The Acámbaro Figures are several thousand small ceramic figurines allegedly found in July 1944 in Acámbaro, Guanajuato, Mexico, by Waldemar Julsrud.
The figurines are said by some to resemble dinosaurs and are sometimes cited as anachronisms. Some young-Earth creationists have adduced the existence of figurines as credible evidence for the coexistence of dinosaurs and humans, in an attempt to cast doubt on scientific dating methods and potentially offer support for a literal interpretation of the Bible.[1]
However, there is no reliable evidence for the validity of the Acámbaro figures as actual ancient artifacts; they are accepted by no credible scholar of archaeology or paleontology, and the motives of many who support them are questionable.[2]
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The Acámbaro Figures were uncovered by a German immigrant and hardware merchant named Waldemar Julsrud. According to Dennis Swift, a young-Earth creationist and major proponent of the figures, Julsrud stumbled upon the figures while riding his horse and hired a local farmer to dig up the remaining figures, paying him for each figure he brought back. Eventually, the farmer and his assistants brought him over 32,000 figures which included representations of everything from the supposed dinosaurs to peoples from all over the world including Egyptians, Sumerians, and “bearded Caucasians.”[1]
The figures attracted little attention from scholars and scientists, and when Julsrud began to assert that they were accurate representations of dinosaurs created by an ancient society, he only alienated himself further from serious scientific investigation. Tabloids and popular media sources covered the story however, and the figures steadily became somewhat famous.
Archaeologist Charles C. Di Peso was working for the Amerind Foundation, an anthropological organization dedicated to preserving Native American culture. Di Peso examined the figures and determined that they were not authentic, and had instead been produced by local modern-day farmers.[3][4]
He concluded that the figurines were indeed fakes: their surfaces displayed no signs of age; no dirt was packed into their crevices; and though some figurines were broken, no pieces were missing and no broken surfaces were worn. Furthermore, the excavation’s stratigraphy clearly showed that the artifacts were placed in a recently dug hole filled with a mixture of the surrounding archaeological layers. DiPeso also learned that a local family had been making and selling these figurines to Julsrud for a peso apiece since 1944, presumably inspired by films shown at Acámbaro’s cinema, locally available comic books and newspapers, and accessible day trips to Mexico City’s Museo Nacional.[5]
Julsrud quickly gained supporters of the figures' authenticity. Some of these have tried to argue against Di Peso's investigation.[6] Charles Hapgood, pioneer of pole shift theory, became one of the figures most high profile and devout supporters.[7] Other supporters included Earle Stanley Gardner, the prolific novelist and creator of the character Perry Mason, who came to Julsrud’s defense claiming that the 32,000 figures could not possibly have been produced by a single person or group of people. This was in defense against accusations that the figures were a hoax played on Julsrud.[1]
The figures continue to draw attention in the present day. They have been cited in some pseudoscientific books such as Atlantis Rising by David Lewis, and Don Patten, another young-Earth creationist, has emerged as their staunchest supporter. He has proposed some new lines of evidence, including the figure’s resemblance to the dinosaurs depicted in Robert Bakker’s book, Dinosaur Heresies.
The very circumstances from which the figures first appeared are cited as dubious.[2] Julsrud claims that he paid the farmers for every figure they brought him, which would have given the farmers motive to create their own figures and disguise them as ancient artifacts. Di Peso observed that the surfaces of the figures were practically brand new and lacked any of the typical features that would be characteristic of pottery having been in the ground for at least 1500 years. For example, he noted that they lacked the surface scratches, marring, and patina that prehistoric pottery acquires in this part of Mexico from lying buried in the rocky soils and middens. Di Peso observed the diggers repeatedly broke many authentic artifacts while digging for the figures, yet none of the figures themselves displayed any marks of damage. He also observed that the Acámbaro figures were found only in loose, black dirt that filled pits that had been recently dug down into prehistoric midden deposits and underlying sterile red earth and later refilled. The dirt filling these pits contained fragments of fresh manure. He also noted that the figures that he witnessed being dug up were filled with clods of loosely packed dirt that exhibited well-preserved fingerprints.[3][4]
The sheer number of perfect figures found is argued as evidence for a hoax.[3][4] Over 32,000 figures were found, and all of them in perfect condition except for a few that were cleanly broken, perhaps to create the illusion of antiquity. If these were authentic antiquities, they would not be preserved with such perfection in such an inhospitable environment. Pottery is almost always uncovered as fragments called sherds; nowhere have 32,000 unblemished ceramics been uncovered with none of them in fragments and all of them in perfect condition (cleanly broken in two does not count as fragmentation).
Although attempts have been made to date these figures using Thermoluminescence, or TL dating, and the earliest results, done when TL dating was in its infancy, suggested a date around 2500 BCE, later work showed these dates to be artificially old.[8] For example, Gary W. Carriveau and Mark C. Han attempted to date 20 different Acámbaro Figures using thermoluminescence dating. They found that the figures had been fired at temperatures between 450°C and 650°C, which contradicted claims that these figures had been fired at temperature too low for them to be accurately dated. However, all of the samples failed the "plateau test," which indicated that dates obtained for the Acámbaro Figures using standard high temperature thermoluminescence dating techniques are unreliable and lack any chronological significance. Based on the degree of signal regeneration found in remeasured samples, they estimated that the figures tested had been fired approximately 30 years prior to 1969.[9]