Evolution Encyclopedia Vol. 2
Chapter 18 Appendix Part B
12 - THE MAJOR HOMINID DISCOVERIES
For over a hundred years men have frantically sought to find those millions upon millions of half-ape/half-human ancestral bones which, according to the theory, should be everywhere. But, to date, only enough bones have been recovered to fill a table top,—and they have provided no real evidence in support of the theory. The bones come from immature apes, adult apes, human children, adult humans with or without arthritic or similar problems, mismatched ape jaws and human skulls, miscellaneous animal bones, or outright doctored frauds.
In the following listing, numbers on the right indicate how many actual bones pieces of that item have been found.
1 - AUSTRALOPITHECINES — These were supposed to have been apelike men that lived about 3 million years ago. The remains have a cranial capacity of less than 750 cc, with a range of 500-700 cc.
SOUTH AFRICAN FINDS:
Taung African Man, Australopithecus africanus
Makapansgat 30
Sterkfontein 40
Swartkrans 60
EAST AFRICAN FINDS:
Olduvai Gorge: Nutcracker Man (Zinjanthropus boisle) 9
Handy Man (Homo habilis) 2-4
Lake Rudolf: 1470 Man 30
ETHIOPIAN FINDS:
Omo: Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) 13
2 - PITHECANTHROPINES or HOMO ERECTUS — These were supposed to have been near men that lived about half a million years ago. The remains have a cranial capacity of more than 750 cc, with a range of 900-1,225 cc.
SOUTH AFRICAN REMAINS:
Swartkrans: Telanthropus capensis 8
Broken Hill: Rhodesian Man 1
NORTH AFRICAN FINDS:
Ternifine - 4
CHINA REMAINS:
Chou Kou Tien: Peking Man
(Sinanthropus pekinensis) 40
JAVA REMAINS:
Trinil and Sangiran: Java Man
(Pithecanthropus erectus) 6
Ngangdong 10
3 - TRUE HOMO SAPIENS — These are remains supposedly dated to some time within the last half-million years. The remains have a cranial capacity such as men today have, and frequently larger. The average volume today is 1,450 cc., and the range is 850-1,700 cc.
GERMAN REMAINS:
Neanderthal 1
FRENCH REMAINS:
La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1
La Ferrassie .. 6
Cro-Magnon Man 5
ITALIAN REMAINS:
Grimaldi Grotto 2
CZECH REMAINS:
Predmost 20
YUGOSLAV REMAINS:
Krapina 13
ISREALI REMAINS:
Mount Carmel 12
Jebel Qafza .. 6
IRAQI REMAINS:
Shanidar 7
MOROCCAN REMAINS:
Taforait 180
ALGERIAN REMAINS:
Mechta-el-arbi 32
13 - THE EVOLUTIONARY ANCESTOR OF MAN
Do evolutionists teach that man came from an ape, or from an ancestor common to both? This may seem to be a minor point, and it actually is. But when discussing the scientific evidence disproving an evolutionary ancestry for mankind, evolutionists will jump on this question as though it provided evidence of your ignorance on the subject.
Howard Peth spent several years establishing the fact that modern evolutionists seem not to be acquainted with either Darwinian or modern evolutionary theory when they object to this aspect of the theory:
"Over the years I have had occasion to discuss Darwin's brainchild with many evolutionists. In these discussions 1 have encountered an extremely fascinating, though inexplicable, reaction. Whenever I voice my disbelief in the idea that human beings descended from apes, the evolutionist smiles indulgently and replies in a very predictable way; He patiently explains that the evolutionary development of man from apes is a popular misconception—he asserts that Darwin never taught such a thing, that evolutionists today do not teach it, and he suggests in a kindly way that I should get my facts straight.
"Often he will go on to say that evolution merely states both apes and men have evolved from some unknown ancestor. So he concludes that I am guilty of slander against evolution when I erroneously impute ideas to the theory which it never taught.
"Naturally, after encountering this reaction I began to wonder where people ever got the idea that, according to evolution, man came from the apes. Here is a little of what I found:
"Darwin really did say man evolved from monkeys. In the conclusion of Chapter VI in his book, The Descent of Man, the apostle of evolution declared:
" 'The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the Universe, proceeded.'
"Modern evolutionists perpetuate this idea almost as a ceaseless refrain. Professor Earnest Albert Hooton, Harvard anthropologist, puts it this way:
" 'Fossil man invented the first tools and discovered the use of fire; he was probably the originator of articulate speech. He made himself from an ape and created human culture.'
"Let's look at a few key chapters among the beautifully illustrated book in the Life Nature Library put out by Time-Life Books. One volume is called Early Man and contains a chapter entitled 'Back Beyond the Apes' and another significantly called 'Forward From the Apes.' A volume on The Primates has a concluding chapter entitled 'From Ape Toward Man.' Early Man contains a five-page foldout chart showing apes in a straight line of development leading to modern man. This full-color chart has been reproduced in countless magazine advertisements for the books. Under one of the apes pictured (Ramapithecus), we are told that some experts believe that beast to be 'the oldest of man's ancestors in a direct line.' " —Howard Peth, Blind Faith (1990), pp. 121-123.
*Charles Darwin was quite proud of his ancestry.
"At first Darwin was a disciple of Lyell, but in the end Lyell was a disciple of Darwin. But it took time, for as one of Darwin's biographers expressed, as a gentleman Lyell resented the idea of coming from a monkey or ape ancestry. [*Henshaw Ward, Charles Darwin (1927), pp. 300, 304.] That is one problem that Darwin did not have. In the sixth chapter of his Descent of Man, he stated plainly several times not only that human beings came from monkeys but even which kind of monkeys he thought were ancestral." —Bolton Davidheiser, "Charles Darwin Centennial, " in Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1975, p. 165.
In his typical reasoning style, * Darwin explains that because man is descended from a certain line of monkey, therefore that line of monkeys are his ancestors.
"And as man from a genealogical point of view belongs to the Catarrhine or Old World stock [of apes], we must conclude, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated." —*Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man 1890), Modern Library Edition, p. 84.
Five pages later, the great founder of modern evolutionary theory again maintains that man is descended from monkeys.
"The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the Universe, proceeded." —*Op. cit., p. 89.
14 - THE HUMAN BRAIN
The marvel of the human mind defies explanation—or evolutionary origin. Here are some Interesting facts about the human brain, plus several statements by scientists:
Commenting on this amazing organ, one Oxford scientist said this:
"The brain is a mystery. It has been and still will be. How does the brain produce thoughts? That is a central question and we have still no answer to it . . We have not yet accumulated more than fragmentary insight into what goes on in the brain, which is of hardly imaginable complexity." — *Sir Charles Sherrington.
The brain of the average man weighs about 3.3 pounds (1500 grams), and is a mass of pinkish gray jelly-like substance composed of some 10 to 15 billion nerve cells.
The cerebrum is the main part of the brain, and has two halves. Each is heavily convoluted . About 65 percent of the surface area is buried in these deep surface folds. This increases the efficiency of the brain threefold. This surface area is the cerebral cortex. It is .1 inch thick, 400 square inches in area, and is the seat of consciousness, memory, imagination, and reason.
Each of the 10 billion neurons is an independent, living unit, yet receives connections from perhaps 100 other neurons and each of these connect to 100 more. The profusion of interconnections among the cells of the gray matter is beyond all calculation.
It is worthwhile to compare the human brain with one local 10,000-line dial telephone exchange: That single exchange requires 500 tons of equipment, 62,000 man-hours of work to install. Eighty miles of cables and 2,600,000 soldered connections are needed. In contrast, the human brain does infinitely more than a 500-ton mass of telephone equipment which merely communicates messages, but does no thinking.
The cerebellum is much smaller than the cerebrum and located beneath the back part of it. The cerebellum controls voluntary muscle action, partly on orders from the cerebrum. Here we find the balance center of the body. It has been estimated that 1 billion nerve cells take part in every move we make to keep our bodies straight. The cerebellum, along with the spinal cord, controls movement. Watch a skilled pianist at work.
There are many other parts of your total brain. One of these is the medulla oblongata, an enlarged bulb at the top of the spinal cord and base of the brain. It controls automatic functions, such as breathing, and the pumping of the heart.
In the 70 years of his life, a person can receive into his mind 15 trillion separate bits of information. Charles Evan Hughes could write a 30minute speech, and then deliver it from memory the same day. John von Neuman, a leading scientist, had "mastered college calculus by the age of eight and could memorize on sight a column in a telephone book and then repeat back the names, addresses, and numbers without error." (*Life magazine, February 25,1957.) The human brain can hold, potentially, more information than is contained in the 9 million volumes in the Library of Congress.
"The brain's tissue include some thousand billion billion protein molecules. That number is believed ample for the purposes of human memory." —*The Tape Recorder in Your Brain, " in Coronet, September 1958, p. 57.
Here are several statements by scientists about this amazing bowl of jelly that is your mind:
Consider such an awesome assemblage:
"Each of the 10 billion neurons is an independent, living unit. It receives impulses from other cells through intricately branching dendrite fibers which sprout form its central body; it discharges impulses to other cells via a single slender fiber, the axon, which branches profusely to make contact with numerous receiving cells via their dendrites . . Connections between cells are established by the synapses-specialized junctions . . At these synapses the transmitting cell secretes highly specific chemical substances, whose high-speed reaction carries the signal from one cell to the next. The whole of this all important process occurs on an exquisitely small scale. A neuron operates on a power of about a thousand-millionth of a watt!" —*John C. Eccles, in Scientific American, September 1958 [President, Australian Academy of Sciences].
The human brain is far above that of any animal:
"Neurons in the brain make thousands of connections with each other. But the innumerable extra connections that the larger human cortex provides multiplies virtually to infinity the brain's capacity for receiving and analyzing data. And it is this sheer, massive power for handling data that places man in a class which is incomparably superior to any other living thing." —*Life, June 28, 1963, p. 72.
"Without doubt, the human mind sets our species apart from non-human animals. Unfortunately, what we call the mind is notoriously refractory to scientific study. It is something that everyone apprehends by introspection, not by objective examination or measurement by some scientific means.
"Human self-awareness obviously differs greatly from any rudiments of mind that may be present in non-human animals. The magnitude of the difference makes it a difference in kind, and not one of degree. Owing primarily to this difference, mankind became and extraordinary and unique product of biological evolution." —*T. Dobzhansky, *F. Ayala, *G. Stebbins and *J. Valentine, Evolution, (1977), p.453.
Hundreds times a million billion different combinations—all within each neuron:
"A healthy, mature human being of normal intelligence may have upwards of 20 million RNA molecules [DNA's 'messenger'] In each neuron . . An RNA molecule made up of merely 25 links could have any one of a million billion different combinations, . . In fact, every RNA molecule contains many hundreds of units—not merely 25. There is no question, then, that RNA presents a filing system perfectly capable of handling any load of learning and memory which the human being is likely to put upon it and a billion times more than that quantity, too." —*Isaac Asimov, quoted in New York Times Magazine, October 9, 1966, pp. 142, 144-146.
That wonder was there all the way back to the beginning; scientists have never found any evidence of an evolutionary development of the human brain:
"We have no evidence for biological change in brain size or structure since Homo sapiens appeared in the fossil record some fifty thousand years ago." —*Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (1981), p. 324.
If the brain evolved, it had to do it "overnight."
"What caused evolution . . to produce, as if overnight, modern humankind with its highly special brain?." —*Morton Hunt, The Universe Within (1982), p. 45.
20 million volumes worth of content can be stored in it:
"The information content of the human brain expressed in bits is probably comparable to the total number of connections among the neurons—about a hundred trillion, 10-14 bits. If written out in English, say, that information would fill some twenty million volumes, as many as in the world's largest libraries." —*Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980), p. 278.
The human brain has a million million circuits per cubic foot, and each brain cell is connected to 1,000 input and 1,000 output cells.
"The deep new knowledge about the brain, gathered at an accelerated rate in recent years, shows this organ to be marvelously designed and capacitated beyond the wonders with which it was invested by ignorant imagination.
"Microelectronics can pack about a million circuits in a cubic foot, whereas the brain has been estimated to pack a million million circuits per cubic foot. Computer switches interact with not more than two other switches at a time, whereas a brain cell may be 'wired' to 1,000 other cells on both its input and output sides.
"Perhaps the most elusive questions surround the brain functions that most make us human—the capacities of memory and learning. Transcending what might be called the hardware of the brain, there comes a software capacity that elludes hypothesis. The number that expresses this capacity in digital information bits exceeds the largest number to which any physical meaning can be attached." —* W.H. Yokel, promotional letter for September 1979 issue of Scientific American.
The big question is how the small human brain store so much memory facts; the experts cannot figure it out.
"If memory is so detailed, how can the brain find room for it all? It is estimated that, in a lifetime, a brain can store 1,000,000,000,000,000 (a million billion) units of information. To store so much, the units of storage must be of molecular size. There would be room for nothing more." —*Isaac Asimov, Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984), p. 848.
Wallace, co-developer of Darwin's basic theory, later came to the conclusion that the excessively large size of the human brain disproved evolutionary theory.
"A brain one-half larger than that of the gorilla would . . fully have sufficed for the limited mental development of the savage; and we must therefore admit that the large brain he actually possesses could never have been solely developed by any of those laws of evolution, where essence is, that they lead to a degree of, organization exactly proportionate to the wants of each species, never beyond those wants. . Natural selection could only have endowed savage man with a brain a few degrees superior to that of an ape, whereas he actually possessed one very little inferior to that of a philosopher." —*Alfred Russel Wallace, Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, (1895), p. 202.
Not only does man have a brain that is far away larger than that of any animal,—his ancestors had still larger brains! The following statement was written by an expert in the field of paleontology. He writes about discoveries of the bones of true "ancient men," but specimens which the evolutionists would rather you not know about. Our ancestors are not apes, but human beings which were more intelligent than we are today.
"Meanwhile he [H.S. Shelton] either forgets, or never knew, many most uncomfortable (to him) facts about fossil man. For most fossil human remains are of distinctly high types—'above the modern standard' as Sir A. Keith, Sir A. Smith Woodward, W.P. Pycraft and others have sadly admitted.
"The huge-brained Wadjak man (found in Java, like Pithecanthropus, but ignored as less satisfactory by most evolutionists) is supposed to be the ancestor of the small-brained modern aboriginal Australians. Even the latter Talgai, Keilor, etc., fossil Australians were quite as brainy as their living counterparts.
"Similarly, while modern Bushmen are small in size and brain, their remote fossil predecessors—Fish Hook men, Grimaldi boy, the Strandloopers, etc.—were very big brained.
"And the oldest of them all—the magnificent Boekop man—had the biggest brain of sill Where did he spring from?
"Even the modem Somali, fine specimen of humanity as he is, had a still finer fossil counterpart in Springbok man.
"Our own (Caucasian) Pleistocene counterparts—Cro-Magnon, Engis, Brunn, and the pre-Neanderthal Dartford man (with Cro-Magnon affinities)—were all better endowed with brains than ourselves.
"Indeed, Neanderthal man himself usually had a bigger brain (both as boy and man) than any living race." —*L.M. Davies, "Science and Pseudoscience," Nineteenth Century, 141:108112 (1947).
Here is an interesting summary of how the brain works. Could all this have been produced by the random accidents which are grandly termed "evolution"?
"Of all the marvelous things on earth, none is more astounding than the human brain. For 9xample, every second some 100 million bits of intimation pour into the brain from the various senses. But how can it avoid being hopelessly buried by this avalanche? If we can think about only one thing at a time, how does the mind cope with these millions of simultaneous messages?
Obviously, the mind not only survives the barrage but handles it with ease.
"How it does so is only one of the many wonders of the human brain. Two factors are involved.
First, in the brain stem there is a network of nerves the size of your little finger. This network is called the reticular formation. It acts as a kind of traffic control center, monitoring the millions of messages coming into the brain, sitting out the trivial and selecting the essential for attention by the cerebral cortex. Each second this little network of nerves permits only a few hundred, at most, to enter the conscious mind.
"Second, a further pinpointing of our attention seems to come about by waves that sweep the brain 8 to 12 times per second. These waves cause periods of high sensitivity, during which the brain notes the stronger signals and acts upon them. It is believed that by means of these waves the brain scans itself, in this way focusing on the essentials. Thus an amazing flurry of activity is going on in our heads every second!..
"The wonder begins in the womb. Three weeks after conception brain cells start forming. They grow in spurts, at times up to 250,000 cells a minute. After birth the brain continues growing and forming its network of connections.
"The gulf separating the human brain from that of any animal quickly manifests itself: `The brain of the human infant, unlike that of any other animal, triples in size during its first year,' states the book The Universe Within. In time, about 100 billion nerve cells, called neurons, as well as other types of cells, are packed into a human brain, although it makes up only 2 percent of the body's weight.
"The key brain cells—the neurons— do not actually touch one another. They are separated by synapses, tiny spaces less than one millionth of an inch across. These gaps are bridged by chemicals called neurotransmitters, 30 of which are known, but the brain may possess many more. These chemical signals are received at one end of the neuron by a maze of tiny filaments called dendrites.
"The signals are then transmitted at the other end of the neuron by a nerve fiber called an axon. In the neurons the signals are electrical, but across the gaps they are chemical. Thus the transmission of nerve signals is electrochemical in nature. Each impulse is of the same strength, but the intensity of the signal depends upon the frequency of the impulses, which may be as high as one thousand a second." —Life: How Did it Get Here? (1985), pp. 168-170.
More connections than the entire communications network of human civilizations.
"The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out somewhere in the region of between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibres by which it makes contact with other nerve-cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 101s or a thousand million million . .
much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on Earth." —*Michael Denton, Evolution: Theory in Crisis (1985), pp 330-331.
" . . the human brain probably contains more than 1014 synapses. ." —*Deborah M. Barnes, "Brain Architecture: Beyond Genes," Science, July 11, 1986, p. 155.
15 - DATING EARLY MAN
Setting the myths and speculations, we left to us the facts of history. But historical records only provide information about mankind going back a few thousand years. Before that, there is only silence. If evolutionary theory was correct, we would have historical records running back 10,000 centuries, instead of only 40. (Also see sections near the end of chapter 6, Age of the Earth.)
We will let the experts in a variety of fields give us more information on this:
"Dates determined by radioactive decay may be off—not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude. . Man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand." —*Robert Gannon, "How Old Is It?" Popular Science, November 1979, p. 81.
No civilizations prior to 6-7,000 years ago:
"Only six or seven thousand years ago. . civilization emerged, enabling us to build up a human world." —*Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (1982), p. 181.
No farming before 10,000 years ago at the earliest; no written records before 5,000 years ago:
"In the Old World, most of the critical steps in the farming revolution were taken between 10,000 and 5000 BC . . Only for the last 5000 years has man left written records." —*Reader's Digest, The Last Two Million Years (1984), pp. 9, 29.
"Authorities are amazed by the fact that agriculture started around the world at about the same time. Thus Harlan wrote on page 95:
" 'For reasons we can only speculate about, people in various parts of the world all seem to have begun the process of domestication at about the same time.' " —George F. Howe and Walter E. Lammerts, "Biogeography from a Creationist Perspective: II The Origin and Distribution of Cultivated Plants," in Creation Research Society Quarterly, June 1980, p. 8 (quoting *J.R. Harlan, "Plants and Animals that Nourish Man, " in Scientific American, 235(3)89-97, p. 95 (1976)).
No metal objects before 9,000 B.C. at the earliest:
"The oldest known artificially shaped metal objects are some copper beads found in northern Iraq and dating from the beginning of the 9th millennium B.C." —*Cyril S. Smith, "Materials and the Development of Civilization and Science," Science, Vol. 148, May 14, 1965, p. 908.
The Sumerians in Mesopotamia had the earliest cities:
"In most civilizations urbanization began early. There is little doubt that this was the case for the oldest civilization and the earliest cities: those of ancient Mesopotamia." —*Robert M. Adams, "The Origin of Cities, " Scientific American, Vol. 203, September 1960, p. 154.
"The great cities of the Sumerians are usually considered to be the oldest urban culture. However, even before these, there were towns of considerable complexity." —H. M. Morris, Scientific Creationism (1974), p. 191.
The earliest non-Biblical historical records are the Egyptian king lists. The earliest dates on these are disputed, but it is thought they extend back only to c. 3000 B.C.
"The Egyptian king lists go back to the First Dynasty of Egypt, a little before 3000 B.C. Before that, there were no written records anywhere." —*Colin Renfrew, Before Civilization (1983), p. 25. A recently-published book, Frontiers of Time, is filled with speculative summaries on how the universe began and how it will finally end. Yet, amid all the speculation, the fact remains that mankind has only had a 5,000-year history on our planet:
"A billion years ago, the only creatures existing on Earth were one-celled organisms, and much of evolution’s rich tapestry of life was yet to unfold. A billion years hence Earth will have altered completely, wrought anew by continuously shitting continents, recurrent ice ages, and occasional cosmic bombardments by asteroids and comets. Against such an endless backdrop, the entire 5,000-year history of civilization has been no more lasting than the flash of a lightning bug." —*Roberta Conlan, Frontiers of Time (1991), p. 10.
16 - WHERE LANGUAGES LEAD US
Ancient historical records clearly place the earliest ancient man at only a few thousand years ago. Various data also helps us locate our earliest ancestors after the Flood. Evidences of earliest agriculture, animal husbandry, and written records point us to the Near East—primarily Anatolia (eastern Turkey) and northern Babylonia (northern Iraq) as the cradle of civilization. Such data fully agrees with the Genesis account that, after the Flood, the Ark came to rest "in the mountains of Ararat" of eastern Turkey.
But even the languages of mankind point us to that same area as the location of the most ancient people that we have evidence of, after the Flood.
Research linguists have sought to find where the thousands of languages and dialects had their origin. These experts have sought to locate the paths by which ancient peoples migrated from their earliest home. Interestingly enough, the evidence is clearly there.
We could compare it to men leaving a central point in the woods and journey off in various directions. Yet as they traveled, each group dropped things here and there. As they moved outward, that which they dropped was ever-new adaptations of earlier things cast aside.
This is what we find in the languages of mankind. By studying those languages carefully, researchers today can retrace those paths, locate many of them, and find their common origin.
"The idea that languages are constantly evolving is obvious from looking at English over time: Consider Shakespeare's Elizabethan 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'; Chaucer's 14th-century, Middle English 'When that Aprille with his shourse sote,' and the opening line from the eighth-century Old English epic Beowulf: `Hwaet! We Gar-Dana, in geardagum. .'
"For instance, diners might order their coffee au laic, conleche or latte, depending on whether they are in a French, Spanish or Italian restaurant. Using these similar-sounding 'daughter' words for milk and a knowledge of how the sounds of words change as languages evolve, linguists could come close to reconstructing the Latin form, lade, even if this mother tongue of Romance languages were unknown. ." "The word for the number three, for instance, is tres in Latin, treis in Greek and tryas in Sanskrit . ."
"From these remnants, however, linguists have reconstructed a vast lexicon of proto-lndo-European words, providing clues to the origins of the ancient people who spoke the language when they populated nearly all of Europe. According to recent work by two Soviet linguists, Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov, words for domesticated animals such as cows, sheep and dogs as well as plants such as barley, flax and wheat suggest that the people who spoke proto-lndo-European were farmers. Likewise, the prevalence of words evoking mountains and rapidly flowing rivers suggests the Indo-European proto-language had originated in southern Russia and had been spread; throughout Europe by hordes of conquering warriors. But Gamkrelidze, Ivanov and other Soviet scholars cite words in proto-lndo-European that appear to have been borrowed from the languages of Mesopotamia and the Near East, suggesting that the speakers of proto-lndo-European lived in close geographical proximity to these cultures. The proto-lndo-European word for wine, for instance, appears to have its ancient roots in the non-Indo-European Semitic word wanju and the Egyptian wns.
"The Soviets' linguistic work has unexpected support in new research by British archaeologist Colin Renfrew, who, unaware of the linguistic studies, independently determined that the Indo-European homeland was In Anatolia, based on a reassessment of the archaeological evidence. Renfrew suggests that it was farmers, not warriors, who were responsible for the spread of the Indo-European language into Europe. He notes that even if a farmer's offspring had moved only 10 miles from the family farm to set up farms of their own, the resulting wave of agriculture souls have swept throughout Europe from Anatolia in about 1,500 years, carrying the Indo-European language with it . .
"While the existence of proto-lndo-European has been accepted among scholars for years, linguists have now begun to trace the lineage of languages back even further. Linguists studying languages from other areas of the world have identified ancestral mother tongues such as Altic, which gave rise to east Asian languages including Japanese and Korean, and Afro-Asiatic, the ancestor of Semitic. Working backward from reconstructions of Indo-European, Altic, Afro-Asiatic and several others, Soviet scholars have found that these ancestral tongues derived from an even more ancient language. called `Nostratic,' meaning 'our language,' this ancestral tongue was reconstructed independently by Soviet linguists Vladislav Illich-Svilych and Aharon lblgopolsky during the 1960s, though their work was not translated into English until recently. . "
"The reconstructed words of Nostratic vocabulary offer a glimpse of how the people who spoke the language lived, and they suggest a date when the language thrived. The absence of words for domesticated plants suggests the Nostratic speakers were probably hunter-gatherers
. . "The speakers of Nostratic were well-traveled: Not only is the lexicon peppered with words that refer to 'long journey' but over the next several thousand years, Nostratic split into several major language families as its speakers migrated from the Near East, their suspected homeland, into Europe, Persia and India." —*"7he Mother Tongue," U.S. News & World Report, November 1990, p. 60.
17 - IDENTIFYING HUMAN BONES
Human bones have certain identifying marks which ape bones lack. Here is a do-it-yourself guide to how to identify human bones.
"1. The diagnosis should be based on all available parts that are known in common for both genera.
" 2. The diagnosis should be based on material that can be shown to be (a) definitely associated or (b) reasonably attributed, and resort should not be made to parts that are doubtfully associated unless this is clearly stated. Where cranial remains of two genera are known and postcranial remains of one can be definitely associated, it is reasonable to attribute a second series of limb bones to the other genus, provided that what has been done is stated and provided that the bones can be distinguished.
" 3. The diagnosis should be made on the morphology alone and not upon inferences from the morphology. Presumed diet, locomotion, and such should not be used, since these are, after all, only inferences from the morphology and can easily be erroneous. The morphology upon which the inferences are based should be sufficient and has the virtue of being available for checking.
"4. Cultural 'associations' are not to be recommended, since the proof of such an assertion is not likely to be forthcoming.
"5. The geological age of the specimen and the geographical location should play no part in the diagnosis. The known ranges of the genus in time and space can be given as information after the diagnosis.
"6. Specimens showing gross pathological features or artificial distortion should not be taken into account without due caution.
"7. If the information is available, not only should the maximum number of skeletal parts be used to differentiate genera, but infant and senile material should be treated separately.
"8. If the species of the genera are sexually dimorphic and this can be demonstrated, the nature of the dimorphism should be stated.
"9. Wherever possible, statistical evidence should be presented to substantiate or amplify statements; for, since taxonomy is a science that deals only with samples, it is by definition a statistical science.
"10. Great care should be taken when making statements about taphonomically altered specimens, and especially about measuring them. If distorted specimens have been used, the limits of the distortion should be measured and all factors related to this taken into consideration." —Dennis W. Cheek, "Creationist and Neo-Darwinian Views Concerning the Origin of the Order Primates, et al.," Creation Research Society Quarterly, September 1981, pp. 101-102, quoting *Alan C. Walker, "Remains Attributable to Australopithecus in the East Rudolf Succession, " in *Y. Coppers, et. al., Earliest Man and Environments in the Lake Rudolf Basin (1976), p. 486.
Here is a second brief summary of identifying factors. If these were more carefully followed, there would not be so many ape bones paraded around as half-human bones.
"In summary, man can be recognized from the skeletal material on the basis of the following major points:
"1. An enlargement of the brain.
" 2. An increased thickness of the cranial vault.
" 3. A reduction in postorbital construction and the size of the temporal foesae.
"4. A reduction in facial prognathism.
"5. A projecting nose associated with the true antero-interior nasal spine and protruding nasal bones.
"6. An inflated frontal sinus and the development of the supra-orbital torus where nasion is located below the torus.
"7. A reduced supramastoid crest.
"8. A vertically oriented temporal squama.
"9. A mastoid notch which is separated from the occipitomastoid suture and occipital groove by the occipitomastoid crest.
"10. Vertically oriented incisors and alveolus with a palate of nearly uniform depth both anteriorly and posteriorly.
"11. M2-2 which are larger than M3-3 (molars).
"12. A mental eminence.
"13. An intermembral index where the upperlimb is considerably shorter than the lower limb." —Dennis W. Cheek, "Creationist and Neo-Darwinian Views Concerning the Origin of the Order Primates, et al.," in Creation Research Sodefy Quarterly, September 1981, p. 104, quoting *Todd R. Olson, "Hominid Phylogenetics and the Existence of Homo in Member I of the Shvartkrans Formation, South Africa," Journal of Human Evolution, 7:173 (1978).
18 - PRIMATE BEHAVIOR STUDIES
When there is no evidence for a theory, anything helps. Lacking any other facts about man's ancestors, scientists have tried to study animal behavior in the hope that this might, somehow, provide evidence that man descended from lower forms of life.
The word primate was first introduced by Karl Linnaeus (1707-1778) the Swedish naturalist, when he was classifying plants and animals. Linnaeus was a strong Creationist, and the more fully so after having studied more plants and animals than any other man then living. The monkeys and apes were placed in the order of primates by Linnaeus, as being the "highest" or "first rank" next to that noblest of God's creation, man. Mammals were placed as secondaries, and the rest of the animal kingdom tertiates.
In the 1930s, *C. Ray Carpenter pioneered in efforts to study primates. First, he observed spider monkeys in South American and howler monkeys in Barro Colorado, Panama. Both are arboreal (live in trees) and difficult to observe.
Then he released a shipload of Indian rhesus monkeys on the tiny tropical island of Cayo Santiago, off the coast of Puerto Rico. Carpenter insisted that a full knowledge of the mannerisms and behavior of free-ranging primates was a necessary background for understanding human evolution.
Originally stocked with 409 monkeys, the colony has been studied by researchers for 60 years now. Thousands of those monkeys now inhabit the island. It is an evolutionist's paradise, but little has been learned that has proven useful to establishing monkeys as part of mankind's past. In fact, human behavior has became much the bigger problem at Cayo Santiago. Trouble began brewing in paradise.
"In later years, the research program was thrown into turmoil by a fight for control between medical researchers and behavioral scientists. There were charges of plagiarism, falsification of data, misuse of grants and disputes over power
and dominance among the island's human primates. So far, the monkeys have kept their observations of the scientists' behavior to themselves." —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), pp. 76-77.
In the spring of 1937, Carpenter journeyed through the jungles of northern Thailand (then called Siam), in order to conduct the first studies of gibbon apes. Carpenter watched how they ate, slept, socialized, walked, searched for food, fought, and called to one another.
But, with the passing of years, it was obvious that little had so far been learned that might provide evidence of human evolution from lower forms of life. The monkeys had not been much help. So it was felt that an urgent need existed to study the ways of the great apes. It was hoped that this might provide evidence, long sought for, of human evolution.
*Richard L. Garner had, in the 1890s, tried to carry on such studies by constructing a sturdy cage, having it carried into the jungles of Africa, and then getting inside and locking the door! There he would sit, armed with knife, handgun, and rifle, waiting for apes to pass by so he could watch them. Back in America, they had animal zoos, but now Africa was fortunate enough to have a people zoo. From time to time, animals would come to the zoo and peer in at the little man inside who would alternately look at the zoo visitors, and then furiously scribble notes on pieces of paper.
Other fully-armed men followed, and tracked baboons from Land Rovers and watched gorillas through binoculars.But, in the 1960s, everything changed. *Louis Leakey, busily digging up old ape bones in central Africa, especially wanted to see ape behaviors studied close at hand, and felt that women would make better observers than men.
*Jane Goodall, a young Englishwoman, was the first. Recruited during a visit to Kenya, she has since spent decades watching a group of wild chimpanzees near Lake Tanganyika. Unarmed, carrying with her a sack lunch, pencil and paper, she would sit down about 15 feet from the chimpanzees and watch them!
Next, Leakey decided he needed a "gorilla girl." *Dian Fossey, an occupational therapist from Kentucky, was vacationing in Africa. He told her that if she wanted the job, "it was mandatory I should have my appendix removed before venturing into the remote wilderness" of the Zaire volcanoes. Upon returning to the States, she immediately did so and reported back. Later, he told her that the appendectomy was requested simply to test her dedication to the work. She later wrote, "This was my first introduction to Dr. Leakey's unique sense of humor."
A few years later, *Birute Galdikas, was recruited, and she went to Indonesia for a prolonged study of the orangutan. For each of the three, Leakey arranged for financing for their work by wealthy Western non-profit foundations. Carrying no guns or other weapons, and using no protective cages, they would go out and sit by the apes all day long. These three became known as the "ape women."
The ape wrinkles its nose and then scratches its back. Goodall wrote it down! People do that at times! Then it picks a tick out of its fur, looks at it carefully, and then eats it. No so good; after they evolved people no longer eat ticks. More notes taken.
Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, a torrent of primate observers have taken to the field, and the poor monkeys and apes have had little peace since. But it has not accomplished the needed objective.
"From a small trickle in the 1950s, by the 1960s scores of scientists were watching monkeys and apes all over the world. Journals were founded, departments expanded and primate field studies became well established in universities. It seemed only a matter of time before the comparative method would answer many of the questions about the continuity of human behavior with that of monkeys and apes.
"Since the 1960s, popularized by European ethologists, British and Japanese zoologists and American anthropologists, field studies of monkeys and apes practically became an academic industry. Yet, three decades later, the thousands of papers on primate social behavior have thrown disappointingly little light on the origin and evolution of the human species—though they continually open up new and puzzling areas for further investigation of 'man's poor relations.' " —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 74.
One of the "ape women" went insane in the process. Dian Fossey, who successfully entered into the world of Zaire's wild mountain gorillas, gradually became withdrawn, irritable, and eventually vicious. In addition to studying the gorillas, she began defending them against poachers who wanted their skins and their babies. On one occasion, she even kidnapped a poacher's ten-year-old son and held him hostage for a time. Gradually she became more and more furious, not only toward poachers, but her own assistants as well. All of life became a living nightmare to her.
On December 28, 1985, Dian Fossey was killed 'by unknown assailants' at her forest camp.
'The presumption that Fossey was murdered by vengeful poachers was widely believed as the finale to her legend; the truth is more difficult to accept. In her final years at Karisoke, her personality had deteriorated; she had isolated herself from researchers and students, spending weeks locked in her cabin. She had become resentful, suspicious of others and downright cruel to her staff. Fossey was tormented, dying of emphysema and finally friendless.
"Those who were at Karisoke during her last years seem to agree that she was probably not killed by a village poacher, but by someone close to her, who had felt the full fury of her unjustifiable rages and merciless personal attacks. Though she remained on her mountain, she had descended into madness. She was buried in the gorilla cemetery in her camp, next to the remains of her beloved Digit [one of her favorite gorillas, who had earlier been slain by a poacher]."— *R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 171.
So that is the story of primate research, another dead-end in mankind's search for evidence that people are just animals. Perhaps for those that believe it fervently enough, it is so.
ANCIENT MAN
CHAPTER 18
STUDY
AND REVIEW QUESTIONS
1 - List several physical factors
about man that are distinctly different than apes.
2 - Explain why earlier peoples
who lived under primitive conditions or in caves were not necessarily partly
human.
3
- Give several reasons why Neanderthals were fully human.
4 - There are four odd facts
about these "hominid bones" which are suspicious. List them.
5 - Select one of the following
and write a brief paragraph on it: (1) Cro-Magnon Man; (2) Rhodesian Man;
(3) Taung African Man; (4) Nebraska Man.
6 - Select one of the following
and write several paragraphs about it: (1) Java Man; (2) Piltdown Man; (3)
Peking Man; (4) Australopithecines; (5) Lucy; (6) Nutcracker Man; (7) Skull
1470.
7 - Select one of the following
and explain its significance in several paragraphs: (1) Guadeloupe Woman;
(2) Calaveras Skull; (3) Moab Skeletons; (4) Leotoli tracks; (5) Glen Rose
tracks; (6) Pulaxy branch; (7) Antelope Springs tracks; (8) other giant
people; (9) Arizona tracks; (10) other human prints; (11) human remains in
coal; (12) manmade remains in coal; (13) man-made objects in rock; (14)
buried man-made objects; (15) manmade objects or markings on petrified wood
or bones; (16) the mind of man; (17) the languages of man; (18) ape
communications; (19) ancient cultures; (20) location and dates of earliest
domestic crops and animals; (21) British megalithic people.
8
- Briefly summarize 12 outstanding evidences indicating that evolutionary
theory in regard to the dating and origin of ancient man is incorrect.
You have just completed
APPENDIX 18-B
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CHAPTER 19- EFFECT OF THE FLOOD