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APPENDIX
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The Evolution
Hoax
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…Fifteen to twenty years ago, paleontologists
were fairly certain that Homo erectus - the supposedly immediate
human predecessor of Homo sapiens - first appeared in Africa
around 1.5 million years ago. So it was said, Europe itself
remained unoccupied until about 500,000 years ago, while Homo
sapiens sapiens was deemed to have first appeared there only
about 35,000 years ago. A mere fifteen years later, the thinking
is almost unrecognizably different, for Homo sapiens sapiens is
now believed to have appeared at least 120,000 years ago, while
southern England and Spain are known to have been occupied by
human beings 1.5 to 1.8 million years ago…In addition to this,
it is now admitted that the human brain has remained roughly the
same size for at least 1.7 million years
- John Gordon (Egypt:
Child of Atlantis)
Nebraska Man
How many skeletons do you think were found of
Nebraska Man? 100? 50? 25? 10? How about one complete skeleton? How
about half a skeleton? Maybe 1/10 of a skeleton? Hold on, Nebraska
man was reconstructed from a single tooth! What is even more
amazing--the tooth turned out to be a pig's tooth! How could anyone
be so gullible as to believe a man could be reconstructed from a
tooth? Yet many people placed their faith in Nebraska man until the
hoax was exposed.
Java Man
How many skeletons
do you think were found of Java Man? 100? 50? 25? 10? How about one
complete skeleton? How about half a skeleton? Java Man was
reconstructed from a skullcap, thighbone, and 2 molar teeth. Dr.
Eugene DuBois found the thighbone 50 feet away from the skullcap,
but assumed it was the same individual. After discovering human
skulls at the same level near his Java Man discovery, he hid the
skulls under the floorboards of his bedroom for 26 years. Before his
death DuBois confessed that he had not found the missing link and
admitted that Java Man was probably a giant gibbon.
Piltdown Man
In 1912 Charles Dawson reconstructed Piltdown Man out
of a jaw, 2 molar teeth, and a piece of skull. In 1953 the hoax was
exposed. The jawbone turned out to be that of a modern orangutan,
the teeth had been filed down and the bones artificially colored to
deceive the public. For over 40 years evolutionists promoted his
findings as fact. The British Museum has documented other
discoveries by Dawson as being fakes. Imagine if you lived during
that time, placing your faith in evolution based upon Dawson's
findings. Wouldn't you be a little upset when you discovered the
truth?
Orce Man
Found in the
southern Spanish town of Orce in 1982, and hailed as the oldest
fossilized human remains ever found in Europe. One year later
officials admitted the skull fragment was not human, but probably
came from a 4-month old donkey. Scientists had said the skull
belonged to a 17 year old man who lived 900,000 to 1.6 million years
ago, and even had very detail drawings done to represent what he
would have looked like. ("Skull fragment may not be human",
Knoxville News-Sentinel, 1983)
Boule's Neanderthal Man
Reconstructed in 1915. Marcellin Boule wrongly
arranged the foot bones so that the big toe diverged from the other
toes to look like an opposing thumb. The knee joint was misplaced to
give a bent-knee look. The spine was misshapen so it couldn't stand
upright and the head was placed in an unbalanced position too far
forward. Boule's model
of Neanderthal man was placed on display in the Field Museum of
Natural History in Chicago for 44 years before the mistakes were
discovered! After the mistakes were disclosed, they kept it on
display for another 20 years until they created a new Neanderthal
model. What did they do with the old inaccurate model? Instead of
throwing it in the garbage can where it belonged, they moved it to
the second floor of the museum and displayed a new sign, "An
Alternate View of Neanderthal." But it wasn't an alternate view. It
was a wrong view.
Another "Story" of Man's Origins Goes Down the Toilet
Bowl
Two hominid fossils
discovered in Kenya are challenging a long-held view of
human evolution.
The broken upper
jaw-bone and intact skull from humanlike creatures, or
hominids, are described in Nature. Previously, the
hominid Homo habilis was thought to have evolved
into the more advanced Homo erectus , which
evolved into us. Now, habilis and erectus
are thought to be sister species that overlapped in
time.
The new fossil
evidence reveals an overlap of about 500,000 years
during which Homo habilis and Homo erectus
must have co-existed in the Turkana basin area,
the region of East Africa where the fossils were
unearthed.
"Their
co-existence makes it unlikely that Homo erectus
evolved from Homo habilis,"
said co-author
Professor Meave Leakey, palaeontologist and
co-director of the Koobi Fora Research Project. The
jaw bone was attributed to Homo habilis
because of its distinctive primitive dental
characteristics, and was dated to around 1.44
million years ago. It is the youngest specimen of
this species ever found. The skull was assigned to
the species Homo erectus despite being a
similar size to that of a habilis skull. Most
other erectus skulls found have been
considerably larger. But it displayed typical
features of erectus such as a gentle ridge
called a "keel" running over the top of the jaw
joint. Analysis showed the skull to be about 1.55
million years old. The new dates indicate that the
two species must have lived side by side.
Sister species
If Homo erectus had evolved from
habilis and stayed within the same location then
both must have been in direct competition for the
same resources. Eventually, one would have
out-competed the other.
"The fact that
they stayed separate as individual species for a
long time suggests that they had their own
distinct ecological niches, thus avoiding direct
competition,"
Professor Leakey
explained. Professor Chris Stringer, head of human
origins at London's Natural History Museum, said:
"Both were
apparently stone tool-makers, but one
possibility is that the larger and perhaps more
mobile erectus species was an active
hunter, while habilis scavenged or caught
small prey."
It is most likely
that both species evolved from a common ancestor.
Other
possibilities
But the linear, ancestor-descendent relationship
between the two species cannot be ruled out
altogether. Fred Spoor, professor of developmental
biology at University College London, and co-author
of the paper, told the BBC News website:
"It's always
possible that Homo habilis lived, let's
say, 2.5 million years ago and then in another
part of Africa, away from the Turkana basin, an
isolated population evolved into Homo erectus
."
After a sufficient
amount of time to allow both species to develop
different adaptations and lifestyles, Homo
erectus could have then found its way to the
Turkana basin. With separate "ecological niches",
both species could co-exist without direct
competition for resources. "But that is a much more
complex proposition," Professor Spoor explained,
"the easiest
way to interpret these fossils is that there was
an ancestral species that gave rise to both of
them somewhere between two and three million
years ago."
Not so similar
The fossil record indicates that modern humans (
Homo sapiens ) evolved from Homo erectus
. However, to some researchers, the small size
of the erectus skull suggests that species
may not have been as similar to us as we once
thought. On average, modern humans display a low
level of "sexual dimorphism", meaning that males and
females do not differ physically as much as they do
in other animals. The scientists compared the small
skull to a much larger erectus cranium found
previously in Tanzania. If the size difference
between the two is indicative of the larger one
being from a male and the smaller being from a
female, it suggests that erectus displayed a
high level of sexual dimorphism - similar to that of
modern gorillas. Sexual dimorphism can relate to
reproductive strategies and sexual selection. If
erectus was very sexually dimorphic it may have
had multiple mates at a time. This differs from the
more monogamous nature of modern humans, indicating
that Homo erectus was not as human-like as
once thought. The researchers dismiss the idea that
the small size of the skull could be a result of it
belonging to a youngster. "By studying how the skull
bones are fused together we discovered it belonged
to a fully grown young adult rather than a
developing juvenile erectus," said Professor Spoor.
Story from BBC
NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6937476.stm
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