Interest in a Vedic perspective on human origins and a desire to hear more explicitly about it were constant themes in the academic reviews of Forbidden archeology. Kenneth Feder wrote in his Geoarchaeology review (pp. 339–340), “The authors are open about their membership in the Bhaktivedanta Institute, which is a branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and the book is dedicated to their ‘spiritual master,’ the group’s founder. They make a reasonable request regarding their affiliation with this organization: ‘That our theoretical outlook is derived from the Vedic literature should not disqualify it.’ Fair enough, but what is their ‘theoretical outlook?’” Human Devolution is my systematic answer to that question.
During the years I was researching and writing Human Devolution, I presented various parts of its argument at scientific and academic conferences. In April 1996, I presented at Toward a Science of Consciousness (a major international conference on consciousness studies held every two years at the University of Arizona in Tucson) a paper called “The City of Nine Gates: A Sophisticated Allegory for Mind/Body Dualism from the Bhagavata Purana of India.” Elements of this paper can be found in chapter 7 of Human Devolution. Also in April 1996, at the Kentucky State University Institute for Liberal Studies Seventh Interdisciplinary Conference on Science and Culture, I presented a paper called “Alfred Russel Wallace and the Supernaturaclass="underline" A Case Study in Reenchanting Reductionistic Science’s Hagiography in Light of an Alternative Cosmology.” This paper served as the basis for chapter 5 of Human Devolution. In April
1998, I presented at the Toward a Science of Consciousness conference a paper called “Famous Scientists and the Paranormal.” Material from this paper can be found in chapter 6 of Human Devolution. In July 2001, I presented at the XXIst International Congress for History of Science, held in Mexico City, a paper called “Paleobotanical Anomalies Bearing on the Age of the Salt Range Formation of Pakistan: A Historical Survey of an Unresolved Scientific Controversy.” Chapter 3 in Human Devolution is based on this paper.
Having established how and why Human Devolution came to be written, I will now give an outline of the substance of the book. Chapter
1 of Human Devolution makes the point that some scientists and scholars are willing to consider alternatives to the Western scientific worldview as candidates for truth. For them, belief in such worldviews is no longer taboo. In american anthropologist (1994 v. 96, no. 3), Katherine P. Ewing said (p. 572), “To rule out the possibility of belief in another’s reality is to encapsulate that reality and, thus, to impose implicitly the hegemony of one’s own view of the world.” In Journal of Consciousness Studies (1994 v.1, no. 2),William Barnard, in speaking about the world’s wisdom traditions, advocated (pp. 257–258) “a scholarship that is willing and able to affirm that the metaphysical models . . . of these different spiritual traditions are serious contenders for truth, a scholarship that realizes that these religious worlds are not dead corpses that we can dissect and analyze at a safe distance, but rather are living, vital bodies of knowledge and practice that have the potential to change our taken-for-granted notions.” I am asking that scientists and scholars approach in this spirit the Vedic perspective on human origins outlined in Human Devolution.
In chapter 2, I present a review of the archeological evidence for extreme human antiquity from Forbidden archeology. I establish that this evidence actually exists and that it has been systematically eliminated from scientific discussion by a process of knowledge filtration. Archeological evidence that contradicts the Darwinian theory of human evolution is often rejected just for that reason. For example, in the nineteenth century, gold was discovered in California. To get it, miners dug tunnels into the sides of mountains, such as Table Mountain in Tuolumne County. Deep inside the tunnels, in deposits of early Eocene age (about 50 million years old), miners found human bones and artifacts. The discoveries were carefully documented by Dr. J. D. Whitney, the chief government geologist of California, in his book the auriferous Gravels of the Sierra nevada of California, published by Harvard University in 1880. But we do not hear very much about these discoveries today. In the Smithsonian Institution annual Report for 1898–1899 (p. 424), anthropologist William Holmes said, “Perhaps if Professor Whitney had fully appreciated the story of human evolution as it is understood today, he would have hesitated to announce the conclusions formulated, notwithstanding the imposing array of testimony with which he was confronted.” In other words, if the facts did not fit the theory of human evolution, the facts had to be set aside, and that is exactly what happened.
Such bias continued into the twentieth century. In the 1970s, American archeologists led by Cynthia Irwin Williams discovered stone tools at Hueyatlaco, near Puebla, Mexico. The stone tools were of advanced type, made only by humans like us. A team of geologists, from the United States Geological Survey and universities in the United States, came to Hueyatlaco to date the site. Among the geologists was Virginia Steen-McIntyre. To date the site, the team used four methods—uranium series dating on butchered animal bones found along with the tools, zircon fission track dating on volcanic layers above the tools, tephra hydration dating of volcanic crystals, and standard stratigraphy. The four methods converged on an age of about 250,000 years for the site. The archeologists refused to consider this date. They could not believe that humans capable of making the Hueyatlaco artifacts existed 250,000 years ago. In defense of the dates obtained by the geologists, Virginia Steen-McIntyre wrote in a letter (March 30, 1981) to Estella Leopold, associate editor of Quaternary Research: “The problem as I see it is much bigger than Hueyatlaco. It concerns the manipulation of scientific thought through the suppression of ‘Enigmatic Data,’ data that challenges the prevailing mode of thinking. Hueyatlaco certainly does that! Not being an anthropologist, I didn’t realize the full significance of our dates back in 1973, nor how deeply woven into our thought the current theory of human evolution has become. Our work at Hueyatlaco has been rejected by most archaeologists because it contradicts that theory, period.” This remains true today, not only for the California gold mine discoveries and the Hueyatlaco human artifacts, but for hundreds of other discoveries documented in the scientific literature of the past 150 years.
In chapter 3, I present a case of fossil evidence showing that the current Darwinian picture of the evolution of nonhuman species is also in need of revision. Beginning in the 1940s, geologists and paleobotanists working with the Geological Survey of India explored the Salt Range Mountains in what is now Pakistan. They found deep in salt mines evidence for the existence of advanced flowering plants and insects in the early Cambrian periods, about 600 million years ago. According to standard evolutionary ideas, no land plants or animals existed at that time. Flowering plants and insects are thought to have come into existence hundreds of millions of years later. To explain the evidence some geologists proposed that there must have been a massive overthrust, by which Eocene layers, about 50 million years old, were thrust under Cambrian layers, over 550 million years old. Others pointed out that there were no geological signs of such an overthrust. According to these scientists, the layers bearing the fossils of the advanced plants and insects were found in normal position, beneath strata containing trilobites, the characteristic fossil of the Cambrian. One of these scientists, E. R. Gee, a geologist working with the Geological Survey of India, proposed a novel solution to the problem. In the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of India for the year 1945 (section B, v. 16, pp. xlv–xlvi), paleobotanist Birbal Sahni noted: “Quite recently, an alternative explanation has been offered by Mr. Gee. the suggestion is that the angiosperms, gymnosperms and insects of the Saline Series may represent a highly evolved Cambrian or Precambrian flora and fauna! In other words, it is suggested that these plants and animals made their appearance in the Salt Range area several hundred million years earlier than they did anywhere else in the world. One would scarcely have believed that such an idea would be seriously put forward by any geologist today.” The controversy was left unresolved. In the 1990s, petroleum geologists, unaware of the earlier controversy, restudied the area. They determined that the salt deposits below the Cambrian deposits containing trilobites were early Cambrian or Precambrian. In other words, they found no evidence of an overthrust. The salt deposits were in a natural position below the Cambrian deposits. This supports Gee’s suggestion that the plant and insect remains in the salt deposits were evidence of an advanced fauna and flora existing in the early Cambrian. This evidence contradicts not only the Darwinian concept of the evolution of humans but of other species as well.