Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Nebraska Man


Illustrated London News, July 24, 1922.


A single tooth and some supposed tools were the only “evidence” for Nebraska Man discovered in 1922. It was immediately acknowledged as a "missing link" by leading evolutionists including the highly regarded Henry F. Osborn. Reconstructions using the “evidence” yielded copy and illustration appearing in newspapers and journals internationally. The “evidence” was even used in the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial." Later excavations however, revealed that the tooth was that of a wild pig (Science, Dec 16, 1927).

Piltdown Man



The "Piltdown Gang" commemorating the edifice of Evolution: left front: A S Underwood, Arthur Keith, W P Pycraft, and Sir Ray Lankester. Left back: F O Barlow, G Elliot Smith, Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward. From portrait by John Cooke, 1915.

A jaw and a skull were the only remnants of Piltdown Man. For over 40 years, hundreds of “scientists” regarded this as classic proof of human evolution. And that situation may have continued except for a dentist (an amateur paleontologist) who in 1953 determined that the Piltdown evidence was the combination of a human skull and the filed and stained jaw of an ape. Numerous books have been written investigating the identity of the hoaxer. More recently, Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery (1990) was an attempt by evolutionist Frank Spencer to regain credibility for the scientific community by admitting guilt and assigning blame. However, this belated confession is no consolation for those who based their eternal destiny on “Science”!

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Java Man


A skullcap and a femur uncovered a year and twelve meters apart, was the "quintessential evidence" for Java Man on the Indonesian island of that name. Eugène Dubois, the self-assured discoverer, immediately christened his find Pithecanthropus Erectus (erect ape man).


Imaginative artistic reconstructions, based on a single bone and a skull fragment, appeared in newspapers, magazines, and academic journals arresting the 1892 public’s attention.


The creditability of the discovery was immediately challenged, and the “brute” was generally dismissed as the jumbled combination of human and ape remains. Although Dubois contested that the relics were from a single individual, decades later it was reported that his Pithecanthropus collection contained an additional left femur i.e., Java Man had “two left feet.”


However, despite the hominid’s dubious authenticity, the “evidence” came just in time to rescue Darwin’s waning theory of evolution, a theory that had been increasingly discredited due to a lack of transitional fossil evidence.



The real intrigue of the Java narrative is not the revelation of some primeval “brute” but rather the humanity of its “evolved” counterpart who, compelled by arrogance and ambition, coerced his family to leave the familial setting of his professorship in Amsterdam and live among the danger, pestilence, and stagnant malaria infested waters of the impenetrable jungles of Java. Dubois buried four children there (American Scientist, Vol: 87, Num: 6, p504). And as the desperate ship’s captain, on the itinerant paleontologist’s eventual return to Europe, readied the lifeboats during a violent storm, Dubois instructed his wife: “If the lifeboat is lowered, you see to the little ones, for I shall have to look after this [Pithecanthropus]."

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Lucy


Earlier this spring [August 94], USA Today carried the cover story New Skull Illuminates Early Man referring to Donald Johanson's most recent discovery as the crown jewel of pre-human fossils. Johanson, founder of the Institute of Human Origins, led the team that discovered Australopithicus Afarensis (Lucy) in Africa's Great Rift Valley 20 years ago. This recent find provides the first complete skull of Lucy's species, generally acknowledged as the missing link between ape and man.


Australopithecus afarensis,
AL288-1 (Lucy), Museo
Nacional de Antropologia,
Mexico City.

A three part Nova series aired nationwide in February to commemorate the event. The series, hosted by Johanson and produced in part by his wife, confidently reconstructed Lucy's past using frequent scenes of aberrant human forms wondering among “prehistoric” settings.

But what was the evidence that was so complete, so convincing, so indisputable it allowed Johanson to win almost universal acceptance of Lucy's species as our predecessor? Before revealing the surprising answer, let’s first review some former "crown jewels of pre-human fossils."

Darwin’s Albatross

Immediate posts are a revision of a column published August 94 regarding the path “science” takes in converging to the “truth.”