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EVOLUTION FORGERIES There is no concrete fossil evidence to support the "ape-man" image, which is unceasingly promulgated by the media and evolutionist academic circles. With brushes in their hands, evolutionists produce imaginary creatures, nevertheless, the fact that these drawings correspond to no matching fossils constitutes a serious problem for them. One of the interesting methods they employ to overcome this problem is to "produce" the fossils they cannot find. Piltdown Man, which may be the biggest scandal in the history of science, is a typical example of this method.
In 1949, Kenneth Oakley from the British Museum's Paleontology Department, attempted to use "fluorine testing", a new test used for determining the date of fossils. A trial was made on the fossil of the Piltdown man. The result was astonishing. During the test, it was realised that the jawbone of Piltdown Man did not contain any fluorine. This indicated that it had remained buried no more than a few years. The skull, which contained only a small amount of fluorine, showed that it was not older than a few thousand years old. It was determined that the teeth in the jawbone belonging to an orangutan, had been worn down artificially and that the "primitive" tools discovered with the fossils were simple imitations that had been sharpened with steel implements.65 In the detailed analysis completed by Joseph Weiner, this forgery was revealed to the public in 1953. The skull belonged to a 500-year-old man, and the jaw bone belonged to a recently deceased ape! The teeth had been specially arranged in a particular way and added to the jaw, and the molar surfaces were filed in order to resemble those of a man. Then all these pieces were stained with potassium dichromate to give them an old appearance. These stains began to disappear when dipped in acid. Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clark, who was in the team that uncovered the forgery, could not hide his astonishment at this situation and said: "The evidences of artificial abrasion immediately sprang to the eye. Indeed so obvious did they seem it may well be asked-how was it that they had escaped notice before?"66 In the wake of all this, "Piltdown man" was hurriedly removed from the British Museum where it had been displayed for more than 40 years.
In 1922, Henry Fairfield Osborn, the director of the American Museum of Natural History, declared that he had found a fossil molar tooth belonging to the Pliocene period in western Nebraska near Snake Brook. This tooth allegedly bore common characteristics of both man and ape. An extensive scientific debate began surrounding this fossil, which came to be called "Nebraska man", in which some interpreted this tooth as belonging to Pithecanthropus erectus, while others claimed it was closer to human beings. Nebraska man was also immediately given a "scientific name", Hesperopithecus haroldcooki.
Many authorities gave Osborn their support. Based on this single tooth, reconstructions of the Nebraska man's head and body were drawn. Moreover, Nebraska man was even pictured along with his wife and children, as a whole family in a natural setting. All of these scenarios were developed from just one tooth. Evolutionist circles placed such faith in this "ghost man" that when a researcher named William Bryan opposed these biased conclusions relying on a single tooth, he was harshly criticised. In 1927, other parts of the skeleton were also found. According to these newly discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor to an ape. It was realised that it belonged to an extinct species of wild American pig called Prosthennops. William Gregory entitled the article published in Science in which he announced the truth, "Hesperopithecus: Apparently Not an ape Nor a man. 67 Then all the drawings of Hesperopithecus haroldcooki and his "family" were hurriedly removed from evolutionary literature.
After Darwin advanced the claim with his book The Descent of Man that man evolved from ape-like living beings, he started to seek fossils to support this contention. However, some evolutionists believed that "half-man half-ape" creatures were to be found not only in the fossil record, but also alive in various parts of the world. In the early 20th century, these pursuits for "living transitional links" led to unfortunate incidents, one of the cruellest of which is the story of a Pygmy by the name of Ota Benga.
Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Ota Benga... These scandals demonstrate that evolutionist scientists do not hesitate to employ any kind of unscientific method to prove their theory. Bearing this point in mind, when we look at the other so-called evidence of the "human evolution" myth, we confront a similar situation. Here there are a fictional story and an army of volunteers ready to try everything to verify this story.
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Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans,
1980, p. 59. |
