Over half a century ago, a hoard of ancient objects were unearthed at Glozel in the French region of Allier set off a furious argument among archeologists.Were the objects found, a total of some 3,000 artefacts, variously dated to Neolithic, Iron Age and Medieval times, remnants of an advenced civilisation or some not-so-clever fakes?
FRAUD OR FIND OF THE 20th CENTURY ???
Émile Fradin, a shrewd peasant lad of 17 years, dug up a number of curiously inscribed brick and clay tablets in a field at Glozel, France on March 1, 1924. Immediately the "Glozel Finds" attracted world wide attention. French archeologists announced that they were important relics of the Stone Age, wrote monographs.
Fradin,along with his grand-father, was working in a field known as “Duranthon”.Émile was holding the handles of a plough when one of the cows pulling it stuck her foot in a cavity. Freeing the cow, the Fradins uncovered an underground structure with walls of clay bricks and 16 clay floor tiles, containing human bones and ceramic fragments.The clay pots found were broken by him quickly in the hope of treasure. But not a single coin was found.He then carried on searching and dug out several other vessels, and clay tablets with mysterious charcters inscribed on them.He reproted this to a teacher with an interest in archeology.
Soon the news spread and it caught the attention of Antonin Morlet, a Vichy physician and amateur archaeologist. Morlet visited Clément and was intrigued by the findings.He believed that some findings might even date from the Magdalenian period (12,000-9500 BC), as they involved bone harpoons and depictions of reindeer, though to be extinct since 10,000 BC. Yet when the writings were studied on other objects , the earliest known form of writing was then established at 3300 BC, and that was in the Middle East.
Antonin Morlet identified Glozel as a transition site between both eras, even though it was known that the two eras were separated by several millennia.
No wonder therefore that French archaeological academia were dismissive of Morlet's report; after all, it was published by an amateur – a doctor – and a peasant boy – who could perhaps not even write properly? The amateurism dripped off their conclusion, for it challenged their carefully established and vociferously defended dogma on several levels.
Despite such allegations, Morlet unearthed thousands of objects over a period of two years, all of varied forms and shape, including a hundred tablets carrying signs and approximately fifteen tablets carrying the imprints of human hands. Other discoveries were sexual idols, polished stones, dressed stones, ceramics, glass, bones, etc. How Fradin could possibly have made thousands of objects, the likes of Vayson de Pradenne never explained…
Furthermore, two other tombs were uncovered in June 1927. One contained 67, the other 121 objects and human remains. It seemed that Glozel was soon to be accepted as a major archaeological discovery. At the meeting of the International Institute of Anthropology in Amsterdam, held in September 1927, Glozel was therefore the subject of heated debate.
A commission was appointed to do further investigations and arrived in Glozel on November 5, 1927. During their three day excavation, the archaeologists uncovered various artefacts, but in their report of December 1927, the commission declared everything, with the exception of a few pieces of flint axes and stone ware, as fake.
But neither side of the controversy were willing to compromise. As a result, the matter remained unresolved until the 1970's, when a new research methods could provide much more precise dating .However even they could not resolve the the mystery surrounding the Glozel finds.
Studies show that the clay tablets are barely 2000 years old and date from Gallo -Roman times, while some bones are as old as 15,000 years.And the some inscribed stones and bones are from Stone Age!!
Hence some believe that Glozel could not be a genuine pre-historic site.They suggest that someone collected objects of various origins.While others who believe in the authenticity claim that the finds have been proven to be ancient.
During the 1980s, France's Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs commissioned new excavation work at the site.
But until new records are found, the quarrel is unlikely to be resolved.
