1. The Pithecanthropus, which is a high sounding name for an ape-man (from Grk. pithekos, ape, and anthropos, man) was found by Dr. Dubois, an ardent evolutionist, in 1892, in Trinil in the island of Java. It lived, it is said, 750,000 years ago. He found, buried in the Pleistocene beds, 40 feet below the surface in the sand, the upper portion of a skull, a tooth and a thigh bone. “It was fortunate,” says Dr. Chapin, “that the most distinctive portions of the human (sic) frame should have been preserved, because from these specimens, we are able to reconstruct (?) the being, and to say with assurance (!) that his walk was erect in manlike posture, that he had mental power considerably above the ape, (it will not do to be too definite) and his powers of speech were somewhat limited. (A string of guesses wholly unwarranted.) This man stood half way between the anthropoid and the existing men.”—Social Evolution, p. 61.
A high authority declares,—“Shortly after this discovery, 24 of the most eminent scientists of Europe met. Ten said that the bones belonged to an ape; 7, to a man; and 7 (less than one-third) said they were a missing link.” Some of the most eminent scientists say that some of the bones belong to a man, and some to an ape, baboon, or monkey. The great Prof. Virchow says: “There is no evidence at all that these bones were parts of the same creature.” But such adverse opinions do not weigh much with modern evolutionists determined to win at all hazards.
The small section of the brain pan, weighing but a few ounces, was found about 50 feet from the thigh bone. One tooth was found 3 feet from the fragment of skull, and one near the thigh bone, 50 feet away. Since the small section of the brain pan belonged to a chimpanzee, and the thigh bone is that of a man, is it likely that these scattered bones belonged to the same creature? Even if they did, is it likely that these bones would be preserved in the sand 750,000 years, or even 375,000 years according to a later estimate? We know that petrified skeletons, encased in rock, may be millions of years old, but where are the unpetrified skeletons of men who lived even 5,000 years ago? If unpetrified skeletons could last 750,000 years, there would be millions of them. Without a doubt, this skull of a chimpanzee, and femur of a man, belong to a modern beast and a modern man, buried by floods or earthquakes, or some other convulsion of nature, or by slow accumulations. It is said that the Jerusalem of Christ’s day is buried 20 feet under the surface, by the quiet accretions of the dust of 1900 years. Rome also has been covered up in recent centuries. It would be easy for 40 feet of sand to accumulate over the bones of a modern man or chimpanzee in a valley, in a few centuries, if 20 feet of dust accumulated on the mountain city of Jerusalem in 1900 years.
Elsewhere we have shown that an ape-man with a cranium of two-thirds normal capacity must have lived at least 20,000,000 years ago,—one third the period of animal existence; or even 166,666,666 years ago, if we accept a later claim that life has existed 500,000,000 years. It is absolutely impossible that a normal creature of the alleged mental capacity could have lived 750,000 years ago, much less 375,000, according to a later estimate cutting in two the first one. But the quickest way to disprove these wild guesses is to check them up by a mathematical test. If these bones are normal, such an ape-man could not have lived at the time assigned. If they are not normal, they prove nothing whatever for evolution. They can be duplicated now.
We are asked to believe that these scattered bones,—some the bones of a modern brute, some the bones of a modern man—were preserved in the sand 750,000 years and belonged to an ancestor of the human race, while of the millions of his generation and of the generations following for many thousands of years, we have not a trace! We are asked upon such a flimsy pretext to accept a theory, unsupported by a single compelling argument, and irreconcilable with numerous facts,—a theory which takes away man’s hope of immortality, destroys faith in God and his inspired word, and in the Christian religion itself. There is a limit. How much more truthful and majestic is Gen. 1:27: “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.”
One distinguished evolutionist has said, “We might as well be made out of monkey as out of mud. It is mud or monkey.” Most of us would retort, “I would rather be created a human being out of the filthiest mud by Almighty God than owe my existence to the brainiest monkey that ever lived.” Please note, “The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,” not mud. The evolutionists are as wild in their exegesis as in their guesses.
2. The Heidelberg Jaw. The second relic, in the order of time, relied upon by the evolutionists to prove the brute origin of man, is a “human jaw of great antiquity, discovered in the sands of the Mauer River, near Heidelberg.” Hence, it is called the Mauer jaw, or the Heidelberg Jaw, or Heidelberg man, or the high sounding Latin name of Homo Heidelbergensis. It needs all the names that can be given to it, to elevate it to the dignity of an ancestor. “This jaw was found in undisturbed stratified sand, (sand again) at the depth of about 69 feet from the summit of the deposit.” Dr. Schoetensack, the discoverer, says, “Had the teeth been absent, it would have been impossible to diagnose it as human.”
They say it is 700,000 years old, preserved in sand. A later estimate says 375,000 years. (Any wild guess will do.) It resembles the jaw of an ape, and the tooth of a man. Was it not likely the abnormal jaw of a modern man, in historic time swept into the sands by the freshets and floods of a few centuries? It is only fair to say that many scientists of the evolutionary school, do not believe the Heidelberg man an ancestor of our race. “These remains,” says one, “show no trace of being intermediate between man and the anthropoid ape.” Some claim it a connecting link. Others deny it. Some say the find is of the utmost value; others say it is worthless. All are guesses, wild guesses at that. They hopefully reach out their hands in the night, and gather nothing but handfuls of darkness.
Since a modern Eskimo skull has been shown by a distinguished scientist to have the same appearance and peculiarities as the Heidelberg jaw, it is easy to believe that this jaw can be duplicated in many graveyards. Greater abnormalities, in great numbers, can be found in the skeletons of modern man. Without doubt, this jaw belongs to modern man, and has no evidential value at all in favor of evolution.
We count these relics normal, in our arguments, because evolutionists do. If they are not normal, they are the remains of modern man and brutes and their whole argument falls to the ground.
3. The Piltdown Man (or Fake). The next fragments of bones, in chronological order, upon which evolutionists rely to prove their impossible theory, has been called the Piltdown man. It has been more truthfully called the Piltdown fake. Dr. Chapin gravely tells us (Social Evolution, p. 67): “During the years 1912, a series of fragments of a human skull and a jaw bone were found associated with eolithic implements and the bones of extinct mammals in Pleistocene deposits on a plateau, 80 feet above the river bed, at Piltdown, Fletching, Sussex, Eng.....The remains were of great importance. The discoverers regard this relic as a specimen of a distinct genus of the human species and it has been called Eoanthropus Dawsoni. This extinct man lived in Europe hundreds of thousands of years ago.” We have passed over 200,000 to 300,000 years since the Heidelberg man, that have not yielded a scrap of bone, though according to the theory, countless millions of ape-men must have lived in various stages of development, in that great stretch of time. Why were not some of them preserved? Simply because there were no ape-men. There are countless relics of apes, but none of ape-men. Even Wells says: “At a great open-air camp at Solutre, where they seem to have had annual gatherings for many centuries, it is estimated there are the bones of 100,000 horses.” Would we not expect as many bones of ape-men? While Wells says the bones of 100,000 horses were found in a single locality, Dr. Ales Hrdlicka says that the bones of 200,000 prehistoric horses were found in another place. Why should we not find, for the same reason, the bones of millions of ape-men and ape-women in 750,000 years? Instead of millions we have the alleged fragments of 4, all of which are of a very doubtful character.
The bones of this precious Piltdown find consisted, at first, of a piece of the jaw bone, another small piece of bone from the skull, and a canine tooth, which the zealous evolutionists located in the lower right jaw, when it belonged in the upper left; later, two molar teeth and two nasal bones,—scarcely a double hand full in all. An ape-man was “reconstructed” made to look like an ape-man, according to the fancy of the artist. The artist can create an ape-man, even if God could not create a real man! But scientists said the teeth did not belong to the same skull, and the jaw could not be associated with the same skull. Ales Hrdlicka says, “The jaw and the tooth belong to a fossil chimpanzee.” Conscientious scientists said that the pieces of the jaw and skull could not belong to the same individual. They constructed a scarecrow from the bones of an ape and of a man, and offer this, without the batting of an eye, as a scientific proof of the antiquity of man. The great anthropologist of world-wide reputation, Prof. Virchow, said: “In vain have Darwin’s adherents sought for connecting links which should connect man with the monkey. Not a single one has been found. This so-called pro-anthropus, which is supposed to represent this connecting link, has not appeared. No true scientist claims to have seen him.” Sir Ray Lancaster, writing to H. G. Wells, concerning the Piltdown find, says, “We are stumped and baffled.” Yet in spite of all this, nearly 1,000,000 persons annually pass through the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and view the “reconstruction” according to the artist’s fancy, of the pithecanthropus, the Heidelberg man, the Piltdown man, and the Neanderthal man, the “ancestors of the human race;” and the multitude of high school students and teachers, as well as the general public, are not told how dubious and unscientific the representation is.
The brain capacity of the Piltdown individual (man or ape) is set down by his discoverers at 1070 c.c., which is 28 2/3% short of the normal skull capacity, 1500 c.c. Therefore, he must have lived 17,200,000 years ago, if we accept the estimate of 60,000,000 years since life began; or 143,333,333 years ago, if we accept the later guess of 500,000,000 years. It could not have lived near the time assigned. In short, no guess of the origin of man that differs materially from the time assigned in the word of God, can be harmonized with the facts.
4. The Neanderthal Man. The next slender prop is the Neanderthal man, claimed to be 40,000 to 50,000 years old, although we are told that that is very uncertain.
Dr. Chapin says, “The first important discovery of the existence of an early example of mankind differing markedly from any living (?) and of a decidedly lower type, was made in 1857, when a part of a skull was found in a cave near Dusseldorf, Germany. The bones consisted of the upper portion of a cranium, remarkable for its flat retreating curve, the upper arm and thigh bones, a collar bone, and rib fragments.” From these fragments, an ape-man has been created (by the artist), about 5 ft. 3 in. high, strong, fierce in look, and having other characteristics created by the artist.
Dr. Osborn assigns to the Neanderthal skull a capacity of 1408 c.c., which would indicate that he lived 3,680,000 years ago, if life began 60,000,000 years ago; or 30,666,666 years ago, if life began 500,000,000 years ago.
From the first, many naturalists claimed that these bones belonged to an abnormal specimen of humanity. They can be easily duplicated. Naturalists have maintained many divergent opinions: an idiot, an early German, a Cossack, a European of various other nationalities, a Mongolian, a primitive ape-man, an ancestor of modern man, and an impossible ancestor of man. Not very reliable evidence to support the stupendous scheme of evolution!
Now these four finds are the weak props supporting the desperate claim of the brute origin of man. Dr. Chapin says (Social Evolution, p. 68): “Other skulls and bone parts of prehistoric man have been found, and preserved in museums, but the specimens described (the four above mentioned) are sufficient to illustrate the type of evidence they constitute.” The later finds measuring close to normal capacity, doubtless are the bones of the descendants of Adam. Even by the admission of this text-book author, the evidence from other remains is no more convincing than that from these four types. Some evolutionists say that the pithecanthropus, the Heidelberg man, the Piltdown man, and the Neanderthal man, form an unbroken line of descent from the ape, each in turn becoming less like the ape, and more like man. Others claim that the pithecanthropus was the end of a special branch of the apes; the Heidelberg man the last of another extinct branch; the Piltdown man and the Neanderthal man, likewise the last of other extinct species. In this case, all four finds have no evidential value whatever. All these confusing guesses from evidence so scant and uncertain, stamp evolution a “science falsely so called.”
If these branches, species, or races of ape-like creatures ended, as claimed, in the age to which these alleged remains belonged, they could not have been the ancestors of the human race, and these alleged links were not links at all. Some evolutionists say that the Neanderthal race became extinct 25,000 years ago. If so, they were not our ancestors. We are curious to know what caused the extinction of all these races. Prof. R. S. Lull confesses, “However we account for it, the fact remains that ancient men are rare.” Most unbiased students would say such men never existed. The entire absence of human remains during the 750,000 years and more is a demonstration against the brute origin of man, and a proof of special creation.
It will be remembered that there is no complete skeleton among all the remains, nor enough parts to make one altogether, nor to make any large part of a skeleton,—not even an entire skull. What bones are found are not joined together, and some of them scattered so widely apart, that no one can be certain they belong to the same individual. Some of the bones belong to an ape, and some to man,—doubtless modern man. Ardent evolutionists, with a zeal worthy of a better cause, have taken a fractional bone of a man, and a bone of an ape, and fashioned a composite being, and called it an ape-man, and their ancestor.
Every one of these finds is disputed by scientists, and even by evolutionists. And all these doubtful relics would not fill a small market basket. Yet some are ready to say that evolution is no longer a guess or a theory, but a proven fact. Text books like Chapin’s Social Evolution are placed in the hands of pupils giving only the arguments in favor, and the student, even if disposed to question this flimsy and unsupported theory, is helpless in the hands of an adroit professor. Dr. Gruenberg’s high school text book teaches that man is descended from the pithecanthropus, the Heidelberg, the Piltdown and the Neanderthal man, without the slightest intimation that such descent is at all disputed or questioned. What right has anyone to teach this false and unproved theory as the truth?
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg