Dr. Recks kontroverser Fund

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von Richard L. Thompson (Sadaputa Dasa)

Abb. 1 Der Schädel des von Dr. Hans Reck 1013 in der ostafrikanischen Olduvai-Schlucht entdeckten Specimens.

Regarding evidence for the extreme antiquity of modern man, it should be noted that the extent to which it challenges the standard views is matched by the degree of vehemence with which the evolutionary establishment tends to reject it. One example of such controversy is provided by a find made in 1913 by Dr. Hans Reck in East Africa's famous Olduvai Gorge.

Dr. Reck discovered a skeleton of fully modern man in strata that made it contemporary with Peking Man and Java Man, supposedly distant ancestors of homo sapiens. This find inspired much controversy, but when the famous Louis Leakey visited the site in 1931 with Reck, he concluded the skeleton was at least a half million years old.

Opponents continued to argue that it was an intrusive burial, that it was a man of recent origin buried in the ancient strata of rock. But Reck insisted that he had taken adequate care to rule out this interpretation. The strata above the skeleton had been undisturbed, he claimed. Yet other investigators charged they had found material from higher strata in the rock matrix in which the skeleton was embedded. In the face of the conflicting testimony, Reck and Leakey withdrew their claims.

In 1973, Dr. Reiner Protsch of the department of biology and anthropology of the J. W. Goethe University in Frankfurt, West Germany, made a report on radiocarbon dating of Reck's skeleton. Since the skull was considered too valuable to destroy for radiocarbon dating, Protsch wanted to use other bones. Unfortunately all of the skeleton except the skull had mysteriously disappeared from the Munich museum in which it had been kept! Some fragmentary portions of ribs, long bones, and vertebrae were later produced and were thought to have come from the originally complete skeleton. As a precaution, both the skull and the fragments were tested for nitrogen content to see if they were actually from the same skeleton. The results of the test were similar enough to not rule out the possibility that this may have been the case. The subsequent radiocarbon dating gave an age of 17,000 years for these bones, which according to Protsch means that the skeleton was buried by digging down from a land surface in the middle of bed 5 at Olduvai Gorge. This has been taken as final proof that Reck's skeleton is an intrusive burial and is much younger than originally thought.

Yet the British scientist A. Tindell Hopwood observed on the site a hard layer of calcrete (limestone) between the base of bed 5 and the lower bed 2 in which the skeleton was found. If the skeleton had indeed been buried from a land surface in the middle of bed 5, the hole would have had to go through the calcrete layer. Regarding the hardness of calcrete, Hopwood noted that African diggers "working at their own speed with heavy crowbars, failed to dig a hole two feet square and three feet deep through similar material, although they were two days on the job."

The whole question remains problematic. We have Reck's original testimony that it was not an intrusive burial, along with attempts to prove it was. But upon close examination it appears the refutations are less than airtight, leaving open the possibility that Reck's original observations about the placement of the skeleton and its extreme age were correct. It is remarkable indeed that the picture of the nature and origin of man that we have derived from modern science is largely based on evidence and lines of reasoning as questionable and slipshod as these.

Louis Leakey was involved in other finds indicating the presence of homo sapiens in very early strata. One example is his discovery of the Kanam jaw in the lowest level (bed 1) of Olduvai Gorge. This jaw was initially accepted as belonging to homo sapiens by a committee of twenty-seven experts, who agreed it derived from the Lower Pleistocene period. This would give it an age of about 2 million years, contemporaneous with homo habilis and australopithecus robustus.

Unfortunately, when one Professor Boswell, who was also involved in the controversy over Reck's skeleton, challenged Leakey's claims, Leakey was unable to relocate the exact site where the find had been made. As a result the find was discredited in the eyes of archaeologists although Leakey insisted that his original report was correct.

In considering the treatment of Reck's skeleton and the Kanam jaw, it is interesting to note that the standards imposed for the acceptance of evidence that contradicts current views seem to be stricter than the standards for acceptance of evidence that agrees with current views. Consider for example, the Petralona skull, which was found in Greece. This skull seems to be nearly intermediate in form between the homo erectus type of skull and the homo sapiens type. It is given a date of about 200,000--300,000 years and is accepted as evidence of human evolution by archeological authorities such as John Gowlett, head of the radiocarbon dating laboratory at Oxford.

Yet how solid are the facts indicating the age of this skull? John Gowlett gives the following information: "The finds were first uncovered not by archaeologists, but by local people who kept no records. Some accounts speak of a skeleton as well as the skull, but no evidence of this has ever been produced. Even the exact stratigraphic position of the skull has been debated." If the Petralona skull had to conform to the same standards applied to Leakey's Kanam jaw or Reck's skeleton, it is highly doubtful that it would ever have been accepted as evidence for human evolution.

Anmerkungen und Quellen

Dieser Beitrag von Richard L. Thompson (Sadaputa Dasa) wurde von uns einem längeren Aufsatz des Verfassers entnommen (,The Record Of The Rocks, Abschnitt: Reck´s controversial Find) der online bei krishnascience.com erschienen ist. Übersetzung ins Deutsche und redaktionelle Bearbeitung durch Atlantisforschung.de.

Bild-Quelle

(1) Richard L. Thompson, Reck´s controversial Find bei: krishnascience.com (Bildbearbeitung durch Atlantisforschung.de)