring and summer game. Ideas were also shared from
site to site. Several caves possessed drainage ditches, running
through the floor to the outside; all were of similar design and
construction. Ideas and concepts must also have been shared over
an extensive area, for among many of the Les Eyzies caverns are
fragments of seashells, indicating contact with a coastal region
- 100 miles away.
Other indications show that the cave men had an intimate
knowledge of the seas and must have been familiar with sea
travel. As previously noted, the cave-man civilization first
appeared along the western coasts of France and Spain, from the
direction of the sea. A bone baton found at Montgaudier is
engraved with figures of a spouting sperm whale and two seals so
detailed that they can be recognized as male and female.
Montgaudier is over 100 miles from the coast, indicating that
someone knowledgeable about marine life had recorded his
observations, which record had found its way far inland from its
source. Similarly, in the cave of Nerja, in the Malaga region of
southern Spain near the Mediterranean coast, at a deep and nearly
inaccessible place on the cavern wall are painted three dolphins,
two males and one female, in a face-to-face encounter. Their
creator - like the person who carved the image of the sperm
whale - would have had to journey far out on the open sea in
order to witness and record his story. If they did voyage by sea,
how far did they travel? Evidence of their journeys has been
found in coastal areas throughout the western Mediterranean - in
Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, Morocco and southern Spain. Even farther
away, Aurignacian tools and skeletal remains have been uncovered
in the New World. Professor J. L. Myers, in the Cambridge Ancient
History (vol.1, p.48) noted conspicuous similarities between
Aurignacian skulls found in Europe and prehistoric skulls
uncovered in Lagoa Santa in Brazil and other localities along the
coast of eastern South America.
Van der Veer reports that obsidian tools from El Ingor, in
the Andes mountains near Quito, Ecuador, are definitely related
in design to tools belonging to the late Upper Paleolithic in
France and Spain. Stone Age man must have had a considerable
knowledge of geography and navigation in order to reach and trade
with these distant locations.
Sophistication in Clothing
When the average person imagines a man of the Stone Age, he
usually pictures a crude-looking individual, dressed only in an
animal skin around his waist and over one shoulder. For decades
this was how anthropologists viewed prehistoric man. However, in
a cave near Lussac-les-Chateaux, in 1937, Leon Pericard and
Stephane Lwoff uncovered a number of engraved stones dating from
the Magdalenian period which drastically altered the accepted
picture. The flat stones showed men and women in casual poses,
wearing robes, boots, belts, coats and hats. One engraving is a
profile of a young lady who appears to be sitting and watching
something. She is dressed in a pant suit with a short-sleeved
jacket, a pair of small boots, and a decorated hat that flops
down over her right ear and touches her shoulder. Resting on her
lap is a square, flat object with a flap that folds down the
front, very much like a modern purse. Other examples show men
wearing well-tailored pants and coats, broad belts with clasps,
and clipped beards and moustaches.
The Lussac etchings contradict everything that classical
prehistory had believed until that time, and anthropologists were
quick to label the drawings a fraud. But despite their hasty
judgments, the out-of-place pictures were authenticated in 1938,
with Abbe Breuil among those who demonstrated that the
well-dressed individuals had indeed lived during the Magdalenian
period of the Upper Paleolithic. Today, most of the stone
engravings are in the prehistory library of Lussacles-Chateaux,
with a few on exhibit in the Musee de I'Homme in Paris. But the
drawings that are shown are those which are not too revealing and
do not clash too strongly with conventional theories. The rest
are stored away and cannot be seen, except by special permission,
and then only by those individuals with "proper credentials." It
is felt that the pictures would be too "disturbing" for public
viewing.
The Lussac models are by no means the only evidence of
sophisticated dress from the Stone Age. Prehistoric cave
paintings from the Kalahari Desert of Southwest Africa, dated
within the Stone Age period, show light-skinned men with blond
beards and well-styled hair, wearing boots, tight-fitting pants,
multicolored shirts, and coats and gloves. Farther to the north,
the remains of a Paleolithic man were uncovered near Vladimir,
not far from Moscow, by Professor Otto Bader of the
Ethnographical Institute of the Academy of Soviet Sciences.
Christened "Vladimir man," the prehistoric individual was a
hunter of reindeer and mammoth, and the remnants of his clothing
indicated he was well attired. He wore a large pair of trousers
made of fur, an embroidered shirt, and a very practical jacket.
Scarcely anything remains of the actual clothing, but the pieces
could be reconstructed from the ivory badges and clasps that were
still intact.
Primitive Art Far Ahead of Its Time
Without question, the most universally recognized aspect of
Stone Age civilization is its art work, which has come to us in a
variety of forms, the most awe-inspiring being the polychrome
paintings found in the caverns of Lascaux, Altamira and other
caves in southern France and northern Spain. Paleolithic art
first appeared with the advent of Cro-Magnon in the Aurignacian
period and became more pronounced and widespread in the
Gravettian. Sculptured female statuettes, currently called the
Venus figurines, are found associated with most Gravettian
remains from France, across Europe and Asia, as far east as
Siberia. But it was not until the Magdalenian period, which must
truly be called a Renaissance, that art burst forth in a wide
range of styles and media of art.
The Magdalenian cave art and the way it was created tell us
much about the sophistication of their culture. The first step in
the execution of a cave painting was to sketch the animal or
other subject matter in outline. This was done either in charcoal
or by engraving with a flint. Following this came the application
of color, which was accomplished in a variety of ways: with the
fingers; with brushes of fur, feathers or mottled twigs; with
pads of moss; by blowing dry colors through a hollow reed or bone
tube; or by rubbing on the colors after mixing them with animal
fat and rolling them into crayons. A number of these crayons were
found at Altamira.
The colors the cave man had available were somewhat limited.
He did not use blues or greens, but utilized a violet-black
pigment made with manganese oxides. Chemical analysis shows that
the most commonly used colors were yellow (from ochre, i.e., iron
oxides), red and orange (from iron oxides and bison's blood), and
brown and black (from heated animal fat and charcoal). The
artists achieved a remarkable three-dimensional effect by
utilizing the natural contours of rock on the cavern walls and
ceilings. Small holes became the glaring eyes of a bison, cracks
became the wounds of a stricken deer, and odd-shaped bulges were
incorporated into the painting as the head or back hump of a
woolly rhinoceros or mammoth. Even today, as one gazes upon the
cavern figures, the contrasts between light and shadow created by
the natural rock contours give the impression that the painted
animals are alive and breathing, a technique and effect unique in
the history of art.
The cave paintings, when closely analyzed, reveal that the
sketching and application of color were done in bold, sure
strokes, with few apparent mistakes or corrections. This may
suggest that those who executed the art were true masters whose
confidence and exactness could only have been acquired after
years of training and experimentation. At Limeuil, in southwest
France, 137 stone slabs were found, with poorly drawn sketches on
them, dating from the Paleolithic age. In the midst of each
sketch, however, are details redrawn and corrected by someone who
was obviously artistically more mature. These drawings show all
the signs of a teacher's hand applied to a student's work - a
master training the eye of the novice in artistic perception.
Limeuil, it now appears, was a school for artists; not only for
sketchers, but for painters as well. In an adjacent grotto, a
bone tube still filled with paint ready to be blown against the
cavern wall was unearthed, as was a stone palette thick with
ochre waiting to be applied with a brush.
Not only was art taught, but artistic ideas were conveyed
from one place to another, sometimes over great distances. In
1903 a wall picture of a stately old bison, drawn with distinct
individuality, was found in a cavern at Font-de-Gaume in the
Dordogne, France. Twenty-three years later a stone slate was
uncovered in another cave 188 miles away, showing the sketch
from which the old bison had been drawn. Someone had undoubtedly
admired the Font-de-Gaume painting, acquired its original sketch
from the artist, and taken it home to keep as a memento or
perhaps to use as a model himself.
In describing the sophistication of Paleolithic art,
prehistorian Robert Silverberg says, "The cave paintings are
upsetting to those who prefer to think of Quaternary man as
little more than an ape. Not only do they indicate great
craftsmanship, but they point to a whole constellation of
conclusions: That primitive man had an organized society with
continuity and shape, religion and art. It was also dismaying to
learn that the earliest inhabitants of Western Europe . . . had
scaled heights of artistic achievement that would not be reached
again until late in the Christian era. That exploded the theory
[that] man's rise from barbarism had been steady and always
upward."
William F. Albright, in his "From the Stone Age to
Christianity," summed up modern research into Paleolithic art in
this way: "....though the number of motifs, techniques and media
available to him now is, of course, immeasurably greater, it is
very doubtful whether man's artistic capabilities are actually
any higher today than they were in late prehistoric times."
Examples of Prehistoric Mathematics and Astronomy
Among both cave paintings and various stone and bone
engravings we find not only realistic representations of nature
and everyday life, but also a great many abstract symbols called
tectiforms, claviforms and blazons. Sometimes the forms are
recognizable; other times they are not. These symbols no doubt
were meant to convey ideas and thus may be considered a Stone
Age form of pictograph writing. In many instances, these abstract
signs are simply composed of a series of lines, scratches or
dots, in carefully planned patterns. At first many prehistorians
regarded the series only as crude forms of decoration, but
now they are identified as notation - some strictly mathematical,
others of a chronological nature, recording such astronomical
phenomena as the phases of the moon.
One of the most intriguing specimens of prehistoric notation
was found on a mammoth tusk from Gontzi, a late Paleolithic site
west of Kiev in the Ukraine. The notation appears around the
edges of a flattened surface, marked off in graduations like the
divisions on a modern ruler or slide rule. The markings are
grouped along a horizontal line divided into series by longer
strokes at specific intervals. There are also a number of symbols
or figures appearing along the sequence, pointing to some event
at those intervals. Alexander Marshack, an American researcher,
analyzed the Gontzi notation and found unmistakable evidence that
it was indeed a detailed record of lunar phases. What's more, the
notation pointed to its use as a calculator; that is, the phases
of the moon could have been predicted in advance. The Gontzi bone
was thus a scientific instrument of a high order, demonstrating
that Paleolithic man was more than a mathematician and
astronomical observer; he was also a scientist who had applied
what he had observed, to create a workable formula that reflected
the repetition he had seen and measured in the night sky.
Evidence of Contact with Higher Civilizations - The Universal
Lunar Calendar
The existence of a lunar calendar used in the Stone Age
civilization is significant not only from a scientific viewpoint,
but also as evidence of contact between Stone Age peoples and the
peoples of the known ancient civilizations. New archaeological
research has discovered that almost every one of the ancient
cultures of the Middle East and the New World possessed, at the
earliest stages of their development, a primarily lunar
calendrical system. Professor Richard A. Parker, in a paper
concerning the origins of the calendar used by the Egyptian
court, notes that in the early dynastic period the system
employed was solar and stellar, based on the simultaneous rising
of the sun and the star Sirius once a year. Parker also explains
that, according to early dynastic symbolism and ritual, there
appears to have been an older calendrical tradition which was
lunar in character, dating back into predynastic times and to the
very beginnings of Egyptian history.
In Mesopotamia, the first calendars of the Sumerian
city-states were also lunar. The Sumerian month began with the
moon's first crescent, and the lengths of the months varied with
the period of the moon, 29 or 30 days - the same breakdown found
among the Stone Age recordings. A lunar calendar was also the
first calendrical system of the early Hindu and Chinese
civilizations. In the Americas, the first Amerind settlers on
both the northern and southern continents are known to have had
lunar calendars. The Incas, for example, had an official solar
calendar, but their division of the year into twelve months hints
at an earlier lunar-count tradition.
Historians have argued that the existence of a lunar
calendar in the Stone Age and also among the first civilizations
demonstrates their succession; that is, the time count of the
moon was developed first in the Stone Age, and then supposedly it
was gradually transmitted over tens of thousands of years to the
first civilized cultures. But the sacred historical manuscripts
furnish evidence that instead the Stone Age peoples and the
peoples of the ancient civilizations directly inherited a lunar
calendar system from a civilization older than them both.
In Genesis 7 and 8 we find the record of Noah's diary of the
Flood. The days of the months and the lengths of time Noah gives
for the duration of the events signify very little by themselves,
but when these are placed in the framework of the present Jewish
calendar, we can isolate some rather interesting data. First, ten
of the dates Noah records fall in the calendar on the Jewish
Sabbath, Saturday. This could not be coincidental, as it confirms
that the data were indeed based on a calendrical system similar
to the Jewish calendar - a system which has, in fact, remained
relatively unchanged in its basic structure for millennia. Noah
must have familiarized himself with the intricate apparent
movement of the sun, for he also marked off in his diary the
passing of a solar year of 365 days. But the most significant
fact is that the Jewish calendar, like the calendar which Noah
uses, is based on a lunar count of 354 days. This suggests that
the lunar calendar had its true origins during the antediluvian
period. By Noah's record, we know that the system was in use
immediately after the Flood, and no doubt it was transmitted to
his descendants. Following the fiasco at Babel, some of these
descendants, we know, remained civilized, while others lost their
knowledge. But the lunar calendar appears to have been preserved
among both the prehistoric primitive men and the post-Babel
civilizations.
Out-of-Place Alphabets and Ancient Memories
Perhaps the most significant evidence of contemporary
contacts between the Stone Age culture and the Mediterranean
civilizations is the discovery of out-of-place writing among Paleolithic
remains. A piece of reindeer bone found in a cave near
Rochebertier, France, has markings on it that are more than just
decoration. They have every appearance of being the letters of
some form of writing. At first glance, one might think that this
is conclusive evidence of the existence of a written language
during the Paleolithic age, but the implications of the reindeer
bone go one step further. The letters resemble or in some cases
are identical to the enigmatic script of Tartessos, a city
civilization that existed in southern Spain and is believed by
some to be the Biblical Tarshish. What makes the similarities of
the writings truly remarkable is that orthodox prehistorians
place the reindeer bone in the Magdalenian period - by their
chronology, about 12,000 years old and the Tartessian
civilization recently has been assigned to the period between
2500 and 2000 B.C. There is an obvious discrepancy with this
dating, for it is highly unlikely that a script, once developed,
would have remained relatively unchanged for ten millennia. What
the two scripts do demonstrate is that the cultures in which they
were found must have been contemporaneous, rather than separated
by a vast span of time. The date of the peak of civilization in
Tartessos is becoming better established, and if there was a
contact between the Paleolithic people and the city of Tartessos,
then they must have existed in the same time period. Other finds
confirm this. Paleolithic antler bones found at Le Mas d'Azil and
La Madelaine are inscribed with signs identical to Phoenician
script from approximately 2000 B.C. Le Mas d'Azil is also the
site where many painted pebbles from the Azilian period of the
Mesolithic age have been discovered. A number of these pebbles
are marked with signs and symbols that were once predominant
throughout the Mediterranean-again, between 3000 and 2000 B.C.
Among the records and literature of the ancient civilizations are
many accounts of the existence of primitive men living and
communicating with civilized men in their day. One of the
earliest traditions known to historians is the Gilgamesh epic
from Mesopotamia, which tells the tale of the hero Gilgamesh and
his many adventures in the world immediately after Babel.
Gilgamesh's companion in his experiences was a strange individual
named Enkidu whose origins are most interesting. As a youth,
Enkidu was described as having lived as an animal among the
animals. His hair was long, his nails and teeth were developed
for gathering and eating herbs, and he was without intelligent
speech, precisely as were the more primitive of the degenerate
prehistoric types. He was found one day by his civilized
contemporaries, who took him captive and taught him the arts of
urban living. It is significant to note that Enkidu's background
was not unusual. His primitive life seems to have been regarded
as an everyday occurrence, implying that other men at that time
were known to live under similar conditions. Enkidu's unique role
in the story is that he is described as one of those very few
"wild men" who completely adjusted to Sumerian civilization.
In India, another epic story, the Ramayana, depicts a race
described as "ape-men" who aided the noble Rama in a war against
the Ravana kingdom of Ceylon. The most celebrated of them was
their general, Hanuman. His appearance, described in both the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata, is that of an ape, but he was also
capable of humor, intelligent speech and great bravery. He was
known for his knowledge of the hills and forests (geography) and
for his cures from rare plants (herbal medicine). He is
represented in India today as a poet who wrote verse on stone.
Underlying the legend is a memory of degenerate men who worked in
stone. Equally significant is the fact that Hanuman is presently
worshipped as a god by millions of devout Hindus living in
southeastern India, in precisely the areas that are richest in
Paleolithic remains. As a curious note, many Hindus also believe
that the yeti - the mysterious "abominable snowmen" who are
thought to inhabit the inaccessible heights of the Himalayas -
may be the descendants of Hanuman and his apelike but intelligent
people.
The ancient Chinese likewise described a race of primitive
men coexisting with their own civilization, only they were not
pictured as a friendly host. The degenerates were called Mao-tse
in the Chinese treatise Shu King (part 4, ch. 27, p.291) and are
described as "an ancient and perverted race who in olden days
retired to live in rocky caves, and the descendants of whom are
still to be found in the vicinity of Canton." It is interesting
to recall that it was in Hong Kong, only a few miles from Canton,
that the giant teeth of Giganthropus were discovered. The Shu
King relates that the Mao-tse once "troubled the earth, which
became full of their robberies." The Lord Huang-ti, an emperor of
the Chinese Divine Dynasty, then saw how these people were
without virtue and ordered his generals Tchang and Lhy to
exterminate them. Perhaps it was this genocide that accounts for
the sudden disappearance of Sinanthropus and Giganthropus from
the Chinese paleontological record.
A remarkably similar description of a race of primitive men
is found in the Bible in the Book of Job. The post-Flood
patriarch depicted a wild people with whom he did not wish to
associate. He described them as living in solitude in the
wilderness. They ate grasses and leaves, often resorted to
stealing food, and - like the Mao-tse-were called thieves and
robbers. These wild people also inhabited the rocks and cliffs
and brayed like animals, as they were without intelligent speech.
Job condemned them all as "a scourge to the land" and the
"children of fools." Many commentators believe that Job was
identical to Jobab, the thirteenth son of Joktan, mentioned in
the genealogy of Genesis 10. If this identification is valid, it
means that Job, a sixth-generation descendant of Noah, lived
about 2698 to 2348 B.C., which places him and the "wild people"
he described in the immediate post-Babel period.
Elements of Sophisticated Technology in Stone Age Cultures
Not only are there indications of contact between Stone Age
cultures and the known ancient civilizations, but we also find
instances demonstrating that on occasion prehistoric primitive
peoples also communicated with and benefited from the knowledge
of other unknown civilizations of a very advanced order. A number
of discoveries suggest the performance of sophisticated surgery
in prehistoric times.
Professor Andronik Jagharian, anthropologist and director of
operative surgery at the Erivan Medical Institute in Soviet
Armenia, examined a number of skulls from the ancient site of
Ishtikunuy, located near Lake Sevan. The site was inhabited by a
prehistoric people called the Khurits who settled the area prior
to 2000 B.C.
Two of the skulls examined by Professor Jagharian revealed
extraordinary skill in head surgery. The first is the skull of a
woman who died at approximately thirty-five years of age. In her
youth she had suffered a head injury which made a hole
one-quarter inch in size in her skull. This accident certainly
must have left brain tissue exposed, and a considerable amount of
blood must have been lost. The prehistoric surgeons skillfully
inserted a plug of animal bone, and the woman survived the
delicate operation. This could be seen from the woman's skull, as
her own cranial bone grew around the plug before she eventually
died years later.
The second Khurits skull shows evidence of even more
complicated surgery. The skull is of another woman, who was
approximately forty years old when she died. A blow to the head
had caused a blunt object about an inch in diameter to puncture
the skull, splintering the inner layers of cranial bone. The
surgeons of 4,000 years ago carefully cut a larger hole around
the puncture in order to remove the splinters that had penetrated
into the brain. Even by modern standards, such an operation would
be considered extremely difficult; yet the prehistoric operation
was successful. Evidence shows that the woman survived the
surgery for fifteen years.
Concerning his examination of both the skulls and the
surgical tools found at the Armenian site, Professor Jagharian
commented, "We have found 4,000-year-old obsidian razors at Lake
Sevan that are so sharp they can still be used today. Considering
the ancient tools the doctors had to work with, I would say they
were technically superior to modern-day surgeons."
Evidence of sophisticated prehistoric surgery believed to be
even older than the Khurits finds of Armenia was uncovered in
1969, when a Russian expedition of researchers from the
universities of Leningrad and Ashkhabad, led by Professor Leonid
Marmajarjan, discovered 30 skeletons in a cave in central Asia.
Dating techniques placed the age of the remains within the early
Paleolithic period. The skeletons were moved to the University of
Ashkhabad, where an extensive scientific examination was
undertaken.
In a report given to the Soviet Academy of Sciences in
November 1969, it was noted that a number of the central Asian
skeletons showed signs of surgery having been performed on them.
As with the Lake Sevan discoveries, there were several examples
of successful operations on the skull. But after examining the
skeletons, the Soviet scientists were astonished to find traces
of surgery having been performed in the area of the heart. The
ribs had been expertly cut, and there was also evidence that once
an opening had been made, the uncut ribs were further spread
apart by retraction. Every feature corresponded to what today is
called the "cardiac window," which enables surgeons to perform
open-heart surgery. The periosteum, or bony deposits on the cut
ribs, indicated that the patients survived three to five years
following this extremely delicate operation.
The success of these prehistoric examples of head and heart
surgery testifies to scientific developments which are not only
beyond the scope of the Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures as we
are beginning to understand them, but also far beyond the
developments of most of the ancient and even more recent
civilizations. The prehistoric operations presuppose an intimate
knowledge of anatomy, especially an understanding of blood flow
and its control, as well as advanced notions of hygiene and
anesthesia. These points are vital, for without them even the
most elementary operation is impossible. Until the last century,
the techniques employed in these fields were still so crude that
even the amputation of a limb usually resulted in shock or
sepsis. What is most significant is that we have as yet found no
evidence whatsoever of the development of these advanced medical
practices in the Stone Age cultures where the operated skeletons
were located. The surgical knowledge must have been borrowed or
performed in person by peoples of a highly technical civilization
that coexisted with the Stone Age cultures. This is not as
incredible as it may seem, when we consider how our present
computer civilization is living side by side with primitive Stone
Age cultures such as those of New Guineans and the Australian
aborigines. And just as modern medical missionaries from our
western civilization have saved the lives of thousands of natives
in Africa, South America and the Pacific, thousands of years ago
unrecognized civilizations utilizing medical knowledge that was
just as advanced as ours saved the lives of Stone Age primitives
in the same way.
What were the diseases they encountered among their own
people and the "primitives"?
I am sure we will never know exactly the variety of maladies
that afflicted early man, but a rare collection of statues in the
private collection of Professor Abner Weisman, a New York
gynecologist, has lifted at least part of the ignorance
concerning this period.
"When I started my collection in 1944," Dr.Weisman told us, when
we first interviewed him for a magazine article a number of years
ago, "most scientists were of the opinion that pre-Colombian art
and science were not all that old. Discoveries that have been
made in the late 1950s and early '60s have greatly altered that
idea. Now we know that several thousand years before the Aztecs,
Incas and Mayas, other highly civilized nations occupied that
part of America. Their legacy to us did not reach us via a
written language, but infiltrated our twentieth century in the
form of numerous statues that tell us about the variety of
diseases these people suffered. What they tell us is simply
mind-shattering."
We gazed at his collection of statues, and suddenly I began
to feel sorry for the nation represented by the so-recently
unearthed statues. The symptoms of ailments such as cancer,
smallpox and osteoarthritis are clearly visible on the often
realistically molded clay statues. Malnutrition, deformities -
some of them hideous - pregnancy in various stages, amputations
and even birth by Caesarean section are depicted in fine detail.
"Many experts believe that these statues were not really used for
instructional purposes, but that they were buried with the
deceased to indicate the cause of death. If that is true, then
things haven't really changed all that much," Weisman concluded.
"But it suddenly brings their medical history a lot closer to
us."
One of the most interesting aspects of this collection is
that it not only shows the diseases of the ancients, but also
supplies hints about the hospitalization of their patients. It is
obvious that many of the sick were treated in outdoor facilities,
for many of the statues are tied down on rather primitive
hospital beds, some equipped with sunshields, while others are
on beds where entire sections of the mattresses have been removed,
eliminating pressure on bedsores.
In Lima, Peru, Dr.Jose Cabrena, professor of anthropology
and history at the University of Peru, has collected hundreds of
pre-Inca stone carvings discovered in remote areas of the Andes,
and these carvings tell of medical knowledge and operating
techniques so sophisticated and so refined that our medical
scientists of today stand aghast at their implications. The
scenes scraped in ageless rock, made by supposedly ignorant
Indians, depict among other things heart transplants, using
techniques that seem modern by today's standards. They show
Caesarean births, brain transplants, and still other forms of
surgery we have developed only within the last generation. Still
other stone carvings depict closeups of heart surgery, showing
blood vessels; surgeons at work with their instruments; and
patients connected via intricate tubing to lifesupport systems.
The scientists who have examined the carvings, or
photographs of them, are clearly baffled by this discovery.
Dr.E.Stanton Maxey, fellow of the American College of Surgeons,
says, ". . . in the photographs of stone carvings depicting heart
surgery, the detail is clear - the seven blood vessels coming
from the heart are faithfully copied. The whole thing looks like
a cardiac operation, and the surgeons seem to be using techniques
that fit with our modern knowledge. Another carving shows the
surgeons operating on a woman whose full abdomen, enlarged
breasts, and what seems to be a fetus strongly suggest a
Caesarean-section delivery. How such ancient stones can carry a
record of modern surgical techniques is completely baffling.
It would seem that somehow those ancient people came into
contact with a civilization far more advanced than any we have
dreamed existed then."
Who Shot Rhodesian Man?
At times the contact between prehistoric primitive man and
representatives of highly developed civilization appears to have
resulted in a less than peaceful coexistence. While some
prehistoric men were rescued from the portals of death by
medicine, others not so fortunate were killed by advanced
weapons.
The Museum of Natural History in London exhibits a
Neanderthal skull discovered near Broken Hill, in Rhodesia, in
1921. On the left side of the skull is a hole, perfectly round.
There are none of the radial cracks that would have resulted had
the hole been caused by a weapon such as an arrow or a spear.
Only a high-speed projectile such as a bullet could have made
such a hole. The skull directly opposite the hole is shattered,
having been blown out from the inside. This same feature is seen
in modern victims of head wounds received from shots from a
high-powered rifle. No slower projectile could have produced
either the neat hole or the shattering effect. A German forensic
authority from Berlin has positively stated that the cranial
damage to Rhodesian man's skull could not have been caused by
anything but a bullet. If a bullet was indeed fired at Rhodesian
man, then we may have to evaluate this in the light of two
possible conclusions: Either the Rhodesian remains are not as old
as claimed, at most two or three centuries, and he was shot by a
European colonizer or explorer; or the bones are as old as they
are claimed to be, and he was shot by a hunter or warrior
belonging to a very ancient yet highly advanced culture.
The second conclusion is the more plausible of the two,
especially since the Rhodesian skull was found 60 feet below the
surface. Only a period of several thousand years can account for
a deposit of that depth. To assume that nature could have
accumulated that much debris and soil over only two or three
hundred years would be ridiculous. Rhodesian man was shot by a
high-velocity projectile, but the bullet that killed him must
have been fired at an early period in human history.
The examination results of the Rhodesian skull are not the
only evidence that someone (or even some nations) possessed
rifles or similar pieces of armament in the distant past. The
Paleontological Museum of the USSR in Moscow contains an artifact
that strongly supports this conclusion. It is the skull of an
aurochs, a type of bison now extinct. The skull was discovered
west of the Lena River, and its age has been judged to be several
thousand years.
What arrested the attention of Professor Constantin Flerov,
curator of the Moscow Museum, and his colleagues was that the
forehead of the aurochs's skull was pierced by a small round
hole. The hole has an almost polished appearance, without radial
cracks, indicating that here too the projectile that penetrated
the animal's skull entered at a very high velocity in a nearly
level trajectory. There is no doubt that the aurochs was alive
when he was shot: the calcification around the aperture is
evidence of that. The distance between gunner and animal,
however, was too great to inflict a mortal wound. The animal
survived the wound, and died years later from other causes. But
his bones lasted through the ages, and with them evidence of the
destructive ability of a developed people.
....................
To be continued
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