Jeffrey Goodman is an independent American archaeologist with training in geology and archaeology. His early career was in oil exploration. Goodman is most notable for his controversial ideas about modern humans originating in California 500,000 years ago, which are widely dismissed as unsupported by evidence. Biography Goodman holds a geological engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines, a M.A. in anthropology from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from California Coast University. He also earned a M.B.A. from Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He was accredited by the former Society of Professional Archeologists from 1978 to 1987. He used to be known as a proponent of psychic archaeology. Goodman is most well known for his idea that modern man was found in California 500,000 years ago. In his book American Genesis Goodman maintains that the conventional scenario is backwards, and that modern human beings originated not in Africa, but in California, where he cites the proverbial Garden of Eden, half a million years ago. He also attributes to these early humans many discoveries considered to be much later, from pottery to insulin to "the applied understanding of the physics behind Einstein's gravity waves". Later Goodman called for a Multiregional origin of modern humans. Goodman’s next book was The Genesis Mystery: the Sudden Appearance of Man and according to Paul Dean of the Los Angeles Times it is “something of an academic brush with scientific creationism, the belief that a divine surge, without explicit adherence to the Bible, created modern man… 250,000 years ago.”. His more recent work has been in biblical archaeology. Flagstaff excavation Goodman began excavation at Flagstaff, Arizona in the 1970s while still a student in the archaeological graduate program at the University of Arizona. Through the help of the psychic Aron Abrahamsen, he predicted that the excavation of a 10 foot wide test pit there would find stone tools from 4 to 20 feet, a minimum date of 20,000 years at the 15 foot level, a geological disconformity at the 15 foot level, a date of 100,000 years at 20 feet, and some human and animal skeletal material at the 20 foot plus level. As predicted, except for the human skeletal material, all of these things were found. In the 1979 dig season Dr. Alan Bryan of the University of Alberta and his team excavated at the site, and they found an