The oldest human footprints
At the base of the Italian Alps, a warm sea lapped 3-4 million years ago; it left many layers of rock containing marine fossils. 1860 summer - geologist and academician from Italy Professor Giuseppe Ragazzoni was looking for fossil shells in Castenedolo, near Brescia. In these ancient coastal formations, he found fossilized human bones; the top of the skull fused with the fossilized coral, along with the limbs and ribs. He showed them to other geologists, who considered it impossible that human bones could have been in such an ancient stratum, and concluded that they must have got into it from an intrusive burial - that is, from a deep burial of a much later time, which reached lower layers of the rock. And so Professor Ragazzoni threw them away.
Then, in January 1880, bones were found again. They were found between an ancient coral reef and fossilized clay that contained shells. Professor Ragazzoni was informed of this find, and he and his assistant arrived at the site to personally extract the discovered fossil bones. A fairly large number of them were found: parts of the skull, jaw, teeth, vertebrae and bones of the limbs. Later that month, fragments of a jaw and teeth that were different from those found earlier were found seven feet from the site.
Bearing in mind his previous experience, Professor Ragazzoni carefully examined the site in order to exclude the possibility of these bones falling from an intrusive burial. No evidence was found, and as he wrote, all bones were "completely covered and filled with clay and small fragments of coral and shells," which swept aside any remaining doubts. In addition, it served as proof that they once rested in the ancient sea.
About three weeks later, in February 1880, a nearly intact skeleton was discovered. Once again, Ragazzoni oversaw the extraction of the fossil remains. Examination of the bones revealed that it belonged to a woman. As a result, the remains of four people were obtained - a man, a woman and two children. The bones were pretty much scattered, which corresponded to the assumption that these people drowned in the sea, and after that their bodies were carried in different directions by the waves. Maybe they were sailing in a boat.
The fact that bones could have been so reliably stored in ancient coastal fossil layers indicated that dating in the region of 3-4 million years was very high probability.
Ragazzoni showed the bones to a professor of anatomy at the University of Rome, who studied both the site and the bones. This expert noted that there was not the slightest indication that bones - especially a female skeleton - could have entered the ancient layer from a burial site. He also noticed that the skull was so firmly sunk in the clay that it took him a lot of effort to extract it.
The professor concluded that the bones "are indisputable evidence of the existence of a person with a familiar human form for us."
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Up until 1969, concerned experts were still trying to question these findings. Scientific tests carried out that year by the British Museum of Natural History aimed at demonstrating the small age of the bones, but the poor quality of these tests was easily shown: insufficient attention was paid to the possibility of damage not only by acids, saprophytes and roots while the bones were lying underground, but also afterwards. when for 89 years they were in the museum, not protected from the influence of the atmosphere or microorganisms. However, tests did reveal that the bones contained a high fluorine content and an "unexpectedly high" uranium concentration, which was evidence of their antiquity.
The professor to whom Ragazzoni brought these bones did not flatter himself about his colleagues from academia when he predicted that the reaction of the scientific world would be inevitably hostile. He lamented the attitude of pundits and warned that "with such a despotic scientific bias" such discoveries would be discredited.
It should be noted that although these fossil bones are similar in age to those found in East Africa, there is one rather significant difference between them. These remains found in Castenedolo belong to individuals anatomically identical to modern humans. Most of the finds made in East Africa belong to early and primitive creatures, at best we can probably talk about protomen here.
Nevertheless, this also makes us think: in East Africa, there is a very small number of fairly ancient finds relating to human beings, anatomically similar to modern humans.
1965 At Kanapoi, at the southern tip of Lake Turkana in Kenya, a humerus is found "strikingly similar" to modern human specimens, originally estimated to be around 2.5 million years old. Later this figure was revised and the age of the find began to be calculated at more than 4 million years. In Koobi Fora, in the eastern part of Lake Turkana, in 1973, fossil bones of the legs were found, whose age was 2.6 million years. Richard Leakey has stated that they are "almost indistinguishable" from the bones of modern humans. Also in Koobi Fora in 1974, an astragalus was discovered, having an age of 1.5-2.6 million years. The anatomist Dr. Bernard Wood (now a professor) has scrupulously studied this fossil bone and proved that it almost completely coincides with the same bone of modern humans. 1977 - researchers from France led by J. Shavayona found a humerus at Gombor in Ethiopia, which they pointed out was a replica of a similar bone in modern humans. This find was also over 1.5 million years old.
Other human remains, as controversial as those found by Professor Ragazzoni, have been found in Europe, Asia and South America. All of them have been the subject of sarcastic attacks from scientists for years, defending what now appears to be a flawed orthodox theory of evolution. Nevertheless, academic science itself is getting closer and closer to heretical conclusions.
It is fair to give a closing word to those who have collected facts not recognized by orthodox science, Michael Cremo, Richard Thompson and their researcher Stephen Bernart: “We have come to the conclusion that the data in general, including fossil bones and artifacts, are most consistent with this view. that in anatomical terms modern humans have coexisted with other primates for tens of millions of years."
M. Baigent