Chapter 8: Evolution Forgeries

There is no concrete fossil evidence to support the "ape-man" image, which is unceasingly promulgated by the media and evolutionist academic circles. With brushes in their hands, evolutionists produce imaginary creatures, nevertheless, the fact that these drawings correspond to no matching fossils constitutes a serious problem for them. One of the interesting methods they employ to overcome this problem is to "produce" the fossils they cannot find. Piltdown Man, which may be the biggest scandal in the history of science, is a typical example of this method.

Piltdown Man: An Orangutan Jaw and a Human Skull!

	The Story of A Hoax
1	The fossils are unearthed by Charles Dawson and given to Sir Arthur Smith Woodward.
2	Pieces are reconstructed to form the famous skull. 1. Pieces from a human skull 2. Orangutan Jaw
3	Based on the reconstructed skull, various drawings and skulptures are made, numerous articles and commentaries are written. The original skull is demonstrated in the British Museum.
4	After 40 years of its discovery, the Piltdown fossil is shown to be a hoax by a group of researchers.

In 1912, a well-known doctor and amateur paleoanthropologist named Charles Dawson came out with the assertion that he had found a jawbone and a cranial fragment in a pit in Piltdown, England. Even though the jawbone was more ape-like, the teeth and the skull were like a man's. These specimens were labelled the "Piltdown man". Alleged to be 500,000 years old, they were displayed as an absolute proof of human evolution in several museums. For more than 40 years, many scientific articles were written on "Piltdown man", many interpretations and drawings were made, and the fossil was presented as important evidence for human evolution. No fewer than 500 doctoral theses were written on the subject.65

While visiting the British Museum in 1921, leading American paleoanthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn said "We have to be reminded over and over again that Nature is full of paradoxes" and proclaimed Piltdown "a discovery of transcendant importance to the prehistory of man".66

In 1949, Kenneth Oakley from the British Museum's Paleontology Department, attempted to use "fluorine testing", a new test used for determining the date of fossils. A trial was made on the fossil of the Piltdown man. The result was astonishing. During the test, it was realised that the jawbone of Piltdown Man did not contain any fluorine. This indicated that it had remained buried no more than a few years. The skull, which contained only a small amount of fluorine, showed that it was not older than a few thousand years old.

It was determined that the teeth in the jawbone belonging to an orangutan, had been worn down artificially and that the "primitive" tools discovered with the fossils were simple imitations that had been sharpened with steel implements.67In the detailed analysis completed by Joseph Weiner, this forgery was revealed to the public in 1953. The skull belonged to a 500-year-old man, and the jaw bone belonged to a recently deceased ape! The teeth had been specially arranged in a particular way and added to the jaw, and the molar surfaces were filed in order to resemble those of a man. Then all these pieces were stained with potassium dichromate to give them an old appearance. These stains began to disappear when dipped in acid. Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clark, who was in the team that uncovered the forgery, could not hide his astonishment at this situation and said: "The evidences of artificial abrasion immediately sprang to the eye. Indeed so obvious did they seem it may well be asked-how was it that they had escaped notice before?"68 In the wake of all this, "Piltdown man" was hurriedly removed from the British Museum where it had been displayed for more than 40 years.

Nebraska Man: A Pig's Tooth

The picture above was drawn on the basis of a single tooth and it was published in the Illustrated London News magazine on July 24, 1922. However, the evolutionists were extremely disappointed when it was revealed that this tooth belonged neither to an ape-like creature nor to a man, but rather to an extinct pig species.

In 1922, Henry Fairfield Osborn, the director of the American Museum of Natural History, declared that he had found a fossil molar tooth belonging to the Pliocene period in western Nebraska near Snake Brook. This tooth allegedly bore common characteristics of both man and ape. An extensive scientific debate began surrounding this fossil, which came to be called "Nebraska man", in which some interpreted this tooth as belonging toPithecanthropus erectus, while others claimed it was closer to human beings.

Nebraska man was also immediately given a "scientific name", Hesperopithecus haroldcooki.

Many authorities gave Osborn their support. Based on this single tooth, reconstructions of the Nebraska man's head and body were drawn. Moreover, Nebraska man was even pictured along with his wife and children, as a whole family in a natural setting.

All of these scenarios were developed from just one tooth. Evolutionist circles placed such faith in this "ghost man" that when a researcher named William Bryan opposed these biased conclusions relying on a single tooth, he was harshly criticised.

In 1927, other parts of the skeleton were also found. According to these newly discovered pieces, the tooth belonged neither to a man nor to an ape. It was realised that it belonged to an extinct species of wild American pig called Prosthennops. William Gregory entitled the article published in Science in which he announced the truth, "Hesperopithecus: Apparently Not an ape Nor a man".69Then all the drawings of Hesperopithecus haroldcooki and his "family" were hurriedly removed from evolutionary literature.

Ota Benga: The African In The Cage

After Darwin advanced the claim with his book The Descent of Man that man evolved from ape-like living beings, he started to seek fossils to support this contention. However, some evolutionists believed that "half-man half-ape" creatures were to be found not only in the fossil record, but also alive in various parts of the world. In the early 20th century, these pursuits for "living transitional links" led to unfortunate incidents, one of the cruellest of which is the story of a Pygmy by the name of Ota Benga.

Ota Benga was captured in 1904 by an evolutionist researcher in the Congo. In his own tongue, his name meant "friend". He had a wife and two children. Chained and caged like an animal, he was taken to the USA where evolutionist scientists displayed him to the public in the St Louis World Fair along with other ape species and introduced him as "the closest transitional link to man". Two years later, they took him to the Bronx Zoo in New York and there they exhibited him under the denomination of "ancient ancestors of man" along with a few chimpanzees, a gorilla named Dinah, and an orang-utan called Dohung. Dr William T. Hornaday, the zoo's evolutionist director gave long speeches on how proud he was to have this exceptional "transitional form" in his zoo and treated caged Ota Benga as if he were an ordinary animal. Unable to bear the treatment he was subjected to, Ota Benga eventually committed suicide.70

Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Ota Benga... These scandals demonstrate that evolutionist scientists do not hesitate to employ any kind of unscientific method to prove their theory. Bearing this point in mind, when we look at the other so-called evidence of the "human evolution" myth, we confront a similar situation. Here there are a fictional story and an army of volunteers ready to try everything to verify this story.