The Mysterious Pre-Human "Coins" of Aix

I’ve been putting together a page of documents related to so-called “out of place artifacts” and ancient high technology, and in so doing, I’ve been looking up some of the texts used by Cremo and Thompson in their lengthy tome Forbidden Archaeology (1993), particularly in the appendix on supposed human-made artifacts in pre-human contexts, which is reproduced across numerous fringe websites and recycled in ancient astronaut, lost civilization, and creationist books down to the present. I already knew that Cremo and Thompson were ideologues rather than scholars, but I was surprised by what I found when I tried to trace back a piece they presented about coins and tools supposedly found in a prehistoric limestone deposit in France.

Cremo and Thompson attribute the following passage to the American Journal of Science, vol. 2, no. 1 (April 1820), where it does in fact appear, in these words. The author of a letter to the journal explained that a piece that ran in an earlier edition reminded him of what he said was a passage in the “Count Bournon in his Mineralogy” that he was translating for the first time. The following was presented as the Count’s words, and I have highlighted the most important sentence in boldface:

During the years 1786, 7, and 8, they were occupied near Aix in Provence, in France, in quarrying stone for the rebuilding, upon a vast scale, of the Palace of Justice. The stone was a limestone of a deep grey, and of that kind which are tender when they come out of the quarry, but harden by exposure to the air. The strata were separated from one another by a bed of sand mixed with clay, more or less calcareous. The first which were wrought presented no appearance of any foreign bodies, but, after the workmen had removed the ten first beds, they were astonished, when taking away the eleventh, to find its inferior surface, at the depth of forty or fifty feet, covered with shells. The stone of this bed having been removed, as they were taking away a stratum of argillaceous sand, which separated the eleventh bed from the twelfth, they found stumps of columns and fragments of stones half wrought, and the stone was exactly similar to that of the quarry: they found moreover coins, handles of hammers, and other tools or fragments of tools in wood. But that which principally commanded their attention, was a board about one inch thick and seven or eight feet long; it was broken into many pieces, of which none were missing, and it was possible to join them again one to another, and to restore to the board or plate its original form, which was that of the boards of the same kind used by the masons and quarry men: it was worn in the same manner, rounded and waving upon the edges. The stones which were completely or partly wrought, had not at all changed in their nature, but the fragments of the board, and the instruments, and pieces of instruments of wood, had been changed into agate, which was very fine and agreeably coloured. 

Here then, (observes Count Bournon,) we have the traces of a work executed by the hand of man, placed at the depth of fifty feet, and covered with eleven beds of compact limestone: every thing tended to prove that this work had been executed upon the spot where the traces existed. The presence of man had then preceded the formation of this stone, and that very considerably since he was already arrived at such a degree of civilization that the arts were known to him, and that he wrought the stone and formed columns out of it.

Now this is certainly interesting. The key piece that makes this highly unusual is the discovery of “coins” in an ancient limestone deposit, which certainly seems unusual for deeply prehistoric France. Cremo and Thompson, and those who copy from them, go no farther than this, not even bothering to check the author or the name of the book in which the account supposedly appears. The authors instead praise the journal for having run a report that could not run today and claim that modern scientists would never take such a report seriously.

Naturally, I wanted to know who Count Bournon was. Jacques-Louis, Comte de Bournon was a well-known mineralogist who fled France during the Revolution and took up residence in England until the Bourbon Restoration in 1814. He was among the first to recognize meteorites as extraterrestrial in origin. In 1808, while still in England, he composed in French his Traité de minéralogie, or Treatise on Mineralogy (pp. 402-404). So, I pawed through the book looking for the original of the material presented as the count’s work. It quickly became obvious that the passage quoted was not what it seemed to be. Most importantly, the Comte de Bournon made clear that he was not reporting his own observations but was quoting testimony given to him by the “Chevalier de Sades,” remembering events from twenty years before. I believe this is the French naval officer Louis, Chevalier de Sade (1753-1832), another French émigré to England, who had a reputation among Enlightenment figures as a great doctor and mathematician, and who wrote a book about tides. I am not certain, however.

I’ve prepared a corrected translation where I have added in all of the passages that the original translator left out, fixed his mistranslations, and restored the count’s quotation marks. After reading this, it becomes pretty clear that the 1820 translation misrepresents both the facts and the Comte de Bournon’s views on the antiquity of the site. Once again, the key sentence is in bold.

“During the years 1786, 87, and 88, they were occupied near Aix in Provence on the rebuilding of the Palace of Justice upon a vast plan, which plan was given by Mr. le Doux [Claude-Nicolas Ledoux], the King’s Architect. The cut stone which served this construction was taken from the quarry of St. Eutrope, located on a small hill about a mile from the town, and very near the Convent of the Trinity. The stone which formed this hill, where it was arranged in layers, was limestone of a deep grey, and of that kind which is tender when it comes out of the quarry, but hardens by exposure to the air. The strata were separated from one another by a bed of sand mixed with clay, more or less calcareous. The first which were wrought presented no appearance of any fossils, but, after the workmen had removed the ten first beds, they were astonished, when taking away the eleventh, to find its inferior surface, at the depth of 40 or 50 feet, covered with shells. The stone of this bed having been removed, as they were taking away a stratum of argillaceous sand, which separated the eleventh bed from the twelfth, they found stumps of columns and fragments of stones half wrought, and the stone was exactly similar to that of the layers to which they belonged: they found moreover wedges, handles of hammers, and other tools or fragments of wooden tools. But that which principally commanded their attention, was a board about one inch thick and seven or 7 or 8 feet long; it was broken into many pieces, of which none were missing, and it was possible to join them again one to another, and to restore to the board its original form, which was that of the boards of the same kind used by the masons and quarry men: it was worn in the same manner, rounded and waving upon the edges. Being then in Aix, I paid a visit to this quarry. The owner was kind enough to show me all of the pieces that had been found. The stones which were completely or partly wrought, had not at all changed in their nature, but the fragments of the board, and the instruments, and pieces of instruments of wood, had been changed into agate, which was very fine and agreeably colored. This discovery was made in the course of the year 1788, during the first uprisings, which began to manifest in Provence, halted the construction of the palace, and created an obstacle to continued observation.”

I copied the note of this fact as it was given to me by Mr. Chevalier de Sades (sic), who gathered together the particulars, as much as his memory of 20 years ago was able to help him: It seemed to me to be too interesting to ignore. This is accompanied by good circumstances that attract curiosity and interest. This quite positively shows the traces of a work executed by the hand of man, placed at the depth of 50 feet, and covered with 11 beds of compact limestone: everything tended to prove that this work had been executed upon the spot where the traces existed. The presence of man had then preceded the formation of this stone, and that very considerably since he was already arrived at such a degree of civilization that the arts were known to him, and that he wrought the stone and formed columns out of it. On the other hand, Aix is in the center of a rather deep basin: the stone which formed near this city, the small elevation of St. Eutrope, seems to show no further trace of its existence in the area, even at a considerable distance from the town: it is therefore a local formation, isolated and specific, and is clearly also the product of different deposits, all of which were accompanied by a precipitation of sand and clay , which indicates the action of the current that at the same time had made the formation from this stone in a pool of water which necessarily occupied then the basin in which the city of Aix is today. However, this pool had to be dry at the time in which the stones were carved, just as it was when they were found. So a disaster must have introduced water into the basin, and the shells found on the underside of the single layer that covered the remains of human labor would seem to indicate that the sea had something to do with. This would not be surprising since Aix is only 6 or 7 leagues away (from the sea). The currents that later would be established in the higher elevations, heading toward the waters of the basin, would do the rest; and a new drying of the same basin would then return it to the state in which it appears in this time.

I feel that this explanation, given from nearly 300 leagues away from where the observation of the facts in question was made, and by a man who knows it only secondhand, cannot provide a full accounting of all of the circumstances surrounding this incident, nor the general topography of the place where the material was found. It cannot be regarded as more than a probability, to be used only to direct some of the research that could be made on this place into the real cause of such an interesting fact, and it will disappear in the face of any more likely or satisfactory explanation that can be given. The study is very easy, from the place itself, and perhaps some mineralogists and geologists are already busy there; but I repeat, the site seems to me isolated from the grand formation of the rocky structure of our globe, and has no connection with it.

Now, I admit that the antique French gave me some trouble in the final two paragraphs, and I hope I rendered it close enough to make sense. But as you can clearly see, the Comte de Bournon did not think that the discovery predated human civilization, but rather that it represented a fascinating geological curiosity, which he attributed to recent and repeated catastrophic inundation. The area, in fact, is well known today as the site of ancient quarries that date back thousands of years. Because later writers never tried to look at the original, they misstate the count’s views.

But most interesting is that the “coins” found in the quarry disappear entirely. That’s because they were never there. The 1820 translator made a mistake. He read the French word coins as the English word coins, when in fact it means “corners” or “wedges.” In context, it refers to wedges. Later writers, stopping their research with the 1820 account, never consulted the original and simply accepted the “coins” as a point of fact.