Fossil Man

What was Adam really like?

From Willmington's Guide to the Bible, page 21-22

Adam was the highlight of God's creation. It has been estimated that the most brilliant genius uses but one tenth of 1 percent of his total potential brain ability. This means Adam was at least one thousand times superior to today's intellectuals. We are probably 956 percent blind to the total color scheme displayed by nature and 98 percent deaf to her many sound patterns. But Adam's five senses were tuned to absolute perfection. He may even have possessed E.S.P. He perfectly understood both himself and his environment. He apparently was able to communicate with animals (Gen. 3:1-2) and perhaps all nature also!

The following article appeared in the April 1977 issue of Readers Digest:

"Six Million Dollar Original" tired of hearing that the human body is worth only about three dollars? And of the humbling and humiliating realization that a chicken or a salmon sells for more than you are worth? There's news to heal out bruised egos. Yale University biophysicist Harold J. Morowitz says that the human body is actually worth $6 million. And that price covers only the raw materials -- hormones, proteins, enzymes, etc. The intricate work of fashioning the material into human cells might cost six thousand trillion dollars. And assembling these cells into a functioning human being would drain all the world's treasures. "Each human being is priceless" is the professor's understatement (p. 144)

Adam was absolutely unique. Over the years a pile of shattered skulls and moldy bones have been dug up and presented by the evolutionist to "prove" the existence of ancient subhuman creatures who finally evolved into man. Again, one must either choose between Moses or Darwin on this subject. Some of the more "important" of these lost links in man's chronological chain are:

Neanderthal man -- Found in Neander Valley, near Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1856 by Johann C. Fuhlrott. The find consisted of a skull and several bones. He was first portrayed as a semi-erect brutish subhuman. It is now believed these "creatures" were real people who suffered severely from rickets, caused by a deficiency of vitamin D. this condition results in the softening of bones and consequent malformation.

"It is now known that Neanderthal man was fully erect and in most details was indistinguishable from modern man, his cranial capacity even exceeding that of modern man. It is said that if he were dressed in a business suit, and were to walk down one of out city streets, he would be given no more attention than any other individual. Today he is classified Homo Sapiens -- full human" (Evolution? The Fossils Say No, Duane T. Gish, p. 103)

Java man (Pithecanthropus eretus, "erect ape man") --- Found in Trinil, Java, in 1891, by Eugene Dubois, a Dutch physician. The "find" consisted of a single skull cap. One year later a thigh bone, along with two molar teeth, was discovered fifty feet from where the skull cap had been. Dubois estimated they all belonged together, and dated back one-half million years! He did not reveal, however, until thirty-one years later, that he had also found two obviously human skulls at the same time and in the same level. Most evolutionist of the day were convinced of the validity of this 500 thousand year old creature. But prior to his death, Dubois sadly concluded his Java man was actually the remains of a large gibbon.

Piltdown man (Eanthropus dawsoni, "Dawn Man") --- Found in Piltdown, England, in 1912, by Charles Dawson. The find was a skull part and a few teeth. Soon the consensus of the world's greatest authorities was that here indeed was a genuine link in the evolution of man. It was dated to be from 500 to 750 thousand years old! The praises of the Piltdown man were sung by Dr. Authur Smith Woodward, eminent paleontologist at the British museum, and Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History. However, in 1950 the Piltdown bones were carefully examined by fluoride test and discovered to be a colossal hoax. The "skull" had been stained with iron salts and the teeth filed down to give it the appearance of age. Thus, the world-famed Piltdown man was simply the doctored remains of a recent age.

Peking man --- Found near Peking, China, in 1912 (and 1937) by Davidson Bolack. Find consisted of the fragments of thirty skulls and 147 teeth. This find disappeared in 1941 when it was moved from Peking by a U.S. Marine detachment to escape the oncoming Japanese invasion. It is now believed by some that this find was simply the remains of some large monkeys or baboons killed and eaten by workers in an ancient line burning quarry!

Nebraska man ("Western ape man") --- Found in western Nebraska in 1922 by Harold Cook. The find was exactly one tooth! It was immediately declared by Dr. H. F. Osborn of the American Museum to be the vaunted missing link, He placed it at the very bottom of the tree of man's ancestry. Dr. William K. Gregory, curator of the American Museum of Natural History and professor of Paleontology at Columbia University, called it "the million dollar tooth." Sir Grafton Elliott Smith of the London Illustrated News assigned an imaginative artist to draw the ape man that once carried the tooth around in his mouth some six thousand centuries ago. During the famous Scopes evolutionary trial in Dayton, Tennessee, William Jennings Bryan (Bible defender) was confronted and ridiculed for his ignorance concerning this tooth and other "facts" of evolution by a delegat8ion of authorities, led by Professor H.H. Newman of the University of Chicago. In 1927, to the supreme embarrassment of many, the tooth was discovered to be that of an extinct pig.

East Africa ape (zinjanthropus) --- Found in 1959 in Olduvia, Tanzzania, by Louis S. B. Leakey. Find consisted of a skull cap and a few bone fragments. This "discovery" was sensationalized through the National Geographic Magazine, which society had sponsored Leakey. His find was dated from two to four million years in age, thus making East Africa man by far the oldest "link" known at the time. However, prior to his death, Leakey indicated he felt his vaunted discovery was but a variety of Australopithecus (Southern Ape) found in 1924.

One of the most respected scholars of the twentieth century is Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, co-editor of the monumental fifty-four-volume set, Great Books of the Western World. In one of his many books, Great Ideas from the Great Books, Adler answers a question asked him concerning the difference between men and animals.

"Dear Dr. Adler, Is there any basic difference between man and animals, or is man an animal like all the others? Some people say that man is the only creature that can think and learn. But I don't regard this as a real distinction, since biologists had psychologists have demonstrated that animals can construct things and solve problems. I have known some very intelligent dogs and some very thoughtless human beings. What is the essential difference between man and the animals? A. M. P. Dear A. M. P. Until comparatively recent times, few philosophers doubted that man was essentially different from all other animals. In the great tradition of Western thought, from Plato right down to the nineteenth century, it was almost universally held that man and man alone is a rational animal. This philosophical view of man's distinctive nature accords with the Biblical view that man and man alone is created in the image of God -- a person, not a thing. Since the time of Darwin, the opposite view has come to prevail, not only among scientists but among the educated classes generally. The Darwinian theory of man's origin, as you know, is that man and that anthropoid apes have descended from a common ancestral form; and along with this view of man's evolutionary origin goes the view that man and the higher mammals differ only in degree. Thus, for example, instead of regarding man alone as rational, the evolutionists find the same kind of intelligence in man and other animals. Man simply has more of it. You say in your letter that you think the traditional arguments for man's distinctive nature are weak, because animals as well as men can make things, etc. let me answer your question be defending the traditional point of view about man as a very special creature. The strongest evidence that men have certain powers which no other animals possess in any degree whatsoever consist in the thing which men can do but which other animals cannot do at all. One such indication is man's power of making things. I know that bees make hives, birds make nests, and beavers make dams. But such productions are entirely instinctive on their part. A given species of bird makes its nests in the same way generation after generation. This shows that the nest is a product of instinct not of art, which involves reason and free will. In making houses, bridges, or any other of their artifacts, men invent and select. They are truly artist, as animals are not. In addition, only men build machines which are themselves productive. Other animals may use rough tools, but no other animal makes a die press which stamps out an indefinite number of a product when the raw materials are fed into it. This is another indication of man's special power as a maker of things. You say that other animals can reason. In my opinion it is more correct to say that other animals can solve problems when they are confronted by the biological urgency of finding a way of getting what they need. All so-called 'thinking' by animals is on this level. But no animal ever sits down to think, the way a philosopher or a mathematician does when he has no biologically urgent need to do so. The fact that human thinking is discursive and involves language in another indication that is quite different from animal problem-solving. Animals, of course, do make sounds and communicate their emotions or impulses to one another. But no animal communicates thought; no animal ever utters a sentence which asserts something to be true or false. Only a rational animal can do that. I could go on and give you many other items of evidence that man has certain powers which no other animal possesses in the least degree. But I shall content myself with one more fact. Man is the only animal with an historical development. Other animals may change in their biological constitution over the course of hundreds of thousands of generations; but such changes result entirely from changes in the germ plasma, which is the only thing that is transmitted from one generation to another. Men transmit ideas and institutions, a whole tradition of culture, from one generation to another, and it is this which accounts for the history of the human race. In my opinion the empirical evidence is over-whelmingly in favor of the view that men are essentially different in kind from the brutes. Like the brutes, they, too, are animals. But unlike them, men are rational. This, of course, if true, would require us to reject Darwin's theory of man's evolutionary origin. But theories after all must be made to fit the facts, not facts theories. (Great Ideas form the Great Books, pp. 173-275)

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And from other sources:

--- All so-called missing links have been proven to be nothing more than someone's vivid imagination or deliberate hoax. There never was any men who never had souls.


--- "From a few fragments of bone, a generous supply of plaster of paris and a vivid imagination, whole races of men are fabricated and colorful myths are constructed concerning their {supposed} primitive beastlike mode of life". This was reprinted in "The Ultimate Disaster" as a quote from the book "The flood and the fossils" p 8, by George Mulfinger.

(Fossil Man, From the book "The Ultimate Disaster" p 228-229)

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With all the advantages of out age -- science, medicine, jet and space achievements -- one would think the farther back the archaeologist went toe more primitive he would find man to be. This, however, is not the case. Findings at excavations have proved a suddenness with which civilization appeared in the world. Pre-historic civilization shows man building houses, palaces, temples and cities. Archaeologists have ex[pressed surprise and astonishment at the high rate of culture in the very earliest stages of the Egyptians. It is possible today to reconstruct in remarkable detail the ritual worship of early man, all about life in the courts of ancient monarchs and their kingdoms, what the average "Joe" did for a living, and what schoolboys at Ur of the Chaldees were taught before the days of Abraham.

Everything found by the archaeologist in ancient tombs or buried cities means something. Events and names which are recorded on clay tablets or inscribed on stone are not just names and places. They total up the daily events in the lives of human beings who lived centuries ago. Those who left these records were just plain, ordinary, common folks. These people lived. They had hopes and ambitions which caused them to forge ahead. They were red-blooded men and women who laughed and cried, who enjoyed pleasures and endured pain and sorrow, who hungered and thirsted, loved and hated, worked and played. Their life was as important to them as ours is to us.

How surprising this must be to the proponents of the theory of evolution! True, many crude objects have been discovered which are "primitive" to our way of thinking; but the archaeologist is not finding evidence supporting the theory that the more ancient the period and people, the less "advanced" they were. As the archaeologist has worked back he has not found traces of civilization ceasing altogether and "ape man" appearing, nor has he found skeletons or skeletal pattern which reveal changes from one stage ot another. Each one has been within the range of the physical variation of the modern human race. Man is man, and archaeology is demonstrating that no matter how far back we go, man is civilized.

(p 17, [i] A pictorial guide to Archaeology,[/i] by Robert T. Boyd).