Over the past two centuries, archaeologists have found bones, footprints, and artifacts showing that people like ourselves have existed on earth for many millions of years. But many scientists have forgotten or ignored these remarkable facts. Why? Primarily because they contradict the now dominant evolutionary views about human origins and antiquity. According to these views, humans like ourselves have existed for only about 100,000 or 200,000 years, and before that there were only more primitive human ancestors. This evolutionary paradigm, to which influential groups of scientists are deeply committed, has acted as a "knowledge filter." And the filtering, intentional or not, has left us with a radically incomplete set of facts for building our ideas about human origins. Recovering the complete set of facts takes us on a fascinating expedition, across five continents to various archaeological sites, some long forgotten, some the center of ongoing controversy. On the other hand, the complete set of facts is consistent with the accounts of extreme human antiquity found in the Puranas, the historical writings of ancient India.

Bio:
Michael A. Cremo is research associate in history of archeology. He is a member of the World Archaeological Congress (WAC) since 1993. His WAC3 paper "Puranic Time and the Archaeological Record" was published in the Routledge One World Archaeology series volume Time and Archaeology (1999), edited by Tim Murray. He is also a member of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA). In 2004 Cremo's paper "The Later Discoveries of Boucher de Perthes at Moulin Quignon and Their Impact on the Moulin Quignon Jaw Controversy," presented at the XXth International Congress for History of Science, Liege, Belgium, was published in a conference proceedings volume of this congress, by the scientific publisher Brepols.

Cremo is the principal author of the book "Forbidden Archeology", a comprehensive historical survey of archaeological anomalies. In a review in British Journal for History of Science, Tim Murray said the book "provides the historian of archaeology with a useful compendium of case studies in the history and sociology of scientific knowledge, which can be used to foster debate within archaeology about how to describe the epistemology of one's discipline."

Cremo is particularly interested in examining the history of the archeology from the standpoint of alternative worldviews, particularly worldviews with foundations in ancient Indian thought. He has given invited lectures on his work at the Royal Institution in London, the anthropology department of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the archeology department of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and many other scientific institutions. He has also lectured on his work at universities throughout the world.

Thanks to all of you for coming to this talk by Michael Cremo on forbidden archaeology here at Google.

So when was the last time somebody questioned evolution?

I'm just trying to say how often it happens, somebody questioning such a major theory as evolution.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2 That happens all the time in the US.

Yeah, that's good that people are aware of that debate.

Some people don't even know that it's a theory and it's being debated, and they just take it for a fact as much as gravity.

That's good to know that You are aware of that.

So he has a lot of extensive introduction about how we got into this topic.

So I don't want to steal that as part of my introduction.

And so I'll just go over the introduction of him as a person.

I've known him for more than 10, 15 years.

And he's a very thoughtful, methodical person with extreme intellectual honesty.

So that's where his research was born into this book.

So the scope of this talk is just questioning the current theory and based on the evidence that's available, but he's not going to present an alternate theory in this talk.

You have to wait for a year for that to happen, if I have my job until then.

So now the scope of this talk is questioning the current theory based on the available evidences from researched literature.

And the next topic he usually presents is called human devolution, presenting an alternate theory.

So with that, let's welcome Michael Kermode to Google with a big hand.

And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming to hear a little something about the topic, Forbidden Archaeology, Evidence for Extreme Human Antiquity.

So just to keep things honest, I'm a researcher in human origins for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

And my research is inspired by my studies in the ancient Sanskrit writings in India, especially the Puranas, the historical writings.

Now for many today, those 2 things would be complete disqualifications for me to say anything about a scientific topic in scientific circles.

However, quite surprisingly to me, even, there are people within the scientific world who are interested in hearing what I have to say.

And I've been invited to present my ideas at some of the leading scientific institutions in the world, such as the Royal Institution in London, the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, Department of Anthropology, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and many others around the world.

So the question I am dealing with is, how old is the human species?

Today, the most common answer to that question comes from the modern followers of Charles Darwin, who proposed that the first humans like us came into existence less than

Before that, they would say there were no humans like us present on this planet, simply more primitive ape-like human ancestors.

However, the Puranas, the historical writings of ancient India, give a different idea, namely that humans have been present for vast periods of time on this planet going back many millions of years.

Now, of course, in scientific circles, I wouldn't expect anyone to take a statement from some ancient writings as evidence.

So in the scientific circles where I'm invited to speak, I do something else.

Namely, if what the Puranas say about human antiquity is true, there should be reports of archaeological evidence for humans existing much further back in time than 200, 000 years ago, perhaps going back many millions of years.

So my method for testing that prediction is to examine all archaeological reports from the time of Darwin to the present.

I have a reading knowledge of most of the major European languages.

So When I speak about examining reports from the scientific literature, I mean 2 kinds of scientific literature, the primary and the secondary scientific literature.

By primary scientific literature, I mean original reports by archaeologists, geologists, paleontologists, and other earth scientists reported in the professional peer-reviewed scientific literature.

By secondary literature, I mean things that are based on the primary literature, such as textbooks, for example.

There are no reports of evidence for extreme human antiquity in the current secondary literature, textbooks, survey studies, and things of that sort.

My second finding was a little more interesting.

There are many reports of evidence for extreme human antiquity in the primary scientific literature of past and present.

So I collected those reports in this book, Forbidden Archaeology, which was reviewed in most of the professional academic and scientific journals that deal with the question of human origins.

So this constitutes a kind of peer review.

Now, as you might expect, many of those reviews were negative, Some extremely so.

However, quite surprisingly to me even, even some of my critics were able to point out some positive aspects of the work.

For example, David Oldroyd, a noted historian of science, in a 28-page review article about the book asked the question, so has forbidden archaeology made any contribution to the literature on paleoanthropology?

Our answer is a guarded yes for 2 reasons.

First, he said, much of the historical material has not been scrutinized in such detail before.

In other words, as a professional historian of science dealing with these particular questions, he had not encountered any work which had gone into history in such depth before.

And second, he said the book raises, quote, a central problematic regarding the lack of certainty in scientific truth claims.

Now, after the book was published and many of the reviews came out, I began speaking about the topic of the book at scientific conferences.

The first time I did that was in 1984 at a meeting of the World Archaeological Congress.

It's the world's largest international organization of archaeologists.

I presented a paper there called, Pirhanic Time and the Archaeological Record.

And that paper was selected for publication in a peer-reviewed conference proceedings volume called, Time and Archaeology, which came out from Rutledge, a major scientific publisher.

And subsequently, I've presented papers on my work at many other meetings of the World Archeological Congress, and also meetings of the European Association of Archaeologists.

And the reason I'm mentioning this is just to show that the kinds of things I'm saying are part of the scientific discourse in the scientific disciplines that are related to human origins.

Now, admittedly, it's not a popular voice.

It's an extreme minority voice, limited maybe even to a minority of 1.

But still, surprisingly enough to many people, it is a part of the discourse.

So 1 of the questions I had about the kind of evidence I'm talking about is, why exactly is it missing from the current secondary literature if it's there in the primary literature.

And I'm proposing it's because of a process of knowledge filtration that operates in the world of science.

And here I'm not talking about a satanic conspiracy to suppress truth.

I'm talking about something that philosophers of science and historians of science have understood for a long time, namely that theoretical preconceptions can influence how scientists may react to different categories of evidence that come to their attention.

We can call the blue box the knowledge filter.

What it represents is the dominant consensus in a scientific discipline at a particular point in time.

And reports of evidence that conform to the dominant consensus will pass through the knowledge filter fairly easily, whereas reports of evidence that radically contradict a dominant consensus tend to be filtered out, ignored, forgotten, set aside, dismissed.

And this was something that 1 of the reviewers of forbidden archaeology noted, the French archaeologist Marilynne Patumati noted in her review of forbidden archaeology and law anthropology, Cremo and Thompson have written a provocative work that raises the problem of the influence of the dominant ideas of a time period on scientific research.

These ideas can compel the researchers to orient their analyses according to the conceptions that are permitted by the scientific community.

So it was interesting to me that an archaeologist graphs correctly what the point we were trying to make in the book and wasn't just dismissing it as, Oh, these are conspiracy theorists.

I'm now going to go over some of the kinds of reports that I'm talking about.

This is Virginia Steen MacIntyre, an American geologist.

She was involved in dating an archaeological site at Huayatlico in Mexico.

There, archaeologists had discovered projectile points and other stone tools and weapons.

And they were, of course, interested in how old these things were.

And the artifacts were photographed intact in the layers of rock in which they were found.

Virginia Steen McIntyre and her colleagues used 4 different methods to date the site.

Animal bones with butchering marks were found in the same layers with the stone tools.

The geologists used the uranium series method to date those bones.

Above the layer with the stone tools was a layer of volcanic ash.

The geologists used the Zircon fission track method to date that layer of ash.

Using all 4 methods that they employed, the geologists concluded the site must be at least 250, 000 years old.

However, the archaeologists refused to accept the date.

They said humans capable of making those artifacts didn't exist anywhere in the world 250, 000 years ago.

They hadn't evolved yet what to speak of being present in North America.

They considered the oldest human presence in North America to go back only about 20, 000 years.

So they refused to publish the age for the site given by their own hand-picked team of geologists.

So Virginia Steen-McIntyre and her colleagues were a little surprised by that, so they decided to independently publish The Age for the Site in a journal called Quaternary Research.

But when they did that, they experienced an extreme negative backlash from their colleagues in the scientific world, because they had dared to publish something like this.

Virginia Steen MacIntyre wrote to 1 of the editors of the journal, not being an anthropologist, I didn't realize how deeply woven into our thought the current theory of human evolution has become.

Our work at Huyet Laco has been rejected by most archaeologists because it contradicts that theory, period.

So some of the cases I'm going to be talking about are from the more recent history of archaeology, some from the more distant history of archaeology.

Some of the cases are going to be closer to what the mainstream concepts allow.

And some are going to be further and further distant from what current ideas would consider possible.

This is 1 of the founders of modern archeology, Jacques Boucher de Perthes.

In 1 of his excavations at Moulin-Quignon near Abbeville in northeastern France, he found an anatomically modern human jawbone.

He found it in the bottom layers of his excavation with stone tools and weapons.

According to modern geologists, that layer at Abbeville is about

It was quite a controversial discovery, even in the 19th century.

Many scientists could not accept that humans existed at that distant point in time.

So some of them proposed, well, Boucher de Perret must have been the victim of a hoax.

Somehow or other, someone must have gone to some Roman cemetery, gotten a jawbone, 2, 000 or 3, 000 years old, and buried it in the excavation for him to find.

And that's actually the explanation that we see in today's textbooks.

However, what we do not see in today's textbooks is that after these hoax accusations came out, Richer de Perret made additional excavations at Moulin-Quignon.

And in these additional excavations, in the same location, he found over 100 additional anatomically modern human bones and teeth in the same formation, which to me indicates a human presence going back over

And I reported on this case in this paper, which was later published in a peer-reviewed conference proceedings volume.

Recently, just last year, archaeologists reported the discovery of footprints at a place called Happisburg in the United Kingdom.

They were found in a formation that is at least 780, 000 years old and is perhaps up to a million years old.

The archaeologists who studied the footprints published results suggesting they are consistent with anatomically modern human footprints.

For example, they studied the foot index, which is the width divided by the length times 100.

The average for all of the Hattiesburg footprints was

The average for living Native American Indians is, again, 39.

The average for living Eskimos today, their foot index is

And other features of the footprints were consistent with those of modern human beings.

Now, of course, they did not believe that humans like us existed at that time.

They don't think Homo sapiens existed over

So they attributed the footprints to a species called Homo antecessor, an ape man that they believe inhabited Europe at that time.

But from the evidence itself, they could just as well have been made by humans like us.

And there is evidence that anatomically modern humans existed at that time.

This is the Buenos Aires skull, which was discovered early in the 20th century in Argentina.

Researchers were conducting digging, and they had gone down about 45 feet, and they encountered a solid layer of limestone rock, locally known as Tosca.

And after they broke through that layer, they found a human skull cap of an anatomically modern human type in the Pre-Ensenaden Formation, which geologists consider to be 1 and 1 half million years old.

This discovery was reported to the scientific world in the primary scientific literature by the South American scientist Florentino Ameghino.

I reported on this case and some others in this paper presented at a meeting of the World Archaeological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa.

Many important discoveries have been made there.

Most people are not aware of the first discovery that was made at Ulduvai Gorge by the German scientist Hans Reck, who reported on it in 1913.

He found a fairly complete anatomically modern human skeleton.

That's the skull cap of it, buried in upper bed 2 of Valduvai Gorge.

Upper bed 2 of Valduvai Gorge is between 1.15 and

Many people thought the debates were finally settled in the 1970s when a German scientist named Reiner Proch did a radiocarbon test on a fragment of bone that he said was from Rex's skeleton.

And he got an age of less than 10, 000 years.

However, I question the reliability of that, given that Reiner Proch was removed from his position at Frankfurt University after an academic committee there found him guilty of having forged dozens of radiocarbon dates during his long career there.

Another report from the earlier history of archeology, the jaw, fossil human jaw, reported by Dr.

This anatomically modern human jaw was found 16 feet deep in the Red Crag Formation in England at a place called Fox Hall.

The Red Crag Formation, according to modern geological studies, is between 2 and 3 million years old.

Mary Leakey announced the discovery of footprints at a place called Laetoli in the country of Tanzania in East Africa.

According to her report, the footprints were indistinguishable from modern human footprints.

Paleontologist Tim White wrote, make no mistake about it.

Now, neither Mary Leakey nor Tim White believe those footprints were made by humans like us.

They propose they were made by some type of ape man who lived at that time, who just happened to have feet exactly like those of modern human beings.

Actually, we have the skeletons of the ape-men that existed at that time in eastern Africa.

And foot bones of Australopithecus have been discovered.

And their foot is not exactly like that of a modern human being.

They have very long toes, sort of like short human fingers.

In other words, their feet were somewhat ape-like.

Actually, the only creature known to science today from skeletal evidence that has a foot exactly like that of a modern human being is, in fact, modern human beings like ourselves.

I think we have to remain open to the possibility.

She found evidence that humans like us were present almost

The footprints were found in layers of solidified volcanic ash that were dated using the potassium argon method as being

I presented evidence on this case at a meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists that was held in England.

Now, some people might say, OK, footprints are perhaps a little bit ambiguous.

It would be better if there were human skeletal evidence almost 4 million years old.

Such things have been reported in the primary scientific literature.

For example, the Italian geologist Ragazzoni reported finding human skeletal remains at a place called Castanetolo in northern Italy.

They were found in layers of rock that modern geologists consider to be about 4 million years old.

I went to the village of Castaneda, where I met this gentleman there.

And he gave me a copy of a very rare geological report dealing with this discovery.

And from the information in the report, we were able to locate the place where the discoveries were made.

Now, the current explanation of these discoveries is, well, it's not really possible that you could have anatomically modern human skeletons and layers of rock 4 million years old.

So the proposal is that maybe about 4, 000 years ago, somebody died on the surface.

His friends dug a grave and put the skeleton down in that ancient layer of rock.

And that's why you think you have a human skeleton 4 million years old.

Technically, it's called intrusive burial.

However, if you look at Ragassoni's original reports in the Italian language, which I did, he says, because even at the time, he was a professional geologist.

He was aware of the possibility of intrusive burial.

He said if it had been an intrusive burial, the layers of rock above the skeleton would have been undisturbed.

However, he found that The layers of rock above the skeleton were all intact and undisturbed.

Actually, he said each layer had its own microstratigraphy that was undisturbed.

So I take this as evidence for a human presence going back over 4 million years.

This is Carlos Ribeiro, who was the chief government geologist of Portugal.

He found hundreds of human artifacts in his country of Portugal.

He found them in layers of rock that date back to the early Miocene period, which means they would be about 20 million years old, according to today's understanding.

He, As a professional geologist, he said they cannot have come into those layers from any higher level through any fissure or crack or all the usual kinds of counter explanations.

He displayed the artifacts in the Museum of Geology in Lisbon.

But if you go there today, you won't see them on display anymore.

But I was able to get permission from the directors of the museum to study and photograph some of these human artifacts from the early Miocene period.

I also carefully studied Ribeiro's original maps, and field notes, and correspondence in the museum archives.

And then I went into the countryside of Portugal, and I relocated some of the sites where he made his discoveries.

And he found human artifacts there in lower Miocene formations.

When Ribera was alive, the artifacts were displayed in the museum with labels showing a lower Miocene age for them, about 20 million years.

After he died, his colleagues in the museum did something interesting.

They left the artifacts on display, but they wrote new labels for all of them.

This is the new label they wrote for the artifact I just showed you.

Second line gives the age, Paleolithico-Superior, Upper Paleolithic period.

According to geologists today, that period in Europe goes back about 20, 000 years.

Ribero's colleagues thought 20 million years, that's clearly impossible.

20, 000 years, that sounds about right for discoveries like this.

So they just wrote new labels for all of the artifacts.

Now, the next generation of officials in the museum just put the entire collection away.

And I'm the first researcher to see these things in over

I presented a paper on this case at a meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists that was held in Lisbon, Portugal in the year 2000.

That paper was later published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal from Europe, the Journal of Iberian Archaeology.

A case that's always fascinated me has been the California gold mine discoveries.

Gold was discovered in California, and miners went to places like Table Mountain in Tuolumne County, near Sonora, actually not too far from here.

And deep inside the tunnels, the miners found human bones and human artifacts.

For example, they found many of these stone mortars and pestles.

What makes them so interesting to me is they were found in layers of solid rock that date to the early part of the geological period called the Eocene, which means they would be about

Some of the details about the dating of the discoveries, it was done in modern times using the potassium argon method and analyzing the plant and animal fossils found in those layers of rock.

These discoveries were originally reported to the scientific world by Dr.

Whitney, who was the chief government geologist of California.

His report was published by Harvard University in the year 1880.

But we don't hear very much about these discoveries today because of the process of knowledge filtration that I mentioned.

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