Piltdown Man

PILTDOWN MAN

The remains of Piltdown Man were allegedly discovered in 1912 by Charles Dawson, an amateur fossilogist. He produced some bones, teeth, and primitive implements, which he said he found in a gravel pit at Piltdown, Sussex, England. He took them to Dr. Author Smith Woodword, an eminent paleontologist at the British Museum. The remains were acclaimed by anthropologists to be about 500,000 years old. A flood of doctoral disertations were performed on Piltdown Man. Surely, this find will stand the test of time and establish evolution as a fact of science; or will it?

All was well until October of 1956 when the entire hoax was exposed. Reader’s Digest came out with an article, summarized from Popular Science Monthly, entitled The Great Piltdown Hoax. Using a new method to date bones based upon fluoride absorption, the Piltdown bones were found to be fraudulent.

Further critical investigation
revealed that the jaw-bone actually belonged to an ape that had died only 50 years previously. The teeth were filed down, and both teeth and bones were discolored with bichromate of potash to conceal their true identity. And so, Piltdown Man was built upon a deception which completely fooled all the “experts” who promoted him with the utmost confidence. According to M. Bowden:

“…the person responsible for placing the faked fossils in the pit was Teilhard de Chardin S. J.”

Teilhard authored several philosophical books in which he attempted to harmonize evolution and Christianity. Exasperated by the lack of convincing evidence for Darwin’s theory, Teilhard was apparently motivated into assisting the theory of evolution by fabricating the needed missing link.

It should be noted that Piltdown Man was viewed in stately museums and studied in major textbooks for several generations. What will today’s “facts” of humen evolution turn out to be in the near future? And so, once again, the veracity of “experty testimony” is called into question. How fitting are the words of Scripture which declare:

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:22)

NEANDERTHAL MAN

Neanderthal Man was first discovered at about the turn of the century in a cave in the Neanderthal Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany. He was portrayed as a semi-erect, barrel-chested, brutish sort of fellow, an intermediary link between man and apes.

With the discovery of other neanderthal skeletons, it is now known, however, that Neanderthal Man was fully erect and fully human. In fact, his cranial capacity even exceeded that of modern man by more than 13%.

The old misconceptions about Neanderthal Man were due to two factors: first, the bias of pre-programmed evolutionary anthropologists who reconstructed him; and second, the fact that the particular individual on whom the initial evaluation was made was crippled with osteo-arthritis and rickets. Today Neanderthal Man is classified as Homo sapiens, completely human.

LUCY

Present-day speculation about human evolution revolves about a group of fossils called australopithecines and, in particular, a specimen called Lucy, a 40% complete skeleton. Lucy was discovered by D. C. Johanson in the Afar area of Ethopia during investigations conducted from 1972-1977.

In a National Geographic article (December 1976) Johanson claimed that: “The angle of the thigh bone and the flattened surface at its knee joint end…proved she walked on two legs.”

However, the knee joint end of the femur was severely crushed; therefore, Johanson’s conclusion is pure speculation. Anatomist Charles Oxnard, using a computer technique for analysis of skeletal relationships, has concluded that the australopithecines did not walk upright, at least not in the same manner as humans. In this connection, it should be mentioned that the chimpanzee spends a considerable amount of time walking upright.

Thus, there is no
scientific basis for a conclusiion of bipedalism in Lucy. Lucy and her relatives are probably just varieties of apes.

Finally, there is evidence that people walked upright before the time of Lucy. This would include the Kanapoi hominid and Castenedolo Man. Obviously if people walked upright before the time of Lucy, then she must be disqualified as an evolutionary ancestor.

From the book:
“The Collapse of Evolution”
by Scott M. Huse
Baker Book House
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49516