DEM BONES, DEM BONES THE NEBRASKA MAN Nebraska Man was discovered in 1922 by Harold Cook i

                         DEM BONES, DEM BONES

THE NEBRASKA MAN

     Nebraska Man was discovered in 1922 by Harold Cook in the
Pliocene deposits in the Pliocene deposits of Nebraska.  A tremendous
amount of literature was built around this supposed missing link which
allegedly lived 1 million years ago.

     The evidence for Nebraska Man was used by evolutionists in the
famous Scopes evolution trial in Dayton Tennessee in 1925.  William
Jennings Bryan was confronted with a battery of "great scientific
experts" who stunned him with the "facts" of Nebraska Man.  Mr. Bryan
had no retort except to say that he thought the evidence was too
scanty and to plead for more time.  Naturally, the "experts" scoffed
and made a mockery out of him.  After all, who was he to question the
world's greatest scientific authorities?

     But what exactly was the scientific proof for Nebraska Man?  The
answer is a tooth.  That's right; he found one tooth!  The top
scientists of the word examined this tooth and appraised it as proof
positive of a prehistoric race in America.  What a classic case of
excessive imagination!

     Years after the Scopes trial, the entire skeleton of the animal
from which the initial tooth came was found.  As it turns out, the
tooth upon which Nebraska Man was constructed belonged to an extinct
species of pig.  THE "AUTHORITIES," WHO RIDICULED MR. BRYAN FOR HIS
SUPPOSED IGNORANCE, CREATED AN ENTIRE RACE OF HUMANITY OUT OF THE
TOOTH OF A PIG!  What an embarrassment to the scientific community and
a noteworthy commentary on our human nature.  Needless to say, little
publicity was given to the discovered error.  Surely, there is a
lesson here for us concerning the reliability of so-called "expert
testimony," which is so often used to manipulate and intimidate the
layman.

     A similar discovery, which was also based upon a tooth, was the
Southwest Colorado Man.  It is now known that this particular tooth
actually belonged to a horse!

     How resourceful and imaginative scientific "experts" can be at
times.  Give them one tooth, not necessarily human, and they create an
entire race of prehistoric humanity.

JAVA APE-MAN

     One of the most famous of all the anthropoids is the Java Ape-
Man, Pithecanthropus erectus (erect ape-man).  He was discovered in
1891 by Dr. Eugene Dubois, a fervent evolutionist.  Dr. Dubois' find
consisted of a small piece of the top of a skull, a fragment of a left
thigh-bone, and three molar teeth.  Although this evidence is
admitedly more substantial, it is still fragmentary.  Furthermore,
these remnants were not found together.  They were collected over a
range of about 70 feet.  Also, they were not discovered at the same
time, but over the span of one year.  To further complicate matters,
these remains were found in an old river bed mixed in with the bones
of extinct animals. Despite all of these difficulties, evolutionists
calmly assure us that Java Ape-Man lived about 750,000 years ago.

     Although the "experts" would have us believe that these mere
fragments provide sufficient information from which to reconstruct an
entire prehistoric race, certain questions are raised.  For instance,
how is it possible to reconstruct so completely with such confidence
from such scanty evidence?  How can the "experts" be so certain that
all the pieces came from the same animal?  How have these unpetrified
bones managed to survive for so long without disintegrating.  And so
on.  Well, as it turns out, even the "experts" differed greatly about
the identification of these fossil fragments.  In fact, of the twenty-
four European scientists who met to evaluate the find, then said they
came from an ape; seven from a man; and seven said they belonged to a
no longer missing link.  Controversy and division surrounded the
discovery.  The renowned Professor Virchow of Berlin said:

     "There is no evidence at all that these bones were parts of the
same creature."

     Even Dr. Dubois himself later reversed his own opinion.  His
final conclusion was that the bones were the remains of some sort of
gobbin. But one would never gather the truly equivocal nature of the
world-famous Java Ape-Man by viewing museum exhibits or reading
college textbooks, which are so dogmatic.  The dubious nature of Java
Ape-Man (and human evolution as well) is either conveniently ignored
or concealed behind the mask of "scientific fact."

     One final note regarding Java Ape-Man.  Another Pithecanthropus
was found in Java in 1926.  Typically, this discovery was billed as a
prodigious breakthrough, the missing link for sure.  It turned out to
be the kneebone of an extinct elephant.

PILTDOWN MAN

     The remains of Piltdown Man were allegedly discovered in 1912 by
Charles Dawson, an amateur fossilogist.  He produced some bones,
teeth, and primitive implements, which he said he found in a gravel
pit at Piltdown, Sussex, England.  He took them to Dr. Author Smith
Woodword, an eminent paleontologist at the British Museum.  The
remains were acclaimed by anthropologists to be about 500,000 years
old.  A flood of doctoral disertations were performed on Piltdown Man. 
Surely, this find will stand the test of time and establish evolution
as a fact of science; or will it?

     All was well until October of 1956 when the entire hoax was
exposed.  Reader's Digest came out with an article, summarized from
Popular Science Monthly, entitled The Great Piltdown Hoax.  Using a
new method to date bones based upon fluoride absorption, the Piltdown
bones were found to be fraudulent.  Further critical investigation
revealed that the jaw-bone actually belonged to an ape that had died
only 50 years previously.  The teeth were filed down, and both teeth
and bones were discolored with bichromate of potash to conceal their
true identity.  And so, Piltdown Man was built upon a deception which
completely fooled all the "experts" who promoted him with the utmost
confidence.  According to M. Bowden:

     "...the person responsible for placing the faked fossils in the
pit was Teilhard de Chardin S. J."

     Teilhard authored several philosophical books in which he
attempted to harmonize evolution and Christianity.  Exasperated by the
lack of convincing evidence for Darwin's theory, Teilhard was
apparently motivated into assisting the theory of evolution by
fabricating the needed missing link.

     It should be noted that Piltdown Man was viewed in stately
museums and studied in major textbooks for several generations.  What
will today's "facts" of humen evolution turn out to be in the near
future?  And so, once again, the veracity of "experty testimony" is
called into question.  How fitting are the words of Scripture which
declare:

     "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." (Romans
1:22)

NEANDERTHAL MAN

     Neanderthal Man was first discovered at about the turn of the
century in a cave in the Neanderthal Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany.
He was portrayed as a semi-erect, barrel-chested, brutish sort of
fellow, an intermediary link between man and apes.

     With the discovery of other neanderthal skeletons, it is now
known, however, that Neanderthal Man was fully erect and fully human.
In fact, his cranial capacity even exceeded that of modern man by more
than 13%.

     The old misconceptions about Neanderthal Man were due to two
factors: first, the bias of pre-programmed evolutionary
anthropologists who reconstructed him; and second, the fact that the
particular individual on whom the initial evaluation was made was
crippled with osteo-arthritis and rickets.  Today Neanderthal Man is
classified as Homo sapiens, completely human.

LUCY

     Present-day speculation about human evolution revolves about a
group of fossils called australopithecines and, in particular, a
specimen called Lucy, a 40% complete skeleton.  Lucy was discovered by
D. C. Johanson in the Afar area of Ethopia during investigations
conducted from 1972-1977.

     In a National Geographic article (December 1976) Johanson claimed
that: "The angle of the thigh bone and the flattened surface at its
knee joint end...proved she walked on two legs."

     However, the knee joint end of the femur was severely crushed;
therefore, Johanson's conclusion is pure speculation.  Anatomist
Charles Oxnard, using a computer technique for analysis of skeletal
relationships, has concluded that the australopithecines did not walk
upright, at least not in the same manner as humans.  In this
connection, it should be mentioned that the chimpanzee spends a
considerable amount of time walking upright.  Thus, there is no
scientific basis for a conclusiion of bipedalism in Lucy.  Lucy and
her relatives are probably just varieties of apes.

     Finally, there is evidence that people walked upright before the
time of Lucy.  This would include the Kanapoi hominid and Castenedolo
Man.  Obviously if people walked upright before the time of Lucy, then
she must be disqualified as an evolutionary ancestor.



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