Trench One 5: From landscape to Netscape
Trench One 6: Written in stone
Trench One 7: Save our heritage
Trench One 8: Game on
Trench One 9: Time Team on the web
Trench One 10: The great Barbie hoax
Trench One 11: Studying archaeology on the web
Trench One 12: Magical history tour: schools resources on the web

The great Barbie hoax

This is an expanded version of the article that first appeared in Trench One 10.

On one level, the internet can function as an unsurpassable tool for the exchange and dissemination of information. On another, it can enable any fruitcake with a phone line to pass off fantasy as fact.

There are plenty of them out there. At http://nov55.com/geol.html, for example, you can find someone who terms himself an 'independent mushroom physiologist'. He explains in quasi-scientific detail how snails a foot in diameter appeared 1,000 million years ago, some 460 million years before anyone else reckons they did. He's also got an original theory on soil formation, which is slightly different to the one that's usually wheeled out to help explain why so much archaeology is buried: 'The soil, of course, fell down from space, part of it while the earth was forming, and presumably some more after a planet exploded where the asteroid belt is.'

Slightly less harmless than this mushroom physiologist, if only because he has a habit of swamping serious internet discussion groups with his eccentric theories, is a man called Ed Conrad (www.edconrad.com). One of his least outlandish assertions, explains how: 'Physical evidence currently exists that proves man inhabited the earth while coal was being formed, shaking the very foundations of who we really are and how we really got here. An assortment of human bones and soft organs, transformed to rock-like hardness, has been discovered between anthracite veins in Pennsylvania. Since one of the golden rules of geology is that coal was formed during the Carboniferous – a minimum of 280 million years ago – it means that man has existed [for] multi-millions of years.'

Why haven't the palaeontologists advised us of this paradigm-shattering discovery? It's all down to 'deceit, dishonesty, collusion and conspiracy' on the part of the scientific establishment apparently.

At least with the Ed Conrads and mushroom physiologists of the internet, you can usually spot where the truth ends and the fantasy begins. Sometimes it's not so easy to spot the join. Not even archaeologists can always tell the difference, especially when they're too busy laughing.

Take the letter reproduced below. It surfaced most recently at the beginning of this year on the Council for British Archaeology’s internet discussion group (Britarch – anyone can join at the CBA's website www.britarch.ac.uk). But it had done the email rounds many times before.

It's supposed to be from Harvey Rowe, the Curator of Antiquities at the Smithsonian Institute to a man named Scott Williams in Newport, Rhode Island who is said to dig things up in his backyard and send the junk he finds to the Smithsonian, labelling it all with scientific names and insisting that he has made great archaeological discoveries.

So is Harvey Rowe, the purported author of the letter, real? And did he really compose this witheringly witty response to someone who sends him the heads of Barbie dolls in the belief that they are the fossil skulls of a previously unrecognised hominid species?

Sadly, no. Call the Smithsonian and they'll groan if you ask for Harvey Rowe. And they've never had anyone called Scott Williams – or any other name for that matter – digging up their backyard and sending them prehistoric Barbies.

The letter is a spoof. But where did it originate? I was first sent a copy a couple of years or so ago, when the curator signed himself Harold Jameson and Scott Williams was called Scott West. I decided to track it back further.

Its first appearance on the web, it seems, was on the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny back in November 1995, since when it has been posted on hundreds of websites and circulated in countless thousands of emails. It's appeared on the Britarch mailing list on at least a couple of occasions and copies can often be found pinned up in the offices and homes of archaeologists. Tracking it back can take you through various countries via virtually every archaeological e-list in existence.

But it tuns out to have started life in the spring of 1994, when a bored graduate student in Charleston, South Carolina – name of Harvey Rowe, naturally – wrote it and gave it to a group of friends. One of them sent it to someone else on the internet, they passed it on again, and so the Prehistoric Barbie myth became part of our common e-lore.

Of course there's no way of knowing for sure whether what I am telling you is true – after all, I got some of my information about it via the internet.

The 'Prehistoric Barbie' letter. Widely distributed on the internet, it is usually accompanied by a note explaining that it is a genuine letter sent by the Curator of Antiquities at the Smithsonian Institute to a man in Newport, Rhode Island. This man is said to dig things up in his backyard and send the junk he finds to the Smithsonian, labelling it all with scientific names and insisting that he has made great archaeological discoveries.

THIS IS AN ACTUAL LETTER FROM THE ARCHIVES OF THE SMITHSONIAN.
Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled "211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull." We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents "conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago." Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the "Malibu Barbie".

It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:

1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.

2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.

3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the "ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:

A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.

B. Clams don't have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino." Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard.

We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the "trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix" that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe
Curator, Antiquities