Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

[Soldier4Christ]

EAR COILS ENHANCE BASS, according to reports in news@nature, 13 Mar 2006 and
New Scientist 18 Mar 2006, p20.  The cochlea, or inner ear, is the part of the
ear that converts sound to electrical signals to be sent to the brain.  It
consists of a fluid filled tube that is coiled like a snail shell.  Biologists
have assumed that it had this shape simply to save space, but a new study of how
sound is transmitted through the cochlea shows that the curved shape makes sound
energy build up towards to the outer wall of the spiral the further into the
curve it goes.  This effectively amplifies the sound by 20 decibels at the end
of the spiral, where the lowest frequencies are detected.  The effect is like
that of "whispering galleries" where sounds are concentrated around the walls of
cylindrical spaces, such as in St Paul's cathedral.  Philip Ball of news@nature
writes; "If the researchers are right, then the ear is more sophisticated than
we thought."  Karl Grosh, an ear researcher at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
commented:  "It would show we need to take a step back from the cell biology and
see how the cochlea works as an integrated system."  Scientists hope this study
will help in the design of better cochlear implants ("bionic ears") for deaf
people.

ED. COM.  Finding out that ear is more sophisticated than we thought is a
challenge to those who believe that it came about by chance random processes.
Integrated systems only work because someone outside the system has a purpose
for the system and can put together the component parts in the best way to
achieve that purpose. If scientists do copy the sound enhancing property of the
cochlea and put it to use in ear implants they will have only added to the
evidence that the ear is the product of plan and purpose, not chance random
processes.

[Soldier4Christ]

FLYING CONTROL FOR BEES described in an article on PhysOrg.com 4 April 2006.
Researchers at University of California, Berkeley have been studying how orchid
bees fly, and they noticed that the bees leave their legs projecting out from
their bodies rather than tucking them in.  A team led by Stacey Combes were able
to get bees to fly in a wind tunnel so they could simulate different speeds of
flight.  They found that to achieve maximum speed the bees pitched forward and
extended their hind legs so that the legs produced lift forces on either side
that helped prevent them from rolling.  Coombes explained: "The hind legs
resemble airplane wings, which probably explains why they also generate lift."
The research could be used to help design miniature flying machines to be used
in search and rescue missions.

ED. COM.  If aeronautical engineers do manage to design a miniature flying
machine that works the same way as the bee, no-one will think that it came about
by chance random processes.  Therefore, it is foolish to claim that the bee came
about by chance random processes.  All our observations of turning non-flying
objects into devices that can fly show that it takes creative design and
engineering to make anything fly-SO-give God the glory that is due to his name.

[Soldier4Christ]

Dinosaurs vs. Birds: The Fossils Don't Lie (#399)
by Timothy L. Clarey, Ph.D.


Abstract
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds continues to be the lack of fossil support.

The term "Dinosauria" was first used in 1841 by Sir Richard Owen in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, subsequently publishing the term in 1842. He was the first to recognize that dinosaurs ("fearfully great reptiles") were a distinct group of reptiles, much different from today's lizards. Owen defined dinosaurs as reptiles that walked erect, having a posture similar to elephants and rhinos. Dinosaurs did not have wings, flippers, or fins. Owen was the best known and most authoritative comparative anatomist in the nineteenth century. He argued extensively against Darwin's theory of evolution later in his life.

Thomas Huxley, the famous supporter of Darwin's theory, was the first person to suggest the dinosaurian origin for birds in publications between 1868 and 1870. Huxley found that some dinosaurs had a bird-like ankle joint, a short torso, massively braced hips, a long and mobile neck, and long hind limbs so typical of bird anatomy. He also found that some dinosaurs had holes in the bones for air sacs as in modern birds, and that some dinosaurs possessed the backward pubic bone typical of birds.1 Later, the presence of what is interpreted as a "wishbone" in some dinosaurs was added to this list.2

Archaeopteryx  to Archaeoraptor: Bird to Hoaxp

In the middle of the controversy is the so-called transitional fossil often cited as the link between birds and dinosaurs entitled Archaeopteryx. All ten specimens have been found in Germany in the Solnhofen Limestone of Late Jurassic age (150 million years old by evolutionary standards). Pat Shipman stated that, "These few, special fossils have served as the basis for brilliant deductions, wild speculations, penetrating analyses, and amazing insights."3 It is the well-preserved impressions of feathers on several of the specimens that have elevated Archaeopteryx to icon status as the first bird.

Among the first critics of Archaeopteryx as the first bird was Sankar Chatterjee when he announced the discovery of a Triassic "bird" he called Protoavis. As sponsors of Chatterjee's research, the National Geographic Society (NGS) chose to release the discovery before formal peer-review and scientific scrutiny of his work, drawing sharp criticism from his colleagues.4 He did however, allow the NGS to publicize his finding, theoretically pushing back the first bird 75 million years before Archaeopteryx. However, many paleontologists did not agree, and today some even doubt Protoavis is a bird at all.5 The NGS continued to create controversy with the 1999 publication of the "feathered" dinosaur Archaeoraptor, again announcing the discovery prior to peer-review. It was later learned that this specimen was a glued together composite of a bird and a dinosaur. In other words, it was a fake. Jonathan Wells went so far as to label the specimen the "Piltdown bird" in memory of the Piltdown man hoax. 6 The NGS should have learned in 1991 not to make "scientific" claims or announce discoveries until the findings are first peer-reviewed for scientific integrity.7

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds continues to be the lack of fossil support. Shipman commented, "The bipedal ancestor hypothesis, while favored strongly by logic, has little direct evidence from the fossil record to support or refute it."8 The best fossil evidence for a link is the historical confusion between Archaeopteryx and Compsognathus. At least three of the Archaeopteryx specimens were initially misidentified as either a Compsognathus or a pterosaur. Unfortunately, these two animals are found in the same strata, making it difficult to argue that Compsognathus was the ancestor of Archaeopteryx. Advocates for the dinosaur/bird hypothesis are left claiming that something yet unknown was the ancestor to Archaeopteryx. "This may be true, but balancing on a hypothetical ancestor is an even shakier proposition than balancing on one leg while the other moves forward," stated Shipman.9

It gets even more confusing when you consider that most of the dinosaurs claimed to be ancestors to birds are found in rocks much younger than Archaeopteryx. Dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus are found in rocks of the Cretaceous Period. These rocks are, by evolutionary standards, 75 million years younger than the Late Jurassic Period rocks containing Archaeopteryx. This information tends to be downplayed by the advocates for the dinosaur/bird relationship who insist that some, as yet, undiscovered ancestor must be the common link to both groups, regardless of the lack of fossil support.

Cladistics: An Attempt to Circumvent the Facts

Paleontologists have tried to get around the fossil "problems" by employing a new system of classifying organisms called cladistics. This system describes organisms on the basis of sister-group relationships between organisms.10 Cladists classify extinct and extant organisms on equal footing without regard to time, and in the process, unknown or missing transitional fossils become conveniently dismissed or eliminated.

The problem with cladistics is the arbitrary choice of what constitutes an evo-lutionary novelty. An evolutionary novelty is an inherited change from a previous pattern or structure that makes an organism unique.11 Choosing evolutionary novelties creates particular problems for extinct organisms because only morphological features are available for comparison. The choices are made based on expert opinion, or in the words of Henry Gee, "persons qualified to judge the evidence."12 Gee further explained, "The danger for scientists is that they will come to believe the hype, that they are indeed secular priests in possession of the truth with a capital T, the 'truth that can be known'. But such truth is expressly unscientific [falls short]."13 The reason many fell for the Archaeoraptor hoax was their belief in their own hype, regardless of the poor science involved.14 They believed so strongly that birds evolved from dinosaurs that all evidence to the contrary was ignored or brushed aside as unimportant. They became "priests," preaching their own version of "science."

Additional Evidence

Many dinosaur skin imprints have been identified in the last 150 years. These discoveries, like the spectacular discovery of embryonic skin imprints from Argentina in 1998, show only scales, very similar to modern reptiles. There are no known dinosaurs possessing feathers like we see in Archaeopteryx.15

Recently, a new dinosaur was discovered, named Juravenator, from rocks near those containing Archaeopteryx.16 This new specimen exhibited clear reptilian scales along its tail without a trace of feathers. The authors attempted to explain the lack of feathers in such a "bird-like" specimen by suggesting that feathers were merely seasonal or that feathers must have evolved more than once. The simplest solution is that they had no feathers in the first place.

Alan Feduccia, an ornithologist, and his team of scientists found no evidence of true feathers in any of the recently published "feathered" dinosaurs from China.17 They concluded that the presumed "protofeathers" were merely the remains of collagenous fiber meshworks that formed feather-looking patterns during decomposition. Feduccia's team further added that it is too early to declare that "birds are living dinosaurs," and that "the problem of avian origins is far from being resolved."18 These authors warned that the strict overemphasis on cladistics, and the ignoring of data from stratigraphy, embryology, ecology, and biogeography, has resulted in misleading interpretations of the evidence.19

Another team of scientists found both soft-tissue and skeletal support that indicates birds and dinosaurs are not related.20 They concluded that the theropod dinosaurs, including the recently discovered, Sinosauropteryx, did not have a bird-type lung-diaphragm, but a crocodilian-type of system, further widening the gap between birds and dinosaurs.

Conclusions

What does the Bible say about dinosaurs? The term "dinosaur" wasn't used in Biblical times, but we do have a passage in Job 40:15-18 that describes a huge, sauropod-type animal that ate grass (the behemoth). Until recently, no grasses were found as fossils in rocks containing dinosaurs. However, in 2005, a group of scientists discovered titanosaurid sauropods did eat grass.21 They found evidence for grass in fossilized dinosaur dung (coprolites) from Late Cretaceous rocks of India. Even the "tubes of bronze" (literal rendering of "strong pieces of brass") has been backed and supported by discoveries of dinosaur bones, as sauropod vertebrae are hollowed out with structures called pleurocoels along the sides of the centra,22 and possessing strong leg bones like "iron." Again and again, scientists find that dinosaurs were in fact, a unique group of reptiles, not truly like modern lizards and not bird-like either, but indeed one of God's marvels of creation.

[Soldier4Christ]

Out of Ararat?

by William Hoesch, M.S.


Paleoanthropologists are not usually known for shying away from discord, debate, or disagreement. Yet for several decades there has been near-unanimity on two fronts: (1) the so-called fact of evolution, and more specifically that, (2) an African ape, sometime in the last few million years, gave rise to the first African human. There is no sign of yielding on the first front, but on the second, new findings have made continued agreement impossible.

The key findings are summarized by archeologists Robin Dennell and Wil Roebroeks (Nature, 438:1099-1104) in an article entitled: "An Asian perspective on early human dispersal from Africa." By "early humans" the authors mean the genus Homo, either as the east African species H. ergaster, or broadly speaking, H. erectus. Many, but not all creationists will recognize Homo as tool-wielding, upright-walking, and relatively large-brained sons of Adam. Here is the problem. In a half-dozen sites across Asia and Europe, Homo remains are being found that are nearly as old, or older, than their oldest supposed Homo ancestor in east Africa. For example, H. erectus specimens from Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia dated at an alleged 1.7 Ma; at Mojokerto, Java, dated at 1.81 Ma; and Sangiran, Java, dated at 1.8 Ma, are comparable in age with the oldest H. erectus in Africa, at 1.9 Ma. Laying aside the absolute value of these dates for a moment, it looks as if Homo popped into existence all at once in a multitude of places! By the way, the Dmanisi site, which has become a major focal point for anthropology and is thought to represent an important dispersal point for early man, lies within a mere 200 kilometers of Mount Ararat. It is now widely believed that humans evolved in an as-of-yet undiscovered site in Asia and then migrated into Africa!

So abrupt is the appearance of the earliest true humans (H. ergaster) in the fossil record of east Africa that Dennell and Roebroeks remarked, "Not for nothing has it been described as a hominin 'without an ancestor, without a clear past'" (p. 1099). Hominin is the category shared by humans (Homo) and their assumed ape (Australopithecus) ancestors. The absence of a clear past for Homo finds these two excited archeologists "on the threshold of a profound transformation of our understanding of early hominin evolution" (p. 1103).

The search is now on for a locality that records the key transition from ape to human. "It is hard at present to identify its immediate ancestry in east Africa," say Dennell and Roebroeks (p. 1099). Nor apparently is it in East Asia, nor even in the promising new site in Georgia. Northern China or perhaps the difficult-to-access Muslim nations of central Asia are now being targeted as good prospects. I applaud the courage and persistence of these evolutionary researchers. But what if, at the end of the day, no ancestor can be found anywhere for H. erectus? It is not hard to see this is the direction the data are pointing. An absence of evidence is not evidence for absence, true. But if it is also true that man always was man, as God indicated to us in Genesis, the truly courageous researcher must face the possibility that a search for human ancestry will end in vain. Do not wait until the end of the day, my friend, to go back to Genesis!

* William A. Hoesch, M.S. geology, is Research Assistant in Geology.

[Soldier4Christ]

BBC NEWS: Colourful beginning for humanity & FOX NEWS: Neanderthals May Have Hung On Longer Than Thought

In the first story, scientist Lawrence Barham believes the range of pigments found at an archaeological dig in Zambia indicates that ancient humans used colors symbolically far earlier than previously thought. This discovery pushes back “the earliest known example of abstract thinking by at least 100,000 years.” So evolutionists believe “apemen” were thinking abstractly for hundreds of thousands of years before we began the development of oral history or writing?

In the second story, evolutionists are changing the timeline for Neandertals*—who were fully human (see Thumbs up for Neandertals, Neandertal Man—the changing picture and The caring Neandertal)—because they have radiocarbon dated charcoal from Neandertal fires to “maybe as recently as 24,000 years ago.” This is making evolutionists wonder if Neandertals and so-called “modern” humans interbred. Unsurprisingly, “[Q]uestions remain about whether the skeleton really does resemble a Neanderthal’s.” If it’s so easy to get Neandertal skeletons confused with those of modern humans, should we really believe Neandertals were oh-so-different?

In both these stories, we read about evolutionists trying to grapple with evidence that rewrites their human development timelines. Of course, the timelines are further flawed by the acceptance of radiocarbon dating as authoritative. The question is, will it take 100,000 years for evolutionists to realize that there never were any apemen and that the evidence we find of abstract thinking and “human-like” behavior is exactly that—evidence for fully formed, non-transitional humans!

[Soldier4Christ]

Thumbs up for Neandertals


Old myths about ‘ape-men’ die slowly.  Even Neandertals, who for decades have been recognized by even many evolutionists to be fully human, still struggle to shed their image as hairy less-than-human brutes.

In ‘Digital analysis: manual dexterity in Neanderthals,’ Nature magazine (27 March 2003) exposes yet another false assumption about these mysterious people.

In the past, some anthropologists have proposed that Neandertals died out because their clumsy hands were unable to manufacture advanced tools.  A new three-dimensional computer simulation of their thumb and forefinger, however, indicates that Neandertals had the same ‘precision grip’ as modern humans.

To make their model, researchers scanned images of a thumb and index finger of fossils found in La Ferrassie, France, and then converted the images into a full-motion model (much like animators now do with computer graphics).  Although Neandertal hands look different from ‘modern’ hands (they had more muscle tissue and broader fingertips), their thumb was easily able to touch the tip of their index finger—the key to human dexterity.

Amazingly, the researchers chose very conservative estimates for the range of motion, so it is possible that the Neandertals’ hand was even more dexterous than our typical hand. 1

This possibility is almost as amazing as the fact that Neandertal brains, on average, appear to have been larger than brain sizes today.  So much for being ape-like brutes.
It’s all about assumptions

Without the ability to examine a ‘Neandertal’ in person, researchers are forced to make major assumptions to fill in the gaps of our knowledge.  Because evolution has had such a strong influence on the study of human fossils, anthropologists have a reputation for jumping to crude conclusions (see Making Monkeys Out of Man).  That’s one reason that anthropologists have grown a little more cautious in their claims about Neandertals.

Neandertal authority Erik Trinkaus writes about the history of bias in this field:

    ‘Infuriatingly, the fossils do not speak for themselves.  It is the examining scientists who bring them to life, often endowing them with their own best or worst characteristics.  Each generation projects onto Neandertals its own fears, culture, and sometimes even personal history.  They are a mute repository for our own nature, though we flatter ourselves that we are uncovering theirs rather than displaying ours.

    ‘This is especially evident in one of the more fascinating aspects of the twisting tale of Neandertals and their interpretation: the creation of full-flesh reconstructions. … ’2

Evolutionists aren’t sure what to do with Neandertal man—whether he is a precursor of modern man or an offshoot that died out.  But fossils of ‘Neandertals’ don’t present a problem for creationists, who recognize that God created a unique ‘kind’ of creature in his own image—man.  In spite of all the variation that we find within the human race, they are all descendants of Adam and bear his resemblance.  God also created other kinds of creatures, such as apes, which display significant variation within their kind.  But there is an impassable gulf between the human kind and any other kind.

[Soldier4Christ]

Neandertal Man—the changing picture

An overview of how this alleged ‘subhuman’ is being progressively rehabilitated, despite the evolutionary bias resisting the trend.

‘Neandertal man’ was the name given to bones found in 1856 in Germany’s Neander Valley (‘tal’, or ‘thal’ in old German spelling). The name Neander was a pseudonym of the 17th century minister Joachim Neumann, the Greek translation of his name (‘new man’). A recent major PBS-TV series on evolution1 depicted Neandertal Man as only half human and not very intelligent, one who lived a very inferior life compared to the alleged first humans, the Cro-Magnon people. Some scientists today believe he was ‘lacking the language skills, foresight, creativity, and other cognitive abilities of modern humans’.2 Neandertal Man is considered to be either a link leading to man or a dead end in human evolution from the supposed ape-like ancestor.

Biblical creationists, on the other hand, believe that there were no ‘subhumans’ at any time. Neandertal fossils are all post-Flood, so these bones are believed to represent just one more group of people which split off from other groups following the Babel dispersion.

The evolutionary assumptions about the Neandertal Man began early this century. The first Neandertal was reconstructed as a ‘missing link’ by famous paleontologist Marcellin Boule (1861–1942).3 He was called Homo neanderthalensis, implying a primitive evolutionary link to modern man, Homo sapiens. Forty-four years later, a reanalysis of Boule’s work showed his extreme evolutionary bias in the reconstruction of Neandertal Man. After the reanalysis, some scientists stated that if you dressed him up, gave him a shave and bath, and sent him into society, he would attract no more attention than some of the subway’s other denizens (see Recreating the faces of our Neandertal cousins, below). Neandertal Man was then reclassified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, just a particular type of modern man.

It is interesting that, just as with Piltdown Man, Neandertal’s uplifted status was hailed as a ‘great moment in science’ in which errors are eventually corrected. But the clues to Neandertal Man’s human affinity were obvious at the time of Boule’s reconstruction, just as it should have been obvious that Piltdown Man was a fraud.

The great pathologist Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) claimed that the Neandertal specimen he examined had rickets and arthritis, which may have caused some of the unique Neandertal features, but his opinion was overlooked.4 It took 44 years for the highly misleading nature of the reconstructions to be revealed, indicative of the shared bias of the evolutionary community.

Even after the Neandertal reconstruction at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago was shown to be false and highly misleading, it took another 20 years for this renowned institution to correct its display!

Although the image of Neandertal Man improved by the 1950s and 1960s, there still is considerable controversy within evolutionary circles over his status,5 with many still preferring the ‘missing link’ concept. Although his brain size is a little larger than modern man’s, Neandertal’s brain is said to be of ‘lesser quality.’ Some believe he had incredible physical strength and would fight large animals at close quarters, while others claim he was a scavenger or even a vegetarian. Evolutionists do not know where Neandertal Man came from or where he went. One faction of evolutionists believes modern man, Cro-Magnons, killed the Neandertals, while others believe Neandertal interbred with Cro-Magnon Man, eventually becoming modern man. Neandertal Man disappeared about 30,000 years ago in the evolutionary timescale—a more or less ‘absolute’ date, despite evidence of younger Neandertals.6

Another difficulty for evolutionists is evidence that Neandertal Man lived at the same time as modern man and ‘archaic Homo sapiens’, sometimes in the same area. This creates big problems for those professing Christians who, like Hugh Ross, generally accept secular dating methods. Since they cannot date Adam back too far without stretching the genealogies beyond recognition, any human-type skeletons ‘dated’ earlier than a few tens of thousands of years ago have to be written off as pre-Adamic ‘soulless’ quasihumans. Biblical creationists believe Neandertal Man was just a unique variant of modern man who lived in Europe and adjacent Asia and North Africa after the Babel dispersion in the Ice Age (the aftermath of the Flood—ref. 24).

Despite the PBS series on evolution, the status of Neandertal Man has been improving among evolutionists during the past 10 years. The series’ failure to mention any of the recent discoveries appears to be typical of its whole propagandistic thrust. The discovery of a human hyoid bone (related to the larynx or voice box) prompted many evolutionists to state that Neandertal Man had speech and language ability equivalent to modern man.7

Trinkaus and Shipman8 say:

    ‘Although no one had explicitly predicted what a Neandertal hyoid would look like, few were really surprised when it turned out to be a slightly enlarged version of a human hyoid and nothing like an ape hyoid ... . Many anthropologists came to believe that Neandertals could have spoken any modern human language, whatever their accent may have been.’

Although the Neandertal hyoid bone was indistinguishable from those of modern humans, some still downplay its significance to speech ability. A later report based on further anatomical evidence concludes that language has been around for 400,000 years of evolutionary time, including the entire Neandertal period.9

The PBS series pointed out that Neandertal burials left little evidence of ritual as compared to those by later humans. Besides leaving me suspicious that their case was concocted, any difference may not mean much, since there are other ways to explain the scarcity of implements or other signs of ritual with Neandertal skeletons. Lately, more evidence of ritual has been showing up. A Neandertal baby was found buried in Israel with a red deer jawbone next to its hip indicating that Neandertal Man at least had the capability for symbolic behavior.10 A Neandertal toddler was unearthed in Syria at the bottom of a 1.5 m (5 ft) -deep pit, with a flint tool resting at about the spot where the infant’s heart had once beaten. This discovery is considered ‘the best evidence yet of Neandertal burial practices’.11 Furthermore, pierced animal teeth, probably worn as pendants, and ivory rings were discovered with a Neandertal fossil in a French cave in 1996.2,12 Moreover, it is now known that Neandertals made their own, relatively sophisticated ornaments and tools.2 This suggests ‘a high degree of acculturation’.12

At one time archaeologists did not believe Neandertals used spears, but this idea has been given the shaft by the finding of aerodynamic wooden spears used by the supposed ancestors of Neandertals.2 Furthermore, it has been discovered that Neandertals crafted a variety of stone tools and deadly, stone-tipped spears, showing an aptitude often attributed only to modern humans.2,13,14 Some scientists had claimed that Neandertal Man was only capable of scavenging carcasses, but a new analysis of break and cut marks on animal bones in caves indicates that he butchered the animals, which is consistent with hunting.2 John Shea, who featured in the PBS series, states that this new information contradicts the idea that Neandertals were markedly inferior.2

A very recent report now finds that Neandertals used stone implements in more flexible ways than previously thought, which gave them access to a more varied diet of meat and plants.15,16 Based on microscopic evidence of use-wear and residues left on the stone tools in the Crimea,16 the report suggests that those who used the tools, likely Neandertals, exploited a variety of woody and starchy plants and even hunted birds. Residues of bird feathers were found on some of the tools.

[Soldier4Christ]

It has recently been concluded that Neandertals lived side-by-side with modern humans in the Middle East for 100,000 years of evolutionary time and made virtually identical stone tools.17 Hybrids of Neandertals and humans are known from a number of areas,8 including a recent find of a child in Portugal.18 It is not difficult to conclude that Neandertal Man was totally human, and that modern humans and Neandertals likely amalgamated in Europe.

One report claimed that Neandertal Man’s DNA was quite different from modern humans, supposedly justifying the classification of them into a different species than modern man. But its author, the famed Svente Pääbo, claims that his paper has been misinterpreted.19 And mitochondrial DNA retrieved from an Australian Homo sapiens, claimed to be 62,000 years old, also differs greatly from that of modern humans.20 The team that made the DNA discovery believes this new result will usher Neandertal Man back into the human fold. This result also suggests that DNA studies are not very good for determining supposed evolutionary closeness.

It has been suggested that Neandertal Man fashioned a bone flute, an obvious human accomplishment. This deduction is strongly disputed, claiming that the holes in a hollowed-out bear bone were punctured and gnawed by the teeth of an animal, possibly a wolf.21 However, the two complete and two partial holes in the picture shown are linear and very round, making the carnivore theory suspect. Besides, there are about 30 partial bone flutes that have been found in Europe late in the Neandertal period and younger.22

Those scientists that dispute Neandertal’s human affinity seem to forget that he lived during the Ice Age and was able to survive the cold and harsh weather.23 Neandertal Man had to have a human level of sophistication to survive.9 ,24)

A new article published in the journal Nature now claims that Neandertals, or possibly modern humans, lived in northern Russia during the Ice Age.25 It had been widely believed that no humans lived in this region until 14,000 years ago in evolutionary time. Based on a mammoth tusk bearing cut marks, likely made from stone tools, the earliest date of man living in this cold territory during the Ice Age was pushed back to 40,000 years. The significance of this is that ‘adaptation to northern climes requires high levels of technological and social organization’,26 strongly suggesting that Neandertal Man, if he was the tool user, was fully human.

Many of these reports of Neandertal’s total humanity are disputed by some scientists, seemingly motivated by a blind evolutionary bias. In one scene from the similarly biased PBS series, John Shea throws a Neandertal spear with a heavy head 23 or 24 m (80 ft), while he throws a later human spear 42 m (140 feet). This demonstration implied that Neandertals were inferior to modern people. But earlier in the Neandertal episode it was concluded that Neandertals were very strong: the body builders of the Paleolithic. It therefore stands to reason that Neandertal Man could throw his spear significantly farther than 24 m, and that the heavy, sharp stone tip would have been very effective in hunting. The spear that was thrown 42 m had a light antler head and was thrown with the aid of a spear thrower.

Despite all the prejudice towards including Neandertals into Homo sapiens, many evolutionists have become impressed with the evidence for Neandertal’s humanity, as research casts a ‘more complimentary light on the older cousins. This emerging view depicts Neandertals as having a capacity for creative, flexible behavior somewhat like that of modern people’.2 Thus, the evidence increasingly supports the Biblical position.
RECREATING THE FACES OF OUR NEANDERTAL COUSINS

From their skeletons, we know that the average Neandertal person had bony differences from the average person alive today, including a bigger braincase. So what did they look like?

Bones cannot tell you about things like hairiness, nor the shape of the fleshy parts, like nose or ears. But computerized forensic science has come a long way in making educated ‘guesses’ at a person’s appearance from the shape of a skull. As reported in January 1996 National Geographic, researchers at the University of Illinois used computer ‘morphing’ techniques to fit pictures of living people onto Neandertal’s skulls.

Unlike the artistic reconstructions of earlier times, this time nothing was imaginatively added based on evolutionary assumptions of ‘primitivity’. The results indicate that the bones of the skull would not preclude Neandertals from looking like people you would not greatly comment on (apart from hair and dress style) if they moved in next door to you today.

[Soldier4Christ]

The caring Neandertal


If we are ever asked to imagine what a Neandertal was like, most of us would think of some half-witted cretin. In fact, the word Neandertal is often used as a term of abuse. It generally signifies that the individual to whom reference is being made acts brutishly and has very little feeling for others. This is a pity, because the more we learn about the Neandertals, the more we are forced to conclude that although they may have looked brutish, they were very caring people, who looked after the sick and elderly members of their communities.

The Neandertals are named after the Neander Valley, not far from Düsseldorf in Germany. The fossilized remains of a Neandertal man were first found there in a cave in 1857. Since then, remains of Neandertals have been found in western Europe, the Near East, and western Asia. Compared with modern Europeans, the Neandertal people were rather robust, and so for almost a century it was mistakenly believed that they were half way between ape-like creatures and humans.1

The idea that the Neandertals were a link between apes and humans was reinforced by drawings which depicted them as stooping half-ape/half-human brutes ambling along on the outsides of their feet, like some oversized chimpanzee. This view persisted until the mid-1950s when a couple of American anatomists concluded that there was no valid reason for assuming that the Neandertal posture was different from that of modern humans. They went on to suggest that if a Neandertal man were bathed, shaved, and dressed in modern clothing he would probably pass unnoticed in a New York subway!2

It has also been suggested that much of the brutish appearance of the Neandertals, such as their eyebrow ridges, is due to the enormous chewing stress on the skull imposed by their powerful jaws. And this was due to the common eating of tough food. They are now placed in the same species as modem-day humans, being put into the sub-species Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (with us being in the sub-species Homo sapiens sapiens). However, the bony differences between them and modern people may be the result of trivial genetic differences. Similarly, people of modem ‘races’ today look more different than they are at the genetic level. Some ‘Neandertal’ bony characteristics are found in some Europeans today.

From their remains, it has been discovered that some of the Neandertal people suffered from rickets. Rickets is a disease of childhood resulting from a deficiency of Vitamin D. Because this vitamin helps the absorption of calcium from the food we eat, people suffering from rickets have soft bones which cause them to have swollen joints and distorted limbs—sometimes they are extremely bow-legged, but in more severe cases they are completely crippled and unable to walk.

Vitamin D is found in fish oils, milk, and dairy products. If your diet is deficient in these, you may develop rickets. The fact that some Neandertals suffered from rickets indicates that they had a diet which lacked these products. However, you can get Vitamin D another way—Vitamin D is made in the skin when it is exposed to sunlight. From this we are able to conclude that the Neandertal people who had rickets must have lived at a time when they would not have been exposed to much sunlight—such as during the Ice Age.

Some of the Neandertal people suffered from arthritis, while others sustained injuries during their lifetime - perhaps by falling over when hunting. Broken bones were not uncommon. Although such people were no longer productive members of their community, they were cared for by other members of their tribe. Their bones demonstrate that they kept on living long after the onset of their disability. This shows that these people had tender feelings for each other—sometimes apparently providing support for those they knew would never get better.

From the evidence discovered, it can be deduced that the Neandertals were good hunters, making and using rather elegant stone tools effectively. They lived in huts which they sometimes located in caves. They kept warm with fires on which they burned bones—because it was the middle of an Ice Age, when there were not many trees growing in Europe. They cooked their food on fires, sometimes using stone hot plates. They wore clothes which they made by sewing animal skins together. In fact, far from being dull-witted brutes, these people were quite sophisticated—there is even evidence of a form of writing!

The Neandertal people also had a sense of the after-life—they buried their dead with ceremony and arranged flowers around the bodies of their dead. A pollen analysis of one grave from the Shanidar cave in the Zagros Mountains in Iraq has revealed the presence of yarrow, cornflower, St Barnaby’s thistle, ragwort, grape hyacinth, hollyhock, and woody horsetail. Most of these plants are known to have herbal and medicinal properties, so it appears that the Neandertals had some knowledge of medicine.

None of this is surprising when we consider that they were not primitive evolutionary ‘links’. They were people, forced to live in harsh conditions, after the dispersal of humanity at Babel, during the great post-Flood Ice Age.3


References and notes

   1. Anthropologist Marcellin Boule was responsible for much of the attribution of ‘subhuman’ characteristics to Neandertals. It seems that what really persuaded him about the truth of human evolution was the Piltdown skull, which later turned out to be a clever fraud. In turn, this conviction caused him to emphasize and exaggerate some characters in Neandertal bones to fit the ‘subhuman’ idea.
   2. John Reader, Missing Links, Book Club Associates, London, 1981, p. 36.
   3. See Life in the Great Ice Age, by Michael and Beverly Oard, Creation-Life Publishers, Inc., California, 1993.

[fiona]

I see many reactions to the Article "Biblical Creation vs. Evolution" posted by 'bronzesnake', but WHERE is the article to find?? I am very curious about it. Can anyone post ik? I would be greatful.



removed personal email

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[fiona]

Sorry for my previous message:  I just found the article of 'bronzesnake'. You don't have to send ik to me now.
love, Fiona

[airIam2worship]

Hi fiona,  Welcome to CU forums I pray you will visit often and as you did above you may ask any questions we will be more than happy to answer them.

Fiona, because this is an open forum and we have many people that visit us 24/7, I removed your email address for your own safety.

Love in Christ,
Maria.

[Soldier4Christ]

MATEY MITES MAKE FERNS MATE according to an article in ScienceNOW and Science
vol. 313, p1255, 1 September 2006.  Ferns and mosses reproduce differently from
flowering plants. Instead of producing pollen male plants, they produce sperm,
which have to swim to female plants. The sperm can only swim two to three
centimetres (one inch), but botanists have observed that female plants can be
fertilised and produce sporophytes (the equivalent of seeds) even if the nearest
male plants are up to 20cm (8 inches) away. To see if the sperm are getting any
help from moss and fern loving bugs, such as mites and springtails, scientists
at Lund University, Sweden set up an experiment with male and female clusters of
silver moss in dishes coated with plaster of Paris. The plaster trapped any
sperm attempting to swim away from male plants. If male and female plants were
placed together so they were touching, the females produced sporophytes, but if
they were separated by a few centimetres they didn't. However, if mites and
springtails were allowed to crawl around the dishes containing the plants, the
female plants produced sporophytes even if they were separated from the males.
The researchers then studied mites to see if they were attracted to fertile
plants, rather than just randomly moving around. Five times as many mites
visited the fertile plants, so researchers suggest the plants produce some kind
of food reward for the insects, in the same way as flowers provide nectar for
their pollinators. Current evolutionary theory states that insect mediated plant
fertilisation evolved when flowering plants evolved about 140 million years ago,
but the Lund university researchers commented that mosses, ferns, mites and
springtails supposedly evolved about 300 million years before flowering plants.
In their concluding paragraph they write: "Mosses, springtails, and mites are
extant representatives of taxa that originated after the early phase of land
colonization (circa 440 to 470 million years ago).  Animal-mediated
fertilization in mosses therefore potentially antedates similar syndromes in
other plant groups."

ED. COM. Genesis tells us that living things were created by God as fully formed
and completely functional organisms from the beginning. All plants were made on
the third day of creation, while the animals that help pollinate them were made
on the fifth and sixth days. Such a complex interdependent symbiotic
relationship between mosses, ferns and insects (along with the relationship
between flowering plants and pollinators) is a challenge both to those who want
to make the days of Genesis long periods, as well as those who proclaim
evolution. Such plants would have died out if their pollinators or sperm
carriers were not created within their own lifespan. Therefore, it you want to
make Genesis days millions of years, you have thrown the whole of Genesis out.
(Ref. symbiosis, ecology, bryophytes)

[Soldier4Christ]

DOG BREED DIVERSITY EXPLAINED, according to reports in ScienceShots in
Science Online and Genome Research, Online 29 June 2006 and New Scientist, 1
July 2006, p18. Researchers at Uppsala University have compared the complete
mitochondrial genomes from fourteen domestic dogs, six wolves, and three
coyotes. They found the domestic dogs showed a greater variety in their DNA than
the wolves, whom they are believed to have evolved from. The researchers
concluded: "This suggests that a major consequence of domestication in dogs was
a general relaxation of selective constraint on their mitochondrial genome. If
this change also affected other parts of the dog genome, it could have
facilitated the generation of novel functional genetic diversity. This diversity
could thus
have contributed raw material upon which artificial selection has shaped modern
breeds and may therefore be an important source of the extreme phenotypic
variation present in modern day dogs."  Matthew Webster of Trinity College
Dublin, who took part in the research, commented to New Scientist, "Our findings
highlight the importance of mutation in driving evolution. With weaker natural
selection, you can get a lot more changes in proteins that can be important in
the future of the species."  Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biologist at John
Hopkins University commented that mutations tended to accumulate more quickly in
mitochondrial DNA than in the main store of DNA in the nucleus and  therefore,
"Much of the variation we see in dogs may have to do with pre-existing variation
from the ancestral wolf-dog population. Relaxation of selection is likely to be
only part of the answer."

ED. COM. "Relaxation of selective constraint" means that dogs with genetic
mutations that would have caused them to die out in the rough and tough
naturally selecting world of wild animals, were able to survive and breed only
because human beings cared for them. In other words: survival of the fittest had
been eliminated. Natural selection was claimed by Darwin to give rise to new
species, but in the case of wolves natural selection had obviously eliminated
genetic novelties, and therefore had an anti-evolutionary effect. Robert Wayne's
comment is no help to the theory of evolution either. If wolf populations
already contained many of the variations we see in domestic dogs, then dogs have
reproduced after their kind - just as Genesis says, even if you arbitrarily give
the wild wolf and the domestic dog different species names. 

[Soldier4Christ]

TEN YEARS ON, AND NO LIFE ON MARS, comments an article in the New York Times,
8 Aug 2006. In August 1996 NASA scientists and President Bill Clinton announced
to the world they had found evidence of life on Mars. Their evidence was highly
magnified images of rows of tiny blobs that looked somewhat like strings of
bacteria, and organic molecules found in a rock named ALH84001. Bill Clinton
commented: "Today, rock 84001 speaks to us across all those billions of years
and millions of miles. It speaks of the possibility of life. If this discovery
is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our
universe that science has ever uncovered." The rock is a meteorite that
scientists agree originated on Mars, but "skeptics have found non-biological
explanations for every piece of evidence that was presented". The blobs were
quickly rejected by biologists as being at least 100 times too small to contain
all the proteins, nucleic acids and metabolic machinery needed for the most
basic life. The organic molecules were identified as polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAHs) that also exist in the environment where the rock was found
in Antarctica, as well as in comets and meteorites that no-one has ever
claimed contain life. Another line of evidence that did not receive as much
publicity, was the finding of carbonate and magnetite particles in the rock,
similar to those produced by living organisms on earth. However, in 2001 a group
of
scientists were able to produce the same carbonate and magnetite grains by
chemical processes. In spite of the failure of all the evidence in rock
AHL84001, a flourishing science called "astrobiology" has grown up in the past
ten years as scientists continue to look for signs of life outside of the earth.
Bill Clinton's 1996 statement: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/clinton.html

ED. COM. Did you notice the great publicity the popular media gave the latest
evidence that this rock didn't contain life? The relentless, but fruitless,
search for life in outer space is motivated by a belief that if life can be
found on other planets that will prove that it must have evolved by chance on
earth and everywhere. No-one has yet proved that life can evolve from non-life
anywhere, let alone on earth. Finding living organisms, even in very strange
places, merely proves they exist or have existed. It does not tell us how they
got there. God could have put bacteria on Mars if he wanted to. However, Genesis
tells us that the reason God made the heavenly bodies, was for "signs, and times
and seasons" (Genesis 1:14), so it is unlikely they will be life supporting.