Nexus - 0226 - New Times Magazine-pages

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The Origin of Species was written, until 1894, when the Java Man _we do in people just because they occupy a university position or finds were reported, I couldn't find any reports. I thought, well, have a Ph.D. behind their name. that's very mysterious. You would have thought that, almost LL: I'm in total alignment with you on that point, for sure. immediately, scientists all over the world would have been look- Michael, you were just stating a very different view of entertain- ing for the missing link and finding all kinds of things. Sol asked _ ing alternative theories. You're saying it's one's duty, one's intel- one of my research assistants to go to a library, get me some _lectual duty, one’s civic duty, that it's really a must to go digging anthropology textbooks from 1880 or 1885 or so, just to have a —_ and find out if there are any hidden points of view, any cover-ups, look, and I was shocked by these books he brought in. These were any alternatives—you know, what is the motivation behind the by scientists, not marginal people. These were genuine scientists current and reigning paradigm? I've heard so many people of the period, reporting in standard journals all kinds of evidence —_ express the idea that if you're silly enough to look at ideas that are showing that anatomically modern humans—not ape-man, not not endorsed by the establishment, then you're being duped or missing links—were present 10 million years ago, 20 million —_ you're just really being silly and wasting your time. Why this years ago, 30 million years ago, 40, 50—as far back as you want _— divergent view on participating or at least being willing to enter- to go. I'm not talking about one or two discoveries. I'm talking tain alternative ideas, do you suppose? about hundreds, and we've got a thousand-page book, Forbidden MC: Well, I think what we have to do is take the same attitude Archeology, that describes them all. towards science that we do towards politics. For example, if there LL: It's extraordinary, and I want to know where are these _is some allegation about some political misdeed, we don't just finds? Where do they reside today? What happened to them? accept and we don't just go to the politician and accept his state- With hundreds and hundreds of finds of anatomically-modern ment. ° human skeletons that date back a hundred million years and LL: Give me your propaganda, in other words, right? beyond, what's the earliest, earliest that MC: Right. So I think that sort of attitude you could find documentation for? is now too prevalent. I think we have to MC: Well, the earliest find that we become a little more... have on record is—of course, now we're LL: Sceptical? talking about not just human skeletons MC: Sceptical. A little more independent only but human artefacts of all kinds... in the way that we look at these things, and LL: Right. sometimes it takes an outsider to really look MC: Things that are obviously made into a question. People vant some indepen- by humans. The earliest artefact we have dent verification so you can’t always go to the is a grooved metallic sphere which was experts and take their opinion in their own discovered in South Africa. Many of field. You need outside people te go in, dig these metallic spheres were discovered— around a little bit and look, and that's basically perfectly round, metallic objects, some of what we've done with our book. We have them with three grooves around their gone in there without any preconceptions and equator—and they date back 2.8 billion years... dug around, and we've found quite a bit to show that we're not get- LL: Two-point-eight billion with a 'b'? ting an objective look at the past. We're not being told the whole MC: Yes. And the Earth is said to be about 5.3 billion years truth. We're not being given all the facts, so in Forbidden old according to current scientific estimate, so these are quite old. | Archeology we just try to provide all the facts and let people make Now, the oldest human sign that we have is a footprint that was _ up their own minds about these things. discovered in Antelope Springs, Utah, in 1968, that dates back to LL: What are your and your co-author Richard Thompson's Metallic tube found at Saint-Jean de Livet, France, in a 65-million-year-old chalk bed. the Cambrian which is about 600 million years ago. backgrounds in the field? LL: What about the earliest skeletal remains of anatomically MC: We don't have backgrounds in this field other than the modem humans? research that we've done. MC: The earliest skeleton we have in forbidden archaeology is LL: How easy was it to do the research? How accessible were a human skeleton that was discovered in a coalfield in Macoupin _ some of these reports? How did you know where to go digging if County, Illinois, in 1862, and reported in a magazine called The _ they're not well-publicised or well-known? Geologist, a standard journal. It comes from the Carboniferous MC: Well, it was like a detective story. You go back in time. period and could be about 300 million years old. So these are You look farther and farther back into the records and you start quite extraordinary finds. Now, one thing that happens, if things _ finding things. Then you have to trace out obscure little foot- do not fit the current paradigm, is sometimes they tend not to be _ notes. It's like a cover-up. It's really like a cover-up. You have to preserved. If you have something that fits the current ideas about _ really dig for it. We had to get journals, obscure journals, and human origins in antiquity, then it's kept very carefully by the reports from all over the world, some dating back hundreds of establishment. years, and we had to translate them from German and French and LL: It's fussed over, it's published, you read about it... Spanish and Russian and whatever languages they happened to be MC: Right. You hear about it. It's put on display at the muse- _in, so it took about eight years. It took cight years of very um, you know. They make videos about it and you see them on _ painstaking work to gather this information which we then put into Nationa! Geographic specials and things of that sort. If something _ this book. It's all thoroughly documented so every reference is doesn't fit the current paradigm, then you don't hear about it. It footnoted. It's got a complete bibliographiy. doesn't get preserved, and it's very difficult to track down. I LL: They don't even have to take your word for it. You pro- would say that people like yourself, media people of all kinds have —__ vided them the paper trail by which they can go back and reverify a duty to look a little bit deeper. It's as if you went to a politician the evidence that you provide. Obviously, even in a thousand and they were trying to cover something up and you just accepted _ pages, you couldn't fit in everything. What was your criterion by their story, didn't check on it, didn't dig for the facts. So I think a which you chose what to include in your documentation and your lot more of that work has to go on. We can't put as much faith as book? JUNE - JULY 1995 NEXUS * 13