22 Mortar and pestle from California
In
1877, a Mr J H Neale, superintendent of the Montezuma Tunnel
Company, was engaged in building a tunnel through Table Mountain,
Tuolumne County (California, USA). The tunnel was running through
gravel, sealed by lava. Between about 425 and 457 m (1400-1500
feet) from the mouth of the tunnel and between 61 and 91 m
(200-300 feet) from the edge of the solid lava, a number of dark
stone objects about 300 mm (one foot) long were reported to Mr
Neale. Close by, he found a small bowl-like object between 75 and
101 mm (3-4 inches) in diameter; further exploration revealed a
larger bowl-like object and a pestle-like object. They were all
found in the gravel within 300 mm of the underlying solid
bedrock.. Some years earlier, in 1857, a fragment of human skull
was found close to mastodon remains, while a complete human
skeleton discovered even earlier had been associated with similar
material; they were thought to be evidence for Miocene
humans.
The gravels were estimated as being between 33 and 55 million years old, so objects found in situ within them ought to have been contemporaneous. The objects do resemble stone bowls and a pestle, but it is not clear how closely associated with each other the objects had been. The accounts do not give any indication that the objects had been examined for traces of working; without evidence for an artificial origin, it is probably safe to conclude that they are simulacra, natural objects that happen to resemble something meaningful to the observer.
23 Sling Stone from the Red Crag, Bramford
By
all accounts, the Red Crag deposits in Suffolk were a veritable
treasure-trove of out-of-place artefacts during the nineteenth
century. A sling stone is another of the many objects claimed as
evidence for impossibly early human activity. Allegedly shaped by
scraping with flint, it was described as possessing a series of
facets running from end to end across the entire surface of the
object.
The photograph does not much resemble the claims being made. There are striations on the object, but they scarcely resemble marks made by scraping with flint. The lack of clarity in the photograph does not enable a confident identification of the marks to be made, but they look plausibly like natural bedding planes within the pebble. There are also problems with the age as stated in fringe sources: 5 to 50 million years old is not the date of the Red Crag Pliocene deposits, which are between 2.1 and 1 million years old.