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!