This is the account of the discovery of a skull that has thepotential to change what we know about human evolution, and a suppression andcover-up which followed. In 1959, in an area called Chalkidiki in Petralona, NorthernGreece, a shepherd came across a small opening to a cave, which became visiblewhen a thick covering of snow finally melted. He gathered a group ofvillagers to help him clear the entrance so they could go inside andexplore. They found a cave rich in stalactites and stalagmites. But theyalso found something surprising – a human skull embedded in the wall (laterresearch also uncovered a huge number of fossils including pre-human species,animal hair, fossilized wood, and stone and bone tools). The skull was given to the University of Thessaloniki in Greeceby the President of the Petralona Community. The agreement was that once theresearch was done, a museum would be opened featuring the findings from thePetralona cave, and the skull would be returned to be displayed in the museum –something that never happened. Dr Aris Poulianos, member of the UNESCO's IUAES (InternationalUnion of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences), later founder of the Anthropological Association of Greece , andan expert anthropologist who was working at the University of Moscow at thetime, was invited by the Prime Minister of Greece to return to Greece to take aposition of a University Chair in Athens. This was due to the publicationof his book, ‘The Origins of the Greeks’, which provides excellent researchshowing that Greek people didn’t originate from the Slavic nations but wereindigenous to Greece. Upon his return to Greece, Dr Poulianos was madeaware of the discovery of the skull at Petralona, and immediately startedstudying the Petralona cave and skull. The ‘Petralona man’, or Archanthropus of Petralona, as it hassince been called, was found to be 700,000 years old, making it the oldesthuman europeoid (presenting European traits) of that age ever discoveredin Europe. Dr Poulianos’ research showed that the Petralona man evolvedseparately in Europe and was not an ancestor of a species that came out ofAfrica. In 1964, independent German researchers, Breitinger andSickenberg, tried to dismiss Dr Poulianos’ findings, arguing that the skull wasonly 50,000 years old and was indeed an ancestor that came from Africa. However, research published in the US in 1971 in the prestigious Archaeologymagazine, backed up the findings that the skull was indeed 700,000 yearsold. This was based on an analysis of the cave’s stratigraphy and thesediment in which the skull was embedded. Further research in the cavediscovered isolated teeth and two pre-human skeletons dating back 800,000years, as well as other fossils of various species. Today, most academics who have analyzed the Petralona remainssay that the cranium of the Archanthropus of Petralona belongs to an archaichominid distinguished from Homo erectus, and from both the classic Neanderthalsand anatomically modern humans, but showing characterists of all those speciesand presenting strong European traits. A skull dating back 700,000 whichis either Homo sapien or part Homo sapien is in direct conflict with the Out ofAfrica theory of human evolution. Link:
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