Circular logic underlies the extremely important business of fossil dating: The number of mutations, they say, gives us age; yet age tells us the number of mutations! This molecular clock (discussed in chapter 6) is said to measure the time since humans and chimps last shared a common ancestor, assuming of course they did indeed share a common ancestor. But the word homology does just that: homologs are defined as protein sequences that diverged from a common ancestor. Correspondence of structure (homology) then indicates a common ancestor. And this is circular: evolutionary descent supposedly explains similar organs in different animals, and these similar organs are then cited as proof of evolution. “Homologous organs provide evidence of [descent] from a common ancestor.”23 In other words, comparable organs, say hand and paw, can be traced to a common ancestor. Sheer supposition! (Things could be alike for a different reason—just as the tuna, porpoise, and mako shark look much alike though of vastly different ancestry—but more on homology in chapter 8.)
Dating follows another loop of circularity: if a hominid is dated before the Mindel interglacial period, call it H. erectus; if it’s H. erectus, date it before the Mindel.24 And how’s this for tautology?: “Small changes operating by degrees were the main instrument of change.”25 In other words: change was caused by changes. And how does evolution explain change? By natural selection (chapter 9). What is natural selection? That which produces change!
Fitness, as genetics defines it, is effectiveness in breeding. But there is a problem here because today, the least “fit” (in Darwin’s thinking) reproduce the most, that is, the poorest, most disadvantaged people in the world have the highest birth rate. American sociologist Elmer Pendell (political correctness be damned) has recently opined that the decline of our institutions and way of life is caused by the higher reproductive rates of those who should reproduce least. It has also been pointed out that in time of war, it is the most fit who perish.
One critic, taking a closer look, finds circularity in the competitive exclusion argument, which assumes only one group can inhabit or dominate a niche: “Count the number of species in a given habitat to determine the number of [ecological] niches the habitat contains, and lo and behold, there is one species for every niche.”26 In Origin, Darwin informed us that “variations will cause the slight alterations”; in other words, the cause of variations are variations.
One writer assures us that H. erectus “clearly migrated out of Africa because that was where people learned how to hunt large animals.”27 Logic? One team found (from DNA) that the Neanderthal population must have at one point shrunk to as low as just a few thousand individuals. Sure, they eventually went extinct! One critic has recommended that evolutionists “take a course in logic.”
Strange and presumptive logic is seen in assertions such as Neanderthal had to be a big game hunter “for their bodies demanded” many calories in the cold.28 But he was not a big game hunter and probably not cold, either (see chapter 9). Along the same lines, H. erectus had to have fire, otherwise he could not have come out of Africa (as theory requires). Neither of which is the case.
Here we note that evolutionists keep telling us that things arose because they were needed. I wonder if it’s that simple. This is Darwin country’s particular metaphysic. But do things really happen because they’re needed? Did pale skin and freckles come about “under pressure in northern latitudes to evolve fair skin to let in more sunlight for the manufacture of vitamin D”?29 (a problem we will take up later on). Most insidiously, evolution itself “needs” deep time (long dating) for things to evolve (to which question chapter 6 is devoted).
The would-be syllogism is: Species lacks (whatever); species needs (whatever); therefore, species acquires (whatever). Ashley Montagu, for instance, accounts for the increase in human brain size in this manner: “The brain would have been enlarged because of the necessity [e.a.] of a large enough warehouse in which to store the required information.”30
That human knowledge or language allowed us to advance as a species is a bit like saying that we have legs allowed us to walk. In this connection science writer James Shreeve finds Jared Diamond’s logic “dizzyingly circular” for he, Diamond, defines the Upper Paleolithic by cultural invention, which depends on language as the spark or prime mover behind the creative explosion at that time. How do we know, asks Shreeve; the answer—“because the Upper Paleolithic is defined by invention.” Diamond’s argument betrays a “total lack of evidence for the crossing of the language Rubicon at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic.”31
All told, modern-day evolution has perfected the art of assuming what you wish to prove, circularity is deeply embedded in the heart of this “science.” We search in vain for the causation, the forces exerted to make man evolve from a lesser to a more sapient state, for H. sapiens did not evolve from anything. H. erectus did not evolve from anything. Neanderthal did not evolve from anything. But each came about through the process of crossbreeding.
HOW THE MIGHTY ARE FALLEN
Evolution makes better murderers.
WALTER MOSLEY, WHEN THE THRILL IS GONE
One fly in the evolutionary ointment is stasis, meaning no change over time. We see this stasis, for example, in Mayan art and architecture, which show “no development with the passage of time, ending up exactly as it began.”32 In the Old World, tools remain crude between the time of Zinj (Au) and Peking man (H. erectus)—a long stretch with no indication that man was evolving or progressing.
The history of the human race . . . gives no countenance to any doctrine of universal and general progress . . . but sustains rather a doctrine of predominant natural tendencies to degeneration. . . . There is no invariable law of progress. . . . As a matter of fact, degeneration and disintegration seem as likely to take place as real progress and advancement.
GEORGE FREDERICK WRIGHT,
ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN
Indeed a certain trend toward devolution is noted in many different traditions, which mutually speak of a lost golden age, a lost utopia, having fallen to barbarism; and this is where retrobreeding shows its face. “In times past the same countries were inhabited by a higher race.”33 In Malaysia “a white race relapsed into barbarism” in the jungle interior.34 Protohistorians of every stripe can attest to such relapses, as in the Pacific, in places such as Ponape and Easter Island, where a dramatic regression of culture has taken place.
In some nameless, distant past mankind must have ascended a long way up the ladder of civilization, only to relapse into chaos and barbarism.
PETER KOLOSIMO, TIMELESS EARTH
Future studies of the protohistorical world might well reveal that retrobreeding, followed by war, destroyed both antidiluvian and postdiluvian civilizations, “and war spread around about the whole earth” (ca 70 kya).35 Much later, just before the flood, men were “descending in breed and blood . . . and they dwelt after the manner of four-footed beasts.”36 Then, after the flood, these histories follow with Ihuan internecine wars (ca 20 kya).37 Later still, around 10 kya, “the Parsieans [high culture] were tempted by the Druks [barbarians], and fell from their high estate, and they became cannibals.”38
Hopi history tells of the third age*15 with a mighty civilization, full of big cities; Hopi artist and storyteller White Bear spoke of big cities, nations, and civilizations that once were, but war and other evils destroyed them. Likewise does archaeology reveal extensive trade networks once centered on the Mississippi Valley mound culture. Canadian Indians knew of “shining cities” before “the demons returned”; there, where once splendid cities stood, “there is nothing but ruins now.”39
All was lost. The complexity and beauty of the earlier layers at Guatemala’s Tikal was puzzling to archaeologists; things did not get simpler, less elaborate, the deeper they dug, quite the reverse. By the time of the Spanish conquest, Mayan civilization was already run down. And the same befell the great societies of the Old World:
The palaces and houses with their goodly apartments
fall into ruin. . . . Serpents hiss and glide amid broken columns.
KALIDASA, SANSKRIT POET, 350–420 CE
Speaking of India, the erudite British archaeologist Godfrey Higgins observed that the science and learning of the Hindus “instead of being improved, has greatly declined from what it appears to have been in the remote ages of their history.”40 Here in India and Pakistan, the lowest strata at Mohenjo Daro, an ancient city of the Indus Valley civilization, produced implements of higher quality and jewelry of greater refinement than in the upper layers. This mysterious civilization has been compared to the equally mysterious Easter Island, where the oldest cultural level is again the most advanced: the statues of the second period have a degenerate style compared to the earlier ones; just as Egypt’s first pyramids were indeed their finest. The masterpieces of Mesolithic art (Cro-Magnon), possibly the oldest art in the world, were never matched in the later Neolithic. Rather than straight-line evolution, we are faced with cycles, the curve of civilization as a waxing and waning thing.*16 In chapter 3, I come back to these relapses of the Ihuan race.
In case after case, the oldest stone remains are the grandest and most perfectly executed; what followed later are crude imitations.
RICHARD HEINBERG,
MEMORIES AND VISIONS OF PARADISE
“The tribes of men . . . prospered for a long season. Then darkness came upon them, millions returning to a state of savagery.”41 In Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds Charles Berlitz noted “the retrograde tendency of American and numerous other ancient cultures . . . as one goes farther back in time, one finds more advanced cultural patterns in preceding eras.”42
Evolutionists seem to be entirely indifferent to the now substantial body of literature on high culture prior to the Magdalenian. Nevertheless, independent studies of the deep past reveal a golden age superseded by decline and savagery. If nothing else, the repeated fall from high civilization puts the lie to steady evolutionary progress from primitive to advanced.
Her people build up cities and nations for a season . . . but soon they are overflooded by [darkness], and the mortals devour one another as beasts of prey. . . . Their knowledge is dissipated by the dread hand of war . . . and lo, her people are cannibals again. . . . As oft as they are raised up in light, so are they again cast down in darkness.
OAHSPE, SYNOPSIS OF SIXTEEN CYCLES 3:6–10
I wonder why evolutionists, so big on competition (see below), deny the obvious cannibalism of prior ages? Why did Cro-Magnon disappear ca 12 kya? The questions are related, for the Ihuans (Cro-Magnon), inhabiting the wilderness, “ate the flesh of both man and beast.”43 As we go on, we will encounter other instances of retrogression in the Ihuan–Cro-Magnon race, which turns up in the record with a considerable sampling of archaic features (low skull, long arms, large orbits), indicating that this perfectly AMH race retrobred with Neanderthaloids, thereby descending lower and lower.
Just as the Paleolithic was coming to a close, ca 12 kya, “tribes of Druks and cannibals covered the earth over”—which corroborates ufologist/prehistorian Brinsley Le Poer Trench’s observation of cannibalism in Egypt around the time of Osiris. It was probably on that same horizon that the Greeks had their Polyphemus, a notorious cannibal. The cave of Fontbregoua in southeast France contains bones bearing cut marks, dated to around the same time, attesting to the presence of “savages and cannibals all over these great lands; enemies slain in battle [were] cut up for the cooking vessel.”44
But man eating was nothing new. Raymond Dart found evidence of cannibalism among Au, almost our earliest progenitors. In South Africa charred bones of human victims were found at Klasies, as well as at Bodo (Ethiopia). “In sights ranging from South Africa to Croatia to the U.S. Southeast, similar evidence indicates that cannibalism may long have been part of the human heritage.”45
Cannibalistic giants in the Americas may have been large Druks—the red-headed goliaths who terrorized the Indians of Nevada until fairly recent time. Sarah Winnemuca, a Paiute, wrote about a tribe of barbarians that once waylaid her people, and killed and ate them. The 1,000-year-old Anasazi site in the Southwest did indeed produce bones with cut marks. We’ll come back to these huge and troublesome Druks.
Just as Judeo-Christian tradition has the sins of the giant Nephilim bringing the deluge upon the world, Greek, Arabian, Roman, and Peruvian traditions likewise suggest that troublesome giants were the cause of the flood: “[T]he land of Whaga (Pan) was beyond redemption. . . . They have peopled the earth with darkness . . . and cannibals.”46
Archaeologists sifting through the remains of Druks and Neanderthals have come across unmistakable evidence of man eating: for example, in Spain at Atapuerca’s Gran Dolina and Sidron caves (dated 43 kya), where cut marks on bones indicate that the edible marrow was sucked out from defleshed, charred, and splintered bones, and at Germany’s Ehringsdorf site as well as at Steinheim, where skulls show heavy blows to the frontal bones. In Europe, Krapina (Yugoslavia) and Monte Circeo (Italy) are two important Neanderthal sites with the telltale remains of cannibal feasts: bodies and bones smashed open to get at marrow and brains.
But for some unknown reason, archaeologists are squeamish about announcing these incontrovertible finds, despite the work of Earnest Hooton, Franz Weidenreich, Robert Braidwood, and other top dog anthropologists, who found cannibalism at Zhoukoutien, China—judging from heavy blows on the Sinanthropus pate. Though this Peking Man was a headhunter who ate brains, Ashley Montagu stated: “It has been asserted that Peking man was a cannibal. . . . This is possible but unproven. . . . Except in aberrant cases, it is highly unlikely that man has ever resorted to eating his own kind except in extremis or for ritual purposes.”47 British archaeologist Paul Bahn interprets the Krapina and Monte Circeo finds as the result of a tragic roof fall, or perhaps a landslide, or the use of dynamite during excavation. And if that doesn’t fly, the Fontbregoua (France) and Krapina bones are understood in a ritual context: the defleshing of bones taken “as a stage in a mortuary practice.” Bahn also discredits the Monte Circeo evidence, despite the presence of a chisel-like object used to scoop out the brains, every skull of which shows fractures at the same spot around the right temple. This, he concludes nonetheless, must have been a hyena den, the tooth marks consistent with those of hyena. Cannibalism, he says, was “rare or non-existent,” and his interpretation has “demolished the myth.”48
But headhunters and cannibals are well known even from the recent past. The Aztecs, not too long ago, practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism, and when the Portuguese first got to South America, some of the local natives were cannibals, including the Yaghan and “Indios bravos” of Brazil’s Matto Grosso. In Borneo, the Dyak’s long-house still displays the skulls of people whose brains they ate, the practice also known in Indonesia and once widespread in Sundaland: Ngandong skulls of Java were smashed at the base like the Dyak ones. Until the eighteenth century the Ebu Gogo on Flores ate human meat. Until recently in New Guinea, too, tribesman ate brains of their enemies, the practice prohibited eventually by the colonial powers (in the 1880s). Other examples of cannibalism in modern times have been documented among Fijians and other Melanesian tribes. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century Easter Islanders were found to have resorted to cannibalism and the Tongans in the South Pacific were also man-eaters. Even in today’s Africa are the fierce cannibal people of the Congo, the Fang. Uganda’s atrocities and war crimes of very recent days include rape, mutilations, and cannibalism. During India’s drought and Skull Famine (1792) there was widespread cannibalism. Man of both the past and present was not above feasting on his fellow man.
A PAEAN TO MOTHER NATURE
When men first cottoned to the idea of evolution (On the Origin of Species, 1859), the world was good and ready for it. The universities were still strongly beholden to the Church of England; natural science, in other words, was still in thrall to the tenets of religious gospel. Science needed to be secularized. Its time had come. It was a world t
hat was reaching beyond the straitjacket of theology and past-thought, that wanted to know the unadorned truth, the facts of man’s beginnings, free of dogma and doctrines passed down by scriptural fiat. It was time for old fallacies to bend with the winds of change.
The Darwinian revolution, toppling old and fixed ideas, was inevitable, refreshing, and necessary. It served its purpose. But having freed itself from the shackles of theology, the scientific mind proceeded to embrace the opposite fallacy, the materialist/reductionist dictum. No sooner was anthropogenesis wrested from its biblical confines and made an article of science, than Darwinism itself became the new authority—the new gospel, the new dogma.
Victorian society, in the midst of the grinding Industrial Revolution, was having a love affair with the phenomena of nature, and Darwinism was the ultimate paean to nature per se, Mother Nature’s power. The progressive Victorian mind was also ready to jettison the “fixity” of species (immutability), as one more token of ancient dogma. Evolution appealed also to the entrepreneurial class, the educated, and the rising bourgeoisie, somehow affirming their sense of rank and higher worth, their qualification as the “fittest.” Darwin’s transmutation of species, moreover, only reinforced the optimistic nineteenth-century belief in progress, but more than just progress, it vindicated the upper-class white Europeans “who were taking over the world.”49
It is a curious thing that modern thinking has struck down almost every Victorian theory—except evolution. It’s staying power depends on this: Without it, science would have to admit it doesn’t know how human beings got here, a naked confession of ignorance. With atheism (or humanism) the predominant “religion” of today’s intelligentsia, the Weltanschauung of this secular age, the only real alternative to evolution—the divine hand, the work of the great unknown—is not acceptable. Many scientists are agnostic or possessed of split mind (forever undecided), a kind of cognitive dissonance.
Mysterious Origins of Hybrid Man Page 6