EVOLUTIONISTS at the CROSSROADS

Copyright, 1935 DAWN PUBLISHERS, Inc., 251 Washington Street Brooklyn, New York

Foreword

The publication of this timely treatise followed the very memorable meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Pittsburgh, in December, 1934, during which the intriguing theory of organic evolution once again held the spotlight and received its usual generous amount of misleading publicity.

By the news headlines the public once more was grossly imposed upon, and induced to believe that evolution is no longer an hypothesis but a proven fact. One headline read, ‘Scientists Depict Genes in Evolution"; and still another said, "Evolution is Directly Pictured."

It seems regrettable that such erroneous inferences are allowed to go uncorrected by the savants. They know they did not actually depict evolution, nor explain the origin of species, nor really picture evolution in action. What they did was to discuss the behaviour of chromosomes and genes in living cells, make some interesting observations on variations, and do some additional speculation on evolution as a "theoretical possibility."

Then they adjourned with the same old familiar realization, that organic evolution is a very fascinating theory but is not yet actually proven to be true. If they would make these frank admissions and publicly repudiate the misleading reports of their meetings and doings, a book like this would not now be necessary. Under the circumstances we trust this treatise will be widely read, that it may help to clarify the scientific atmosphere—at least for laymen—and that all true scientists may welcome it as a friendly bearer of truth

THE PUBLISHERS

Evolutionists at the Crossroads (Part I)

CHAPTER I Back to the Ignoramus Viewpoint

SO SYSTEMATICALLY have three generations of impressionable schoolchildren been indoctrinated in the theory of evolution, and induced by imaginative writers to believe that it is an incontrovertibly proven fact—instead of being the mere unproven hypothesis that it is—that now if anyone dares to question the soundness of the theory, the public immediately classes him as a fogy who has not yet gotten free from the superstitious cobwebs of the dark ages.

It is also lamentably true that much of the anti-evolutionist literature tends to confirm the public in such unfavorable judgment—for much of it is written by persons who are poorly informed, and who merely make silly jokes or appeal to prejudice rather than to scientific reason and common sense.

It is not enough to merely ignore evolution’s arguments. Such silence satisfies no one. Nor is it sufficient to casually dismiss the evolutionist’s claims with a practical joke—such a course does nothing more than foster prejudice, piquancy or pride, and often causes intelligent persons to conclude that evolution’s claims cannot be refuted.

It is now apparent that every argument thus far advanced in behalf of the widely taught theory of human evolution has utterly failed; and it is our purpose to point out these scientific failures one by one. In doing this we shall present the statements of famed evolutionists themselves to prove that their case really has broken down.

Darwinism was rejected by many scientists of his day; but it found favor with Huxley, Haeckel, and Herbert Spencer. Darwin was a retiring man, but his sponsors were more aggressive; and they soon put his ideas across to the public in true press-agent style. Finally they got it incorporated into the schoolbooks, and then it became "orthodox." Meanwhile novelists and feature writers had found in evolution a fruitful field for play of the imagination; and to this day they have continued to tell the world far more about how man evolved from the lower orders of life than Darwin or any real scientist every claimed to believe.

Scarcely had the twentieth century dawned when there came rumblings of discontent from over the scientific horizon. Zoologists first began to wonder if "natural selection" really works, or if it is but a bit of unprovable armchair philosophy. Darwin himself had admitted that he had been unable to develop any new species, after much effort.

All of Darwin’s proposed methods of evolution; namely, natural selection, environment, and inheritance of acquired characters, are now being challenged in scientific circles. Some now openly repudiate Darwinism even while continuing to hold blindly to the evolutionary principle as a matter of mere faith—they simply believe or hope that evolution is true, but readily admit that they do not know by what means one species could have "changed" into another, and have no actual proof that such changes really have occurred.

Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan, of California Institute of Technology, interbred various fruit flies through thousands of generations, and under many different environmental conditions. He produced many new varieties, but no new species—that is none that would interbreed only with its own kind and not with the parent stocks. He is an evolutionist "by faith," admits he cannot explain how it may occur, but offered some interesting suggestions in the 1934 science meet in Pittsburgh.

Dr. William Bateson, famous English biologist, and probably the foremost authority on genetics or scientific breeding, several years ago proclaimed his complete break with Darwinism. His words fell as a bombshell when he wrote in Science magazine the following: "Darwin speaks no more with philosophical authority....No evidence has been discovered to verify his genesis of species."

Since then Dr. Bateson repeatedly has declared his position to be that of one who accepts evolution only by faith, without any tangible evidence on which to base it. He says:

"Do we, as a matter of fact, find in the world about us variations occurring of such a kind as to warrant faith in a contemporary progressive evolution? Till lately most of us would have said ‘yes’ without misgiving. The appearance of contemporary variation proves to be an illusion. WE have done with the notion that Darwin came to favor—that large differences can arise by accumulation of small differences....Modern research lends not the smallest encouragement or sanction to the view that gradually evolution occurs by the transformation of masses of individuals, though such fancy has fixed itself on popular imagination."

These damaging admissions by such commanding scientists as Bateson and Morgan, find corroboration also in "Readings on Evolution," by Prof. H. Newman of the University of Chicago. Though still adhering "by faith" to evolution as a theory, he says, at page 57: "Reluctant as we may be to admit it, honesty compels the evolutionist to admit that there is no absolute proof of organic evolution."

Darwin himself, in his "Origin of Species," made this frank admission: "In spite of all the efforts of trained observers, not one change of species into another is on record." It is not surprising to Bible students, who have confidence in the story of special creation as recorded in Genesis, to learn that scientists, after nearly a century of effort, can find no positive proof to support a theory that is obviously at variance with the Word of God.

Accordingly Prof. Vernon Kellogg, of Leland Stanford University, adds his testimony to the host of his colleagues who now take evolution "by faith" without a scintilla of scientific proof. In his "Darwinism of Today," page 18, he says: "We only tell the general truth when we declare that no indubitable cases of species-forming or transforming, that is, of descent, have been observed. For my part it seems better to go back to the old safe ignoramus standpoint."

Prof. Kellogg is to be commended. It is better to admit ignorance than to pretend to have knowledge which really is not possessed. The shame of very many self-styled scientists is that they profess to have proof of evolution, and deceive the laity into believing that evolution is no longer a theory but a proven fact.

In succeeding chapters we shall discuss the four main lines of argument in behalf of the evolution theory, together with facts which may be offered in rebuttal. The more one examines into the matter with care, the weaker does the theory of human evolution appear, and the more satisfactory does the Biblical story of creation become.

CHAPTER II Evolution’s Case Reviewed

THE reader may wonder why serious scientists continue to rest their faith in a theory they admit they have been unable to prove. You may ask why they do not lay it aside and stop wasting time on it, when their every effort to demonstrate its soundness has proved to be futile? But to this question the scientists have an ever ready reply. They remind us that many important scientific discoveries have come about as a result of testing mere theories.

Right or wrong, a theory does often serve to correlate all available data along a given line, and bring related facts and ideas into a common compass for study. Hence scientists insist that the theory of evolution, though admittedly unproved, is justifiable as a guide and stimulus to scientific imagination, and is more likely to lead them to the true scientific explanation of the origin of species than if they had no working hypothesis whatever on the subject.

Scientists declare that they are simply seeking the truth from nature, and that if they should at any time discover facts that flatly contradict evolution they will readily discard the theory, just as they are constantly rejecting discredited theories on other scientific subjects. Until then, they prefer to hold tentatively to the theory of evolution, because they say they know of nothing better to pin their faith upon. But is it faith or credulity? Bible students, of course, feel that they have something better than the evolution theory as a foundation for faith: that the creation story of Genesis may be depended upon as a succinct statement of truth, and that the searching scientists will find this out eventually.

It is a lamentable fact that few scientists of today have ever made a serious study of the Bible; hence they are unfamiliar with the hidden truths which its pages contain. It is but natural, therefore, that they should seek to explain natural phenomena in a naturalistic way, entirely apart from what the Scriptures may have to say about it.

To them it has seemed more reasonable to assume that the myriads of species of plants and animals have come into being through natural evolutionary law than that each species represents a special and direct act of creation. And inasmuch as man’s organism is constructed along lines similar to those of various lower animals, naturally they have assumed that he too must be included in the general "evolutionary" scheme, which they have proposed as a theoretical yardstick with which to measure life.

In view of the fact that human evolution obviously is contrary to the bible, and yet is believed in by millions of people today, we feel that it is of prime importance to bring it out into the open. But before any of its fallacies may be effectively shown it is necessary first to state the main arguments on which evolutionists rely. Although they admit that there are no scientific proofs to support the theory, yet there are four distinct lines of arguments which have been urged. These have to do with

(1) structural similarities,

(2) Embryology,

(3) Fossil exhibits, and

(4) Genetics.

These arguments may be epitomized as follows:

(1) Similarity of Structures: Under this head much "evolution" literature has been written. Such books point out various anatomical similarities in the different species of animals, also structural similarities in the different families of plants, and content that this suggests kinship through evolution. For example, man’s arm and hand bear a resemblance to that of the ape, and indeed is somewhat like the forefoot of the dog, cat or rat.

There also is the general similarity in the construction of the backbone of nearly all vertebrate animals; also resemblances between the heart, stomach and other organs and structures, in nearly all the varius animal species, including man. Says Prof. Thomas Hunt Morgan, celebrated evolutionist: "We find it difficult to believe that such complex, yet similar things, could have arisen independently." But to the creationists this seems a very unconvincing argument, as will be pointed out in more detail later in this book.

(2) Embryonic Development: During embryonic life the fetus of all animals undergoes many peculiar changes; and to this some biologists seek to attach evolutionary significance. During this period certain embryonic organs and structures appear, and then disappear before birth. For example, the human embryo at a very early state develops so-called "gill slits," resembling those of a fish. These later disappear, or rather they develop into the human ear and adjacent structures.

At one stage the human fetus also has a rudimentary tail, which later recedes and disappears. In fact nearly all animals while in embryo bear some resemblance to some lower forms of life, at one stage or another of fetal development. From this fact some evolutionists have argued that the embryo or fetus during its development just repeats in miniature and in rapid succession, the various stages through which that particular species has "evolved" during thousands or millions of years. Some school text books seriously teach this idea, which was originated by Haeckel, and dignified it by the name, "Haeckel’s Biogenetic Law." But there is no scientific proof that this "law" has anything to do with evolution, except theoretically; and certainly it does not prove evolution’s case to a skeptic.

(3) Paleontology, or Study of Fossils: "The remains of plants and animals, found in or upon the earth, are called fossils; and the study of fossils of extinct species is a science known as Paleontology. Evolutionists are generally agreed that Paleontology is their most hopeful source of research, and that the fossils of extinct species thus far found really constitute their strongest argument for evolution; though admittedly it falls far short of proof, as we shall see in our next chapter.

It was the dream of Darwin, and it is the hope of all his followers today, that eventually sufficient fossils of extinct and current species may be found to enable the scientists to make up a series of such similar structures as will show an unbroken graduation, from the lowest to the highest in order of development, and thereby prove evolution’s case by "circumstantial evidence."

But modern Paleontologists are not so hopeful of success as were their fellows of several years ago. They of course have found many fossils since Darwin’s day, and have tried to arrange them in an unbroken series; yet they have so many "missing links" in their chain of evidence that their fossil record is becoming exceedingly discouraging.

Indeed, these fossils of extinct species furnish no more evidence for evolution than do the similarity in structures of modern living species. And certainly the structural similarity, in any case cannot prove evolution, even if there were no gaps or links that are missing; but in view of them, the Paleontologists admit that the fossil record to date really raises more problems than it solves.

(4) Genetics, or Experimental Breeding: The fourth and last main argument that can be advanced in behalf of evolution is based on experimentation in breeding animals, or in crossing plants. And to date, the most that has been accomplished is the production of new varieties; but no new species or families which cannot be crossed with the parent species. Therefore this last resort of the evolutionists has utterly failed of proof. However, some interesting things have been discovered in the field of Genetics, such as Mendel’s "Law of Variation," and DeVries’ "Mutations," which we may here briefly note.

From 1857 to 1868 Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, experimented with garden peas, crossing different varieties and producing new ones. His notations of the results came to the attention of Prof. Correns, famous botanist, about thirty years later; and he soon found that Mendel had discovered a hitherto unknown law of heredity. Correns duplicated Mendel’s experiments, using the garden flower "four O’Clock" instead of peas, and found that they too followed Mendel’s "law."

Correns crossed a red and white variety of the flower "Four O’Clock"; and, true to Mendel’s "law of segregation," all of the first generation were pink—that is, the red and white were evenly mixed. But in the second generation only half of them came pink—the remainder being pure white or pure red, just like the original parent stocks. They were just as pure as though they had never been mixed, and continued to reproduce themselves without variation.

Mendel’s "law of segregation" is simply this: When any two simple varieties are crossed, only half of the genes or hereditary elements of each of the parent cells mix with each other, while the other half remains segregated and dormant; and in the second generation these segregated genes filter out and reproduce themselves in their original form, as though they had never been mixed.

Mendel also discovered that if complex varieties are crossed (that is, if there is more than one difference between the parent stocks, as when yellow-round peas are crossed with green-wrinkled peas), not only will the original unmixed genes filter out in the second generation, but in addition there now will be two new varieties of hybrids instead of one.

Dr. Morgan, when at Columbia University, found that animals obey Mendel’s law the same as do plants, and that finally the original stocks begin to filter out and reappear, even after having passed through successive generations of cross-breeding with other varieties. In none of these experiments, either with plants or animals, have any new species been produced. Rather, Mendel’s laws seem to prove that the species are fixed, and that the tendency of nature is to return to the original parent stocks rather than to get away from them, as Darwin erroneously imagined.

In 1900 Prof. H. DeVries, a Dutch botanist, who had been experimenting extensively with the "evening primrose," discovered that occasionally a new and strange variety would crop up, totally different from all the other hybrids that were being produced by directly crossing the varieties. These new variants seemed to be freaks of nature, that came up in defiance of Mendel’s law; and yet were able to perpetuate their variety if unmixed with others—although generally they could be readily mixed with any other variety of primrose.

DeVries called these freaks "mutants," and he formulated a theory which seems to explain their existence. He believed that they result from some accidental scrambling or disarranging of the "genes" in the fertilized cell or germ plasm, which may happen either at the time of fertilization or subsequently, and which prevents nature from taking its ordinary course. Mendel’s law thus represents nature’s normal process, while DeVries’ mutants seem to be the result of some accidental interference with nature.

Now if a mutant should ever be discovered that is so far changed from the original stock as to be incapable of mixing with it, and at the same time would be fertile in itself, and able to mix with other mutants like itself, then we would have a demonstration of a new species arising or "evolving" from an old species—the answer to every evolutionist’s prayer since Darwin’s day. But no such new species has ever been discovered, notwithstanding thirty years of experimentation with this in view.

Even if such a mutant should finally appear, which is exceedingly unlikely (since their genes or hereditary elements are none other than those of the parent stocks), yet this would not prove the existence of a law of evolution; for these mutations apparently do not result from any law whatsoever, but in defiance of law, due to accident. At most, then, this would be accidental evolution, not "natural evolution." Furthermore, these mutants are freaks, and are often dwarfs or otherwise inferior to the parent stock. Hence they do not obey a law of "progress," such as Darwin’s theory demands.

Thus it is apparent that neither the discoveries of Mendel nor of DeVries, nor of any other experimenters in the field of genetics, have helped the case for evolution. Rather they have proved to be a boomerang. In another chapter we shall see how signally each of the four lines of argument for evolution we have outlines, has failed to support the theory. As to the effects of Mendel’s and DeVries’ findings on Darwinism to date, let Dr. D. H. Scott, the well-known British botanist and erstwhile Darwinist, speak. IN an article in Nature magazine, he has this to say:

"It has long been evident that all those ideas of evolution in which the older generation of naturalists grew up have been disturbed, or indeed transformed, since the re-discovery of Mendel’s work and the consequent development of the new science of genetics. Not only is the omnipotence of natural selection gravely impugned, but variation itself, the foundation upon which the Darwinian theory seemed to rest so securely, is now in question.

"The mutations of DeVries, though still accepted by many, seem to some at the present time to be nothing more than Mendelian segregates, the products of previous crossings; opinion o this subject is in a state of flux. In fact it is clear that we know astonishingly little about variation.

Thus it becomes apparent that evolutionists today are really at the crossroads, though some of them may be loath to admit it. They have strenuously urged their fourfold reasoning, as summarized above; but now must admit that proof of their theory is utterly lacking in each of these wide fields of research.

CHAPTER III The Fossil Record

IN THE preceding chapter we briefly reviewed the four main lines of evidence upon which the evolutionist are obliged to rest their case; namely, deductions based on

(1) anatomical similarities,

(2) embryonic development,

(3) comparison of fossils, and

(4) experimental breeding.

From these four sources all concrete data in favor of evolution is, and of necessity must be derived.

The dearth of actual proof of evolution to date, as freely admitted by leading evolutionists themselves, may have been a surprise to some—especially to those who have obtained their "education" on the subject from fiction writers who generally treat this popular theory as though it were long since proven beyond all shadow of doubt. But Bible students, who believe the Genesis account of creation as it reads, have not been surprised at these disclosures. Human evolution is contrary to the divine Word and Plan, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter; hence it would indeed be surprising if scientists should ever find "proof" of this or of any other anti-Scriptural hypothesis.

The fact is, the evolution theory in its application (or misapplication) to humanity, and indeed even in respect to the lower orders of animals and plants, has never been proven. No true scientist makes any claim that it has been proven, though a few of them sometimes express themselves so carelessly as to lead casual readers into the error of believing that its correctness really has been established. The wish may be father to the thought in such cases; but the undeniable fact still remains, that evolution is still a mere philosophical theory, an unconfirmed scientific hypothesis and nothing more.

Charles Darwin, in his "Origin of Species," set forth the essence of his evolutionary creed in these few direct words: "I believe that animals are descended from at most only four or five progenitors; and plants from an equal or less number....Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from one prototype....from some one primordial form."

By this he of course means that in his opinion all species of plants and animals that have ever lived upon this planet must have evolved from one type of simple unicellular life germ, or from "at most only four or five." Just how that first or primordial type of life germ came into existence no scientist yet knows, even as they do not know the origin of inorganic matter or the ultimate source of energy. Some evolutionists are willing to admit that the first life germ may have been created by an Intelligent god, while others insist that it must have come into being through some marvelous "accidental" combination of inorganic atoms, which no scientific laboratory has ever been able to verify or duplication.

Nor are all evolutionists agreed upon the theory that animal life sprang from plant life; though this evidently was the firm belief of Darwin. Some organisms, of course do seem to be on the borderline between the plant and animal kingdoms—bacteria and sponges for example—and experts are baffled when they try to classify them; they do not know whether to call them plants or animals. But most works on evolution avoid a clear commitment that bacteria or sponges are the connecting route through which all animal life has traveled from the primordial plant world.

Plainly there is a great gulf between plants and animal life in general. And it staggers even scientific imagination to conceive of natural conditions that could cause plant cells to spontaneously change into animal cells, of even a unisexual type—to say nothing of their subsequent division into male and female of the species. But this is only the first "gap" in the evolutionists theoretical chain; there are many more to follow, as we shall see as we critically peruse the fossil record.

Nevertheless the geologists, paleontologists, and other scientists should not be censured for their honest efforts to fathom the works of nature’s laws, even though they have been admittedly hasty in jumping at unwarranted conclusions on very slender evidence.

The geologic evidence clearly reveals that the first forms of animal life upon this planet were creeping sea-creatures—simple, invertebrate, shell-less—even as the Bible suggests (Ge 1:20.) The remains of these boneless sea-creatures are found in the lowest strata, rare and poor preserved. Then, in the Cambrian rock stratum next above, are found fossils of trilobites and other shell fish, in abundance. Immediately above this appear the fossils of fish of a very low order, without backbone or skeleton, but possessing fins which enable them to swim.

Then, in the layer next above, are found fish of higher order—vertebrates, with full skeletons—similar to many of the varieties with which we are familiar today. Above these are found amphibians—frog-like or lizard-like creatures, which were able to live both in water and on the land. Then came reptiles, then birds, then mammals, and finally man. A similar progression is also found in the orderly appearance of plant life. First came lichen and mosses, then grasses, and herbs; while fossils of trees and other higher forms of vegetation are found for the first time in the stratum immediately above that in which feathered birds make their initial appearance.—See Ge 1:11, 12, 20-26.

Now it is from the fossils which show this progressive gradation in order of appearance that the evolutionists have sought to build up their "strong case." But they have not yet found the perfect gradation that they had hoped for. After failing to find among living species the several "missing links" which are needed to bridge the admittedly enormous gaps in the record, they have placed their hopes in the ultimate discovery of fossil so prehistoric or extinct species—but with not very satisfactory results thus far.

Of course, the science of paleontology is relatively new. No scientist had suspected that there were such things as fossils or extinct species of animals until the beginning of the nineteenth century. At that time some workmen, digging in an old quarry near Paris, found the remains of a prehistoric elephant, which was unlike the skeleton of any known variety of elephant now living on earth. That opened a new chapter in scientific history. Since then the earth has been combed for specimens of extinct species, in an endeavor to complete the fossil record and thus permit the evolutionists to present a series of skeletons in a progressive chain, each one nearly like its predecessor, but showing some small step of improvement, such as Darwin’s theory calls for. In this way they have hoped to circumstantially prove an evolutionary law of development that has operated from the very beginning of life upon this planet.

The scientists have made up a few sectional series of certain types of fossils, each showing more or less similarity to each other, which they fondly display in the museums. But, says Prof. C.A. Seward, of Cambridge University, in an article in Nature magazine: "A student who takes an impartial retrospect soon discovers that the fossil record raises more problems than it solves." Instead of revealing a perfect gradation from the lowest to the highest in plant and animal structures, as the evolution theory requires, it rather indicates thus far that from time to time during geologic history new and distinct species have suddenly appeared, which possess organs and structures that in no way resemble those of any preceding type.

For example: the evolutionists have theorized that reptiles, by several successive minute steps, gradually evolved into birds. Yet the fossil record reveals that birds made their appearance suddenly and dramatically—in the Jurassic stratum of the Mesozoic era—with full feathers and wings; and no intermediate types of creatures between reptiles and birds thus far have been found. Such unbridged gaps as these throughout the fossil record create the unsolved problems to which Prof. Seward alludes in the foregoing quotation; but they agree perfectly with the Bible account of creation.

And the reptile-bird gap is but one of the yawning chasms in the fossil chain, of which the ordinary layman has heard little. Everybody of course is familiar with the fact that there is a "missing link" between the so-called anthropoid ape and mankind. But this link, even if it could be found, would not complete the case for organic evolution—there are too many other and even large gaps that must yet be spanned before Darwin’s theory could be even circumstantially confirmed.

Darwin himself appreciated all this even in his day; and in his "Origin of Species" he made this frank admission: "Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory." Darwin, however, then fondly expressed the hope that the many gaps in the fossil record would eventually be filled by further geologic research.

Over seventy years have elapsed since his death, and geologic research has gone forward on a worldwide scale as never before, but Darwin’s fond hope has not yet been realized. Indeed, the more the geologist delves into earth’s silent strata, and the more the paleontologist seeks to complete his "finely graduated organic chain," the more pronounced becomes the divergence between theory and fact, even as Prof. Seward tacitly admits. Yet it seems that he, like many other scientists, continues to hold to evolution as a matter of simple faith.

Prof. Louis Trenchard More, of the University of Cincinnati, also doubtless considers himself a believer in organic evolution. Yet in a series of able lectures which he delivered at Princeton University not so long ago he had this to say:

"The more one studies Paleontology [fossils], the more certain does one become that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great ‘mysteries’ of religion. The changes that are noted as time progresses show no orderly and no consecutive evolutionary chain and, above all, they give us no clue whatever as to the cause of variation....The evidence from Paleontology is for discontinuity; only by faith and imagination is there continuity of variation."—Dogma of Evolution (More), pp. 160, 161; published by Princeton University Press (1925).

It seems then that evolutionists today cannot longer chide those who accept the Genesis story of special creation, on the ground that the latter’s belief rests on "blind faith" and not on scientific facts; for now the evolutionists are found to be in exactly the same boat. Indeed the entire evolutionary scheme rests on "blind faith" alone. The evolutionist must even begin by faith, for certainly he cannot undertake to explain the origin of inert matter on any better ground than that is was "created." Neither can he explain the beginning of life—he must take it simply by faith. It is unscientific to say that life was "spontaneously generated," especially since he cannot prove it or demonstrate how it was done.

The evolutionist cannot explain how a plant germ evolved into an animal cell, nor can he show that it can or has been done. HE takes it by faith alone. The first animal cells, he says, were sexless; then he cannot explain how some of these developed into males and others into females. He must exercise faith again when he comes to the great gap between invertebrate and vertebrate animals. The latter appear suddenly and in abundance—fish with fully formed backbones and skeletons—in Silurian deposits. And there are no fossils of any intermediate sea life which show a gradual evolution of invertebrate fish into vertebrates.

In Carboniferous strata there appears, suddenly and in abundance, amphibian air-breathing animals, possessing fully formed feet and legs; and there are no intermediate fossils which show a gradual evolution of fish into these amphibian frog-like creatures. Next come the reptiles, with a marked gap on either side of them in the fossil record. These gaps no Darwinist can account for. Instead of a "fine gradation" there seems to be "leaps and jumps" of nature throughout the whole record.

And next above these, in the Jurassic strata, full feathered birds make their sudden appearance, with no intermediate fossils between them and the reptiles, or anything to connect them with any preceding species. Reptiles have teeth, but birds have none. And is it scientific to suppose that snake scales could change themselves into feathers at a single jump?

The Darwinists have contended that nature makes no leaps, but moves by slow infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress. Yet the fossil record does not confirm that theory; either nature in the remote past, has made sudden, enormous jumps contrary to all human experience and observation, or else there was a special creation of the successive fixed species throughout all geologic times. And certainly the latter idea does not call for any greater degree of "blind faith" than does the former.

The fossil record at its very start presents us with several unfilled gaps which no evolutionist can explain. Fossils from the very earliest stratum show wide differentiation of species then in existence, with no intermediate forms to connect one species with another. Prof. Cook, of Cambridge University, says this concerning these earliest living forms in the remotely distant Cambrian geologic era:

"The first undisputed traces of animal life to appear in the Cambrian epoch, exhibit the same phyletic distinctions as now exist—sponges, echinoderms, mollusca and worms, formed already, in those immeasurably remote ages, groups apparently as generally distinct from one another as they are at the present time."—Cambridge Natural History, Vol. II, p. 5.

Another conundrum for the evolutionist is the fact that we still have these same types of sponges, mollusca, echinoderms, and other Cambrian sea life, living on earth today. They have never evolved a step in all these ages, but appear in the same form throughout all geologic strata, down to modern times. Although many of the ancient species have become extinct, nevertheless those which are still in existence look just like they did when they made their initial appearance on earth. Speaking of the earliest fossils of shellfish, Prof. Geoffrey Smith, of Oxford University, says: "If we examine the fossil shells, and those of the living animals, with the minutest care, we would not be able to detect the smallest difference."—Primitive Animals, pg. 91.

We thus see, by the admission of evolutionists themselves, that the Darwinian theory which has been foisted upon the immature minds of schoolchildren for the past three generations, and which has caused the world to believe in it, is recognized by its own sponsors to be faulty at its foundation and unstable throughout its entire structure. Clearly the following utterances of Dr. D.H. Scott, the distinguished British naturalist, in his epoch-making address some time ago before the British Association, cannot be disputed:

"For the moment, at all events, the Darwinian period is past. We can no longer enjoy the comfortable assurance that once satisfied so many of us, that the main problem has been solved—all is gain in the melting pot. Now, in fact, a new generation has grown up that knows not Darwin."

CHAPTER IV Deceptive Museum Exhibits

WE have already noted that there are many missing links in the scientists’ fossil record, besides the enormous gap that exists between the anthropoid ape and modern man; and that it is impossible for the Darwinists to prove by this record that nature is traveling gradually from lower to higher species by an evolutionary law which moves forward by infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress.

As the matter now stands, the record suggests that either each species was specially created, or else that nature has evolved them by "fits and starts" rather than by slow, small steps. Bible students cannot see how a belief in special divine creation requires any more faith than the evolutionist must have in "blind nature" which, presto! Causes invertebrates to change suddenly into vertebrates, water animals into air-breathing amphibians, fanged reptiles into toothless birds, and snake scales into multicolored feathers—at one jump.

Even if scientists should yet find fossils which seem to fit into some of these unbridged gaps it would be necessary to prove that these animals made their appearance on earth at precisely the time in geologic history which each particular gap demands: otherwise the evidence would be valueless as proof for evolution. As a matter of fact, all the fossil exhibits in our museums today are actinically arranged wholly without respect to any chronological sequence, hence they are plainly deceptive.

These museum-exhibits always begin wit the smallest and simplest fossil, and gradually go on up to the more complex organisms; with any regard to the time when each of these animals first appeared on earth. Perhaps the largest and the smallest skeleton in the group may be those of animals which actually lived contemporaneously; yet the artificial arrangements of them by the museum managers leads visitors to suppose that the first animal in the group must have lived many millions of years prior to the last and largest one in the group, since that much time apparently would be needed for one to "evolve" into the other by slow, successive steps.

In this insidious way the fossil-fixers induce immature schoolchildren and others, who thoughtlessly view their exhibits, to imagine that each of those animals made its initial appearance on earth in exactly the order in which the museums display them, and to suppose that thus they have "evolved" from one species into another by small graduated steps. Then, when all these schoolchildren have grown up in that belief and have become the adult generation of the morrow, naturally the world continues to accept the evolution theory—for did not we see the "proof" of it when we visited a museum in our childhood?

But what may seem to be evolutionary "proof" to schoolchildren, is far from proof to the studious scientists themselves. Prof. Thomas Hunt Morgan, heretofore mentioned, in his "Critique of Evolution," page 9, says:

"Because we can often arrange the ‘series’ of structures in a line extending from the very simple to the most complex, we are apt to become unduly impressed by this fact and conclude that if we found the complete series we should ind all the intermediate steps, and that they have arisen in the order of their complexity. This conclusion is not necessarily correct."

Prof. J. P. Lotsy, celebrated Dutch scientist, also seems to see the utter hopelessness of trying to prove Darwinism by these artificially arranged fossil displays, and by guesswork "reconstructions" made from fragmentary remains. And he should know what he is talking about, for he is a leading phylogenist who has made reconstructions and fossil exhibits for many years. In his "Evolution by Hybridization," p. 140, he says:

"Phylogeny, e.g., construction of what has happened in the past, is no science, but a product of fantastic speculations. Those who know that I have spent a considerable part of my life in efforts to trace the phylogeny of the vegetable kingdom will know that this is not written down lightly; nobody cares to destroy his own efforts."

Such statements as these by present-day scientists, who still call themselves evolutionists "by faith," plainly indicate that the modern scientific trend is to agree with the late Dr. Etheridge, who for many years was the great fossil expert of the British Museum, and who is quoted by Prof. Townsend in his "Collapse of Evolution" as saying:

"Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species."

Prof. J. B. Warren, of the University of California, is another scientist who seems to agree fully with the foregoing. He is quoted by Dr. Williams in his "Evolution Disproved" as remarking frankly that during the course of human history "there should certainly be known at least a few instances of the evolution of once species from another," but that "no such instance is known."

Of course it is obvious that there are certain anatomical resemblances between various species of animals; and indeed between man and the chimpanzee, gorilla or ape. It is inevitable that there should be structural similarities, for the simple reason that the same mechanical and biological principle are commonly involved. The same thing is true in mechanics generally; and in architecture, or any of the arts. Buildings frequently employ the same architectural principles, because they are intended to perform similar functions; but this does not imply that the one has "evolved" from the other.

Common anatomic resemblances no more prove that man was evolved from the ape than that architectural resemblances prove a kinship between St. Peter’s in Rome and a Masonic Cathedral. There are close anatomic resemblances between a dog and a lion, yet evolutionists do not even place them in the same group; for the one is a canine and the other a feline. Neither should man be grouped with the anthropoid ape, simply because of certain anatomic similarities. But why stress the resemblances and overlook the enormous divergences? There are quite as many differences as there are similarities between them.

True, some races and individuals have retrograded about as far as it is possible for them to go and still be human. Certain types of men have sunk down so low that they have become savage cannibals, and thus approximate the beastly plane. But still there is a great gap between them and even an "educated" ape. Man is a reasoning creature, not governed by mere instinct. He has a moral sense; probably much corrupted and seared, but still capable of being developed. This is not true of beasts.

There is no mental nor moral resemblance between man and beast. A dog sometimes seems to have certain moral qualities; but it is only apparent. No dog actually possesses a moral sense; nor does any other animal, except man. Many animals respond to kindness, and can be taught to obey. Some readily learn to be faithful servants of the hand that feeds them. Some dogs indeed can e trained not to molest little children.

But tests show that it is not because of any ethical reasoning or moral appreciation of right and wrong that leads animals thus to refrain from doing harm. Either it is not their natural disposition to be ferocious, or else they have learned by means of repeated punishments and rewards exactly what course is best for them to follow. But man, even the lowest savage tribesman, has a moral sense that can be influenced by belief—even though it be a superstitious belief. He has a conscience capable somehow of being touched.

Evolutionists, in a studied effort to establish kinship between man and beast, have drawn deeply at the well of vain imagination, and have made "reconstructions" of what they suppose earliest man must have looked like. These artificial reconstructions or "restorations" are to be found in our great museums, and they invariably represent early man as bearing a very close resemblance to the ape. But the plastic artists who made these so-called "reconstructions" knew no more about what early man looked like than does anyone else; they simply drew upon their vivid imagination.

For example: America’s leading museum proudly displays an original "reconstruction" of the so-called "Trinil Ape Man." It is a horrible looking creature, with apelike countenance, simian ears, scowling face and long shaggy hair. As you stand bef ore it you imagine it is indeed a "half-man, half-gorilla," a dangerous low-bred creature that is ready to attack you and tear you to shreds.

What evidence did the plastic artist, J. H. McGregor, have in his possession by which he was able to "reconstruct" this so-called Trinil Ape-man? Simply this: The upper part of a human thigh bone, found at Trinil, Java, in 1891. And these bones were not together when they were found either. The teeth were discovered in he sand fully a yard away from the skull, and the shattered thigh bone fragment was nearly fifty feet away.

Yet from these bits of scattered bone, which nobody can prove ever belonged to one and the same creature, Prof. McGregor made his "reconstruction," with its ape-like jaws, gaping mouth, simian ears, shaggy hair, and all! And a picture of this McGregor "restoration of earliest man" has been reproduced in many textbooks for schoolchildren to gaze upon as "proof"of human evolution. This plaster cast bust is admittedly an able specimen of plastic art, but it is no more proof of human evolution than is any imaginative sketch of a "cave-man" drawn for a magazine cover.

It is regrettable that school textbooks and teachers generally fail to make these essential facts clear to the student. Too often the schoolbooks tacitly imply, if they do not state in unmistakable terms, that man is descended from this supposed "Trinil Ape-man" which Prof. McGregor has imaginatively "reconstructed," and without giving the schoolchild the slightest intimation that scientists themselves are not agreed as to the practical value or significance of these fragmentary Java bones. Schoolchildren should not be given books to study which do not honestly state facts.

Sir James Jeans, one of England’s foremost scientists, in his lectures at Cambridge University a year or two ago, very properly and pointedly warned the students to beware of textbooks that make too positive assertions, not only as to the evolution of man, but also as t the source of life itself. It is his opinion that the sooner we cease trying to deceive ourselves and our children into believing that a long-taught theory is necessarily true and resolve to face facts just as they are, regardless of what pet ideas they may contradict, the sooner we may expect to make progress in the direction of ultimate truth.

As for the value of many of the theoretical generalizations of scientists in regard to "early man," and especially as to the false implications of the aforementioned "reconstructions" or "restorations," we here quote the following from the recent collaborated work of Professor Shepard and Morris, of New York University, in their World’s Essential Knowledge, Vol. 1, published in 1930:

"A single bone in the hands of some of these scientific magicians is soon transformed into a complete human being, physically perfect but ethically horrible....In recent years we have had more than our normal supply of sweeping generalizations, which too often are the last resort of baffled or tired minds....It is unfortunate that the people of the ‘pre-civilization era’ all bear in the popular mind the stigma of inferiority, of brutishness and of savagery. Some of this is no doubt due to the riotous imagination of scientists and pseudo-scientists."

CHAPTER V On the Trail of the Missing Link

THUS far in this book we have dealt with the evolution theory in its broadest aspects, as it relates to the plant and animal kingdoms in general; and we have seen that even its own chief advocates readily admit that there is no actual proof that the theory is scientifically sound. We also have found that there are many "missing links" throughout the fossil record, and that these gaps or blanks seem no nearer now of being filled than they were far back in Darwin’s day.

In this chapter let us focus our attention upon the "missing link" that is nearest to us—the one which constitutes the unbridged space between the so-called anthropoid ape and modern man. We want to know what progress the scientists have made, if any, in spanning this yawing chasm between man and beast.

We now insist that Darwinists present before the court of public opinion their full case in behalf of human evolution. We want them to exhibit their proofs one by one, that they may be scrutinized by intelligent, critical readers among the laity. We therefore call for all their fossil specimens that they may be marked for evidence and presented for consideration to the jury.

We are not asking now for theory or conjecture; we want real evidence—actual proofs on which evolutionists themselves rely each time they assert that man is a near relative of the ape. Theoretically plaster cast "restorations" will not serve their purpose now; we demand the original fossils from which their so-called restorations or reconstructions have been made. Such cleverly constructed plaster casts may be interesting exhibits for a museum; but they cannot be accepted as evidence in this court of opinion, for they are neither originals nor copies of originals. We want the ultimate and evidential facts.

Scientists have admitted that evolution is merely a theory; but surely they must have some fossil specimens which have made them believe that earliest man was closely related to the ape. Darwinists, how many such specimens have you yet discovered? Tell us about them, where they were found; and what they reveal? We are not unduly critical; all we want is the truth. But we want the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

For reply we are given a copy of a recent, authoritative work on evolution, entitled, Men of the Old Stone Age, by Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the New York Zoological Society and Honorary Curator of the American Museum of Natural History, New York. This book, we are told, will give us all the facts that any scientist knows to date, about man’s immediate ancestry.

We are glad to give this book a careful reading, for unquestionably it is an exhaustive, scholarly work. In fact, the foreword, written by the president of America’s greatest museum, says that it is "the most important and complete work on human evolution since Darwin’s Descent of Man," and that it is "the first full and authoritative presentation of what has been actually discovered up to the present time in regard to human pre-history."

This certainly suffices to qualify the author as an expert witness, and we therefore proceed to delve into the evidence which he has so painstakingly prepared. Turning to page 7, we find that he lists a series of seventeen fossil groups and in connection with them he says this:

"Between 1848 and 1914 successive discoveries have been made of a series of human fossils belonging to intermediate races. Some of these are now recognized as missing links between the existing human species (homo sapiens) and the anthropoid apes; and others as the earliest known forms of sapiens (modern man."

As suggested by the late Alfred McCann in his admirable volume entitled God or Gorilla, "Now we appear to be getting somewhere." Here we have a recent authoritative work, by an undoubted scholar and a foremost advocate of human evolution; and he gives us a whole series of seventeen fossil groups, gathered from all parts of the world from Darwin’s day down to the present; and he also assures us that "some of these are now recognized as missing links between the existing human species and the anthropoid apes."

Naturally we feel disappointed that Dr. Osborn did not at once point out exactly which ones of these seventeen fossils are "recognized as missing links" between ape and man. But perhaps that is no good ground for discouragement; so we peruse his book with zest, for we feel that now we are on the trail of real evidence, and that by a simple process of elimination we shall soon find the scientifically recognized "missing links" which the author assures us are somewhere within these carefully selected fossil groups.

We do not read far until we find the author explaining that ten of the aforesaid seventeen groups are skeletons of ancient "Neanderthal" men. Are these the "missing links" between ape and man? No, because the author presents, with evident approval, the careful conclusion of Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, Curator of the U.S. National Museum, that these Neanderthal men are "true men" whose descendants live along the Danube today. He also cites Dr. Arthur Keith, Curator of the Museum of the Royal college of surgeons, London, who fully agrees with Dr. Hrdlicka.

Thus the ten Neanderthal fossils seem to be eliminated from the running before we scarcely get started on our search for the "missing links"; and our original list of seventeen candidates is now reduced to only seven. Anyway, that simplifies matters, and it must be that among these remaining seven we shall find the evidence we seek, for we are not forgetting that the learned author has assured us that "some of these are now recognized as missing links" between ape and man. So the search goes on.

Among the seven remaining groups is a series of "Furfooz" skulls, found in Belgium. Are these the "missing links"? No; on page 458 Dr. Osborn himself explains that they represent a rather highly developed race of true men, they being the progenitors of the broad-headed Dutch and Danish people of today. So they’re out; and our list of possible ape-man now narrows down to six.

Next, we note that two of the remaining six fossil groups are classified as "cro-Magnon men," whose skeletons were found in Germany in 1914 and earlier. Are they the elusive "missing links"" No; the author himself describes them as "comparatively modern Cor-Magnon true men." Now if they are "true men" then they cannot be a "missing link" between man and the anthropoid ape. So the witness, by his own admissions, has now reduced his list from seventeen down to four.

One of these remaining four fossils is called the "Grimaldi Skeleton," found in 1901. But the author hardly gives it a passing comment, such as any real "missing link" would seem to deserve. About all he says about this Grimaldi specimen is that it presents "a number of resemblances to the African Negroid race" of today. Since other late works on evolution do not so much as mention this skeleton, we naturally conclude that it cannot be a very strong candidate for the ape-man honors, and so we casually cross it off the steadily narrowing list.

This now leaves but three remaining groups, on the original imposing list of seventeen submitted in evidence; hence these must be the "big three" of the fossil world. It is clear that if any fossils on this list are "recognized as missing links" between man and ape, as the witness has positively testified, then they must be found among these three; for there are no others remaining to be considered, and the book that lists them is "a full and authoritative presentation of what has been actually discovered up to the present time in regard to human pre-history."

Let us now consider these three remaining fossil groups in some detail. They are: the Trinil bones, the Heidelberg jaw, and the Piltdown fragments.

(1) The Trinil bones: This group consists of the upper part of an ape-like skull, tow ape-like teeth, and part of a human-like thigh bone, which were found in 1891 at Trinil, Java, in an excavation forty feet below the surface. They were not lying together when found; the teeth were three feet from the skull; and the thigh bone, discovered some time later, was nearly fifty feet away. Further search failed to reveal any other remains anywhere near.

Scientists are not all satisfied that all these bones ever belonged to the same creature. The learned Dr. Virchow, German anatomist and President of the International Congress of Zoologist, who critically examined these Trinil bones soon after their discovery, said: "There is no evidence that these bones were part of the same creature." He believed the skull fragment was that of a chimpanzee, and that the thigh bone was that of an ordinary man. Only seven scientists out of the twenty-five in that International Congress believed that they might have belonged to the same creature and that such creature was an ape-man.

Even our own witness, Dr. Osborn, seems a little hazy as to the real significance of these Trinil bones; for on page 81 he says that the two teeth "do not resemble those of man closely enough to positively confirm the pre-human theory." He admits that the brainpan resembles that of an ape, calls the bones "conundrums," and concludes with the unanswered question, "Is the Trinil race pre-human or not?"

It is not clear why he speaks of a Trinil "race," in view of the obvious absence of proof that there was such a race. It seems unfortunate that scientists sometimes use simple words so loosely. They speak of a Trinil race, or a Heidelberg race, as though they had found whole cemeteries full of bones of such creatures, when as a matter of fact they have never so much as found one whole skeleton—no, not even one whole skull—of either of them. We will further discuss these Trinil, Java specimens later on in this volume.

Now since Dr. Osborn says that the Trinil bones are "conundrums," and actually questions whether they are "pre-human" or not, it is evident that he is not prepared to affirm that they are the "missing link." If he thus eliminates them from that category this leaves us only two remaining specimens of that original list of seventeen possible aspirants for the ape-man crown; viz., the Heidelberg jaw and the Piltdown fragments. Let us now consider them for what they are worth:

(2) The Heidelberg Jaw: This is a massive jawbone which resembles an ape’s jaw, but has human-like teeth. It was found near Heidelberg, German, in 1907, in a shaft 69 feet below the surface. No other part of the skeleton was found; yet from this one bone the scientific plastic artists have pretended to "reconstruct" the whole creature, just like they have "reconstructed" the Trinil "ape-man" from equally flimsy evidence.

This Heidelberg jaw may be that of an extinct and rare species of ape, whose teeth were straight instead of slanting; or it might be that of an abnormal man—a monstrosity or "freak of nature." In the Munich Institute of Paleontology there is an abnormal skull of a modern Eskimo, with a massive jaw and teeth, and which, according to Dr. Erich Wasmann, the distinguished scientist, bears a striking resemblance to the Heidelberg specimen.

But in any event, Dr. Osborn seems to eliminate this Heidelberg jaw entirely as a "missing link" between ape and man; for on page 99 he says concerning this jaw and teeth: "It is absolutely certain that these remains are human. They bear no trace of being intermediate between man and the anthropoid ape;" but he indulges the fond hope that other and more complete remains of similar creatures may some day be found, which may then show that the Heidelberg "race" (?) Was not entirely human after all.

It appears now that the witness, even without cross-questioning, has voluntarily eliminated sixteen of the seventeen fossil groups, concerning which he had said at the outset that "some of these are now recognized as missing links between the existing human species and the anthropoid apes."

There is but one more fossil group on the list for us to consider; and when we put it in evidence, the Darwinists must then rest their case—at least so far as "missing links" are concerned—for there is not another known fossil or group of fossils in all the world that aspires to the dignity of being called the ape-man branch of man’s family tree. Of course, there is the "Sino-man" found recently in china; but that fragment is that of a "true man" of great antiquity, not a "missing link" between man and ape. Let us now have a loot at this sole survivor of the original seventeen aspirants, the last of the final "big three" of fossildom—the Piltdown group—which must be the bright, scintillating star of them all.

(3) The Piltdown Fragments: This final fossil group consists essentially of a small piece of skull, part of a jawbone, three teeth, and two small bones from the nose. These bones were found scattered through a gravel pit, at Piltdown, England; but not all at one time. The finds were made during 1910, 1911 and 1912, and it is not known that they all belong to the same creature or type of creatures.

Sir Ray Lankester, the British scientist, after carefully examining the bones, said he did not believe the jaw and skull ever belonged to the same creature; and Prof. Waterson, of the University of London, agreed with him, saying: "The outlines of the Piltdown jaw are identical with those of a chimpanzee jaw. The molar teeth are identical with the ape form. The cranial fragments, on the other hand, are in practically all their details essentially human."

Dr. Hrdlicka, in the Smithsonian Institute’s Report for 1913, discussed the Piltdown fragments conservatively, and then said, "The most important development in the study of the Piltdown remains is the recent well documented objection by Professor Garrett S. Miller, of the United States National Museum, to the classing together of the lower jaw and the canine (tooth) with the cranium. According to Miller, who had ample anthropoid as well as human material for comparison, the jaw and tooth belong to a fossil chimpanzee."

Three years later Dr. W. D. Matthews, the fossil expert of the American Museum of Natural History (of which our chief witness, Dr. Osborn, is or was the honorary Curator), wrote an article on the subject for Science magazine, and declared that the aforementioned conclusions by Prof. Miller are "convincing and irrefutable."

It seems now that not only has Dr. Osborn eliminated sixteen of his seventeen fossil groups from the "missing link" category; but that his co-worker, Dr. Matthews, and Dr. Hrdlicka, Prof. Miller, Sir Ray Lankester and others, have definitely eliminated the other one. From all this evidence it therefore seems clear that the much sought for "missing link" in human evolution is still very much missing. As a matter of fact, scientists have not yet even discovered the anthropoid ape, much less the link between it and man.

The term "anthropoid ape" means a human-like ape; that is, an ape that is more like a man than any variety of ape now known, yet not enough like man to take it out of the ape-family or simian classification. There are still searching for such a man-like ape among the fossils of the "Tertiary Period," even as they are still searching for an ape-like man. In other words, between present day apes and modern man there are admittedly two "links" instead of one—and both are missing.

Let us quote again from Dr. Osborn’s authoritative book on Men of the Old Stone Age, in which he says, "Elliott Smith concluded that members of the Piltdown race might well have been the direct ancestors of the existing species of man, thus affording a direct link with undiscovered tertiary apes."

We call the reader’s attention to two noteworthy things in the foregoing quotation: First, the author carelessly speaks of a Piltdown "race," whereas there is no proof that such a race ever existed; and second, he expressly admits that the man-like tertiary apes are still undiscovered. This considerably widens that unbridged gap between man and beast.

But even if fossils of apes should yet be discovered which more nearly resemble man than any variety now known, this would not prove kinship between them and humanity. The same Creator who made every fixed species could have made some of His creatures very similar if He so desired; they all would not have to be wholly dissimilar. But so long as no two species can interbreed and produce an offspring capable of perpetuating its kind, that constitutes the strongest possible proof that all species are distinct and unrelated.

CHAPTER VI True Science and the Scriptures Agree

THE facts of nature agree with the statements of Genesis, that every species is given power to bring forth only "after its own kind." We read: "And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creapeth upon the earth after his kind. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good." (Ge 1:25, 21.) He saw that it was wise to keep each species separate and distinct.

The Apostle Paul agrees with this statement of Genesis, that each species of animals is constituted by nature to be separate and distinct from all other species or orders; and that while they all are animals, consisting of flesh, yet that they are not the same flesh; that is, they are unrelated. He says, "All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beast, another of fishes, and another of birds."—1Co 15:39.

All nature, as we know it today, corroborates the foregoing biblical declarations. So far as scientific observation goes, nature is unalterably opposed to the commingling of species, or to the formation of new species; and it continually and successfully seeks to prevent it. Nature does permit "mutations," as DeVries discovered. It also allows seemingly endless "varieties" according to fixed laws, as discovered by Mendel; but it has established limits beyond which variations cannot occur.

Furthermore, in the crossing of varieties within a given fixed species, we see retrogression quite as often as we see improvement in the stock’; and there is no evidence whatsoever, that nature is attempting to move forward by "infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress," as the Darwinists have long theorized. By artificial cultivation and forced crossbreeding of selected varieties, stocks may be seemingly improved or enlarged up to a certain point; but when left to themselves nature soon brings them back to an ordinary level, instead of naturally carrying them "onward and upward" by an evolutionary law.

Nature, when not interfered with, seems to strive to bring all new varieties back to normal as quickly as possible, rather than inducing in them further progressive changes by "evolution." Consider, for example, eugenics. So far as it has been tried, it really has accomplished nothing in improving the race. It often happens that a man and a woman, both highly gifted, marry and have children; but it is seldom that such gifted parents are able to transmit those gifts to their offspring.

It, of course, is true that occasionally a genius is born to inferior parents. This happens but rarely, and such "child wonders" may be regarded as "mutants." But no mutant ever constitutes a new species; all mutants—whether of plants, or of animals, or of man—still belong to the parent species; they can always interbreed therewith like any other members of that species or group, unless entirely sterile. The scientific cause for the occasional propagation of mutants was discussed in a previous chapter of this book, and need not be restated here.

Every attempt at crossing two species either results in no descendant of all, or else in a hybrid offspring being produced that is sterile and unable to perpetuate its kind—as occurs when the horse and donkey, or the horse and the zebra are crossed. These animals are so structurally similar that they can interbreed; but the resultant offspring is a sterile hybrid that cannot cross with anything. This supplies further proof that the species are fixed, that nature does not allow even very similar species to commingle and change into another, but calls a sudden halt every time any attempt in that direction is made.

When all the "proofs" that have been urged in behalf of Darwinism are sifted to their foundation they are found to be scientifically weak and unconvincing. Scientists admit this; yet they continue to accept the theory "by faith." Why? Perhaps the principal reason why many of them are loath to come out boldly and repudiate Darwinism is that it has become "orthodox"; and furthermore, even if they should repudiate the theory, they feel that they have nothing better to suggest in place of it. Consequently they think it is best, for the time being, to simply mark time and quietly maintain the status quo. They hesitate to reject a long-taught doctrine until they find enough facts to indisputably contradict it.

But a theory is not necessarily true simply because a majority of scientists have long held it. The world’s leading scientists once were convinced of Ptolemy’s theory, that the earth is the centre around which all the universe revolves—and they held it as a strictly "orthodox" doctrine for over fourteen centuries—until Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, finally became radical enough to contradict and disprove it. Again, in more modern times, all the leading scientists fully subscribed to Laplace’s Nebular Theory as being a satisfactory explanation of the origin of our solar system; but now nearly all of them have rejected it for the more probably Planetesimal Hypothesis.

Then again: during the last century the best scientific minds "invented" an hypothetical ether, and all became agreed upon a mechanical ether-wave theory to account for the propulsion of light rays through space. But Planck, Einstein, and others now present facts which cannot be explained by that long-held ether hypothesis; and today many scientists admit they do not know if the ether really exists. They are undecided whether light is a wave motion in an ether-ocean, or a stream of individual corpuscles which are flung out into empty space in quanta, like buckshot.

In view of the fact that so many long-held scientific theories are thus being upset and discarded today, why should anyone now be expected to unquestioningly subscribe to Darwin’s evolution hypothesis which nearly a century of intelligent research has been unable to substantiate or support by a single tangible, indisputable exhibit of proof? And why should anyone be held in scientific disesteem today who frankly looks askance at Darwin’s doctrine, at least until its advocates succeed in making a better scientific showing than they have up to the present time.

Within the past seventy years the evolutionists have foisted more fickle fancies upon the public in the name of "science’ than anyone might have thought humanly possible in this enlightened day. Evolutionary story writers, rather than true scientists, have been mainly responsible for this state of affairs; but the scientists themselves cannot be held altogether blameless.

Scientists have known all along that evolution is by no means proven. They are not deceived or deluded. They know that every point that has been made in this entire series or articles is true. They know that Darwinism is still an unconfirmed theory, just as many theological beliefs are theoretical and incapable of confirmation. They know that evolution has not yet been verified—neither by comparative anatomy, nor by embryology, nor by genetics, nor by the fossil record. They know that the whole concept of Darwinism is still in the speculative stage, and indeed quite wildly so. Then why do not they take the initiative in making these facts clear to the layman? Why do they still let schoolchildren vainly imagine that evolution is a scientific fact?

We feel certain that real scientists do not deliberately seek to deceive themselves, nor their fellows, nor the laity. But some are entirely too careless in their public utterances and writings. Perhaps they do not always realize the weight their simplest statements generally have in the minds of the less scientific public. And the public cannot really be blamed for their credulous reliance upon them; for our scientists have mad so many wonderful discoveries in recent years that men naturally have come to regard them almost as gods. Their gossip becomes gospel in the minds of the common people, and this fact should make them realize their great responsibility.

Some scientists do appreciate their position before the public, and therefore have sought to make clear that their belief in evolution is merely a matter of "faith" and nothing more. Would that all were equally clear and candid in their expressions. When a scientist’s tentative belief in evolution rests on faith alone, and he knows it, then at least, he is not laboring ; under a delusion; and his mind is probably free to scan the path of truth wherever it may lead. But when a layman’s belief in Darwinism is rooted in unproven theories which he has been led by scientists to accept as established facts, his condition is pathetic—not only is he building a credulous house upon a sandbar, but he is unwittingly setting himself against the truth; and sooner or later his building will take a tumble and he will go down with it.

To Bible scholars it seems strange that modern scientists, acquainted as they are with so many marvels of God’s handiwork in nature, should seek to ignore the existence and power of the Creator and habitually attribute the origin of species to unintelligent law. Why not concede the possibility that He who created the stars could also easily create each species of life upon this planet?

Some evolutionists do admit the possibility that an intelligent God may have created the first protoplasmic cell from which all subsequent forms of life have "evolved." But if He could crate life in one form originally, why could He not create it in other forms later? If He could create a unicellular amoeba, why could He not also crate a fish, or a bird, or a man? Isn’t that simpler than to assume, without a scintilla of scientific proof, that one "fixed" species has evolved into another "fixed" species by "fits and jumps"?

Modern scientists scorn divine miracles; yet they readily countenance inconceivable miracles of nature, while denying or ignoring the existence of an Intelligent Power capable of performing them. Although some Darwinists quite readily admit that inorganic matter may have been created by a living God, and that possibly the beginning of life was a divinely creative act, yet they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that a God capable of creating the entire material universe could possibly have specially created man; that, it seems, is just too much of a miracle for them to concede.

A miracle is an occurrence that transcends all known natural laws. Any event which cannot be explained by any known physical or biological law must be put into the miraculous class. Life is one such miracle. Science has long striven to corral it, but always its elusive secret keeps jut beyond scientific grasp. The existence of matter and of energy are profound mysteries, which none can explain.

Einstein’s theory, that mass and energy are interchangeable, has been experimentally confirmed. But this does not explain the source of either energy or matter, or why the one is convertible into the other under certain conditions. The whole thing is still a mystery, an unexplained miracle. We know not where either mass or energy came from, when, or how; whether both appeared everywhere simultaneously, or came into existence piecemeal during unfathomable ages.

Yes, all the universe is a miracle—every atom of it; yea, every electron, positron, neutron, photon and proton within the atom; and no scientist can explain their real nature. Light rays, as they are studied more closely, now resolve themselves into stupendous miracles; for photons, or light-quanta, are now found not to behave according to any ordinary physical or electro-chemical law. Sir James Jeans said recently at Cambridge, "The possible abolition of the law of causation from physics is a recent development of the quantum theory of light." then he added:

"All the pictures which science now draws of nature, which alone seem capable of according with observational facts, are mathematical pictures....The universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling Power....It can hardly be said that science today has a pronouncement to make; perhaps science should leave off making pronouncements." that, perhaps, would be good advice for all evolutionists to follow, except to announce that they have no proofs to offer in support of their spectacular theory.

The scientists cannot get away from divine miracles, if they try. We are literally embedded in them, and meet them at eery turn. "Simple" phenomena, which science supposedly had solved year ago, now are found to be deep and seemingly impenetrable mysteries, as admitted by the world’s leading savants in their recent convention in Pittsburgh. True, we should not cease trying to understand these miracles in nature, if we can; but certainly the scientists should not lead the public to believe that they have found a satisfying explanation of things when they know they have not. That is the mistake so many evolutionists continue to make. They should not try to deceive themselves or others by implying that they understand the origin of species, when each and every one of them knows that the problem has not bee solved.

Scientists continually ascribe things to "natural law," apparently without analyzing what the term involves. They cannot explain the source or origin of these natural laws which display such astounding intelligence. Some Intelligent Power must have ordained these laws; and perhaps that same Power can suspend them at will should He desire to do so, and no doubt on proper occasions. He does that very thing. Even Darwin himself said, "It is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature."

CHAPTER VII Man is Fallen

THE preceding chapters have considered every important scientific claim thus far advanced in behalf of the evolution theory, from Darwin’s day down to the present time; and we have shown by the utterances of leading evolutionists themselves that each of these claims lacks scientific verification. Even their long-taught theory that earliest historical man was greatly inferior to man of later times, now has been thoroughly exploded by recent archeological research.

It suited the theory of the Darwinists to picture earliest man as a low-brow savage—an apish creature just one step above the brute. And so long as the world knew very little about the earliest civilizations, the evolutionists could solemnly advance that speculative theory and all were inclined to believe it. But actual archeological discoveries of the past few years now tell us a very different story. We now know that he earliest inhabitants of Mesopotamia—the generally accepted "cradle of civilization"—as well as the earliest known people of Egypt, Crete, and Asia Minor, actually had a civilization that far exceeded that of Europe of three or four centuries ago; and indeed, compared most favorably with ours of the present day.

The facts are now very evident that our own boasted "modern world progress" is not due to the outworking of a natural evolutionary law, as the Darwinists have long theorized. Rather, it is due mainly to the invention of printing and varius other modern modes of disseminating knowledge, which have been thrust upon us during the past few decades by a handful of inventive geniuses.

But we are not all inventors, nor really mentally superior to our forefathers. Had it not been for these few fortunate inventors, all the rest of us might still be plodding along in backward, primitive fashion, just like our great grandfathers did—unable to read or write our own names, knowing very little of the world about us, and stumbling on by candlelight from the cradle to the grave.

Even these much acclaimed modern inventive geniuses, or at least many of them, really have not been exceedingly brainy men—such, for instance as the early scientists of Egypt and of the orient or the great Athenian philosophers of ancient Greece. Rather, our modern inventors were simply more fortunate than were their predecessors, in that they were born down here at a time when the world had accumulated and made accessible the science or knowledge of all past ages, from which they could easily gather ideas. And even then, many of them have simply stumbled upon their inventions by sheer accident.

When we analyze and compare the world’s condition today with the world of centuries past, we can see that our present educational progress has not come about by slow, gradual steps of "evolution"; but it is a relatively sudden, spectacular mushroom growth, which began only a generation or so ago Before that time Europe had been slumbering through a millennium of darkness, into which she had sunk from a much higher plane of intelligence. Indeed, her progenitors had given her a magnificent start in civilization back at the very dawn of history, but she was quite unable to maintain it. Those "dark ages" represent a descent, and not evolutionary progress.

Earliest historical man was not the primitive caveman" brute concerning which the fictionists have written so many imaginative stories. Cavemen did finally appear in the world, and indeed savage cannibals; but they came about as a result of retrogression—the antithesis of evolution. The evidence of this is now so clear that such a scientist as Prof. Arthur Thompson, of Aberdeen, a leading evolutionist, frankly admits that "modern research is leading us away from the picture of primitive man as brutish, dull, lascivious and bellicose. There is more justification for regarding primitive man as clever, kindly, generous and inventive."

Another significant admission by a leading evolutionist of today, is the following from the pen of Prof. R. S. Lull, in his Readings in Evolution. On page 95 he says: "Man’s physical evolution has virtually ceased, and insofar as any change is being effected it is largely retrogressive." He then mentions some of these retrogressive changes, such as, "reduction of hair and teeth, and of hand skill, and dulling of the senses of sight, smell and hearing." In other words, he admits that man is falling instead of evolving.

Even so staunch an evolutionist as Prof. George A. Dorsey of the University of Chicago, in his very popular book entitled, Why We Behave Like Human Beings, says, on page 19: "Our teeth are on the go. A perfect ‘civilized’ set is rare." Then he contrasts us with man of ages ago, saying: "In hundreds of skulls [of ancient men] which I collected in New Guiana, there was not one imperfect set [of teeth]—all sound, beautifully aligned."

This does not sound like the operation of an evolutionary law in which there is "survival of the fittest"; for the best human specimens seem to be extinct today, while degeneration has continued to reign with a high hand. Among savage tribes, their mental and moral decline is generally more marked than is their physical decline. Many modern observers also admit that civilization is declining, both physically and morally; notwithstanding that men are making educational progress, because of their many modern means of acquiring knowledge.

The evolutionists have sought in vain for archeological evidence that earliest man was physically, mentally, and morally inferior to man of today; in fact, an "ape-like" creature. Is it not strange that after combing the earth for many a century in an endeavor to find fossils of the "missing link," they have succeeded in locating but three scattered displays of suspicious fragments—the Trinil bones, the Heidelberg jaw, and the Piltdown remains—the actual significance of which they themselves do not agree upon?

If there is a ling between apes and men, why do we not find an abundance of fossil remains of such creatures scattered throughout the earth; and why should there not be such creatures, in all the various stages of "evolution," still living and evolving at the present time? No Darwinist can answer such questions, even to his own satisfaction. In digging through the strata of the Cainozoic Era—which embrace both the so-called Quaternary and Tertiary geologic periods—geologists find many fossils of apes, but never the fossil of an ape-man.

Prof. Bronco, famous geologist of the University of Berlin, never took seriously the guesses of the Darwinists as to man’s "ape-like" ancestry, but insisted to his dying day that the scientific evidence stripped of idle conjecture, shows that "man appeared suddenly in the Quaternary (Modern) period"; and that "palenotology knows nothing of the ancestors of man." It now seems that the scientists have not improved one whit upon his declaration.

Of course, various early human fossils have been found in the caves of France, Spain and elsewhere, which differ in certain racial respects from the skeletons of modern inhabitants of those regions; but none of them show any kinship to the ape. The fact is, these ancient fossils are far from uniform. Some show that they are the remains of men of splendid physique, and their skulls indicate fully as much mental capacity as modern Europeans possess. Other fossils are those of men of lower mental capacity, much s we find among various types of humanity today.

When a single, isolated fossil of a subnormal or unusual type is found, as occasionally happens, the scientists often hastily assume that it represents a whole race of such creatures; when as a matter of fact it may mean nothing more than that its owner was an idiot or some otherwise abnormal freak of nature.

We hear scientists talk much about the Trinil race, the Heidelberg race, Neanderthal race, etc., although there is no proof that such "races" ever existed. Says Prof. Peake of Oxford: "The name ‘Neanderthal race’ is a little unfortunate as matters now stand, as it is associated with an individual of whom only the skull-cap and the long bones are preserved."—Corridors of Time, Vol 1, p. 116, published by Oxford University, (1929)

But even if there had been such a race, and if they all had been of a rather low order of intelligence, it would prove no more for evolution than does the existence of degenerated savages today. In fact, scientists now have found, at Broker Hill, Rhodesia, in South Africa, a skull that is very similar to the European Neanderthal specimen above mentioned. The same authority as last quoted, comments on it as follows: "Until the broker Hill skull came to light, it was widely held that the Neanderthal types vanished without a trace soon after the Middle Pleistocene period; but now we have indications that they survived in South Africa at least."

It now appears therefore, that the European Neanderthal man may have been a relative of the South African Negroid tribes. As for the other specimens of ancient men, the Cro-Magnon fossils and others, found in Europe, no less an authority than Dr. Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian Institution has declare that they are progenitors of Aryan white people who now live along the Danube, and that their skulls show a mental capacity about equal to the average European of today.

In the walls of some of the European caves containing these ancient human fossils, are found various paintings, portraying animals, men, and hunting scenes. Many of these are done in colors; and the pigments have retained their brilliance throughout the long ages since they were painted there, by these ancient cave dwellers. These paintings are crudely executed, to be sure; but they are better than many intelligent people could do today, especially on the rough walls of a dark cavern by the unsteady flicker of a smoking campfire.

As further evidence that scientists are now being forced to repudiate the Darwinian Myth that earliest historical man was a low-browed brute from which we have gradually "evolved," let us quote again from the recent collaborated works of Prof. Albert Shepherd and John Seybold Morris, of New York University. In Vol. 1 of their Outline of History, pp. 28, 29, published in 1929, they say: "When we open the first page of authentic history we find man in possession of almost all the fundamental inventions. He had learned the art not only of using tools but also of making them....In drawing, painting and sculpture he had developed a very respectable ability in response to his instinctive desire to express his love of the beautiful....Such a picture as these earliest records present to us differs in no great essential from life lived today on great areas of the world’s surface. How all these inventions and discoveries came about we have no certain knowledge."

Thus has recent archeological research brought the theorizing Darwinists to the crossroads of science, and they are having difficulty in deciding which way to turn. And, perhaps without realizing it, many of them are finding themselves turning more and more in the direction of truth, as it is given in the creation story of Genesis. A great conflict between truth and error is now being fount by the scientists themselves, and we may be sure that the truth ultimately will prevail. In this connection we are reminded of the following paragraph from the able pen of Dr. William Emerson Ritter, professor of Zoology at the University of California, which was published in Science magazine some time ago. He therein wrote this significant sentence.

"If one scans a bit thoughtfully the landscape of human life for the last few decades he can hardly fail to see signs that the whole battleground of evolution will have to be fought over again, this time not so much between scientists and theologians, as among scientists themselves."

CHAPTER VIII Scientific Speculation

SCIENTISTS, after long holding blindly to Darwin’s theory, are now waging a quit, but nonetheless realistic battle amongst themselves over many essential phases of the evolution hypothesis. And to the unbiased, critical onlooker this scientific conflict grows more interesting daily.

Some are frankly repudiating the abstract idea of "the survival of the fittest," on the ground that it is uncorroborated by facts, and that history and experience do not confirm the theory that nature is ever moving forward by infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress. While maintaining an intangible semblance of "faith" in the broader aspects of the evolution theory, these scientists nevertheless freely admit that they know of no indisputable scientific facts by which the theory may be verified.

Others seem frantic in their endeavor to maintain a deathlike grip on the staid old doctrine of Darwin, which has become "orthodox" and "respectable" with the passing of time. They seem to have developed a psychology which, in the religious field, would be aptly described as the "ecclesiastical mind"—which discounts anything and everything that fails to coincide with their preconceived system of orthodoxical thinking.

In other words, present day scientists may be said to be divided, on the evolution theory, in two general groups: (1) the orthodox, or conservatives; and (2) the heterodox, or progressives. Both groups claim to believe in evolution, yet the progressive scientists have their eyes wide open to the faults and weaknesses of the theory, which the conservatives seem to close their eyes, and pretend that Darwinism rests on a proven scientific foundation—even though they know that it does not.

One phase of the battle now being waged concerns the question of the age of man. Darwinists have realized from the beginning that in order to make the theory seem plausible, they must insist on an extreme age for the human race; because, at the infinitesimally slow pace at which man has "progressed" (if at all) during the known span of human history, it stands to reason that he could not have made his way from the ape-man stage to his present position in just a few thousand years.

For this reason the Darwinists have insisted that man has been on the earth for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years. Dr. Chapin, in his book entitle Social Evolution, suggests that the so-called "Trinil Ape-, am" lived 750,000 years ago. Some scientists, as we have seen, do not believe that these bone fragments found at Trinil, Java, represent an ape-man. But even amongst those who do so regard them, there now is a wide difference of opinion as to their age; their guesses ranging from 750,000 to 375,000 years, or less.

The evolutionists’ estimates on the age of the "Heidelberg Jaw" also vary greatly—from 700,000 down to 100,000 years. And those who accept the so-called "Piltdown Man’ as a respectable ancestor, regard him as not more than 100,000 years old, or possibly only 50,000 years, or less; while the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon skeletons are given ages ranging from 50,000 years down to 30,000 years, or even younger.

The modern tendency of careful scientists is to reduce, rather than to enlarge, their former great estimates of the age of man; and were it not that the evolution theory (which they still try to accept) requires an extreme age for mankind, undoubtedly they would shorten their estimates still more, and thus make their calculations agree with the archeological and statistical facts, as well as with the biblical accounts.

The foregoing estimates of the scientists on the age of man are based on three questionable assumptions, namely (1) that the Trinil bones belonged to the same creature; (2) that this creature was an ape-man, or man in a very early stage of evolution, only one or two steps above the common run of apes; (3) that the geologic stratum in which the bones were found imply that this creature must have lived and died back in the Pleistocene Period of the earth’s development, which geologists believe was an epoch that ended possibly two hundred thousand years ago. But let us pause to make these brief observations.

(1) There is no evidence that the Trinil bones ever belonged to the same creature; for they were not together when found, but were scattered over an area of fifty feet.

(2) Since it cannot be proved that the Trinil bones belonged to the same creature, it follows that there is no proof that they represent an ape-like man. Rather, the skull fragment is believed by many to be that of an ape or chimpanzee, and the thigh bone seems to be that of an ordinary man; even as Dr. Virchow and other scientists have contended from the beginning.

(3) The skullcap and teeth were found in 1891, at Trinil, Island of Java, by native Javanese workmen who had been employed by Dr. Eugene Dubois, a Dutch surgeon. These workmen had dug a shaft 40 feet deep; and it was at that depth that these bones were said to have been discovered. Some months later other shafts were sunk in the immediate vicinity to about the same depth; and in one of these, 48 feet from the original one, the shattered fragment of a human thigh bone was found. None of the other excavations yielded any other bones or fragments of any significance.

Dr. Dubois reported that the apish skullcap and teeth, also the human thighbone, of the Trinil group, were found imbedded in "Pleistocene sand," thus seemingly placing their age back in the Pleistocene geologic era. But there were no geologists on the ground to check this conclusion; and later efforts at verifying it were rather unsatisfactory. Unless a geologist can see the specimen in situ, before it is removed from the later, it often is impossible, after the layer has been disturbed by unskilled diggers, to assign with certainty any "geologic age" to the discovery.

There have been so many local disturbances to the terrain, in all parts of the earth throughout geologic times, that it is impossible to compute geologic time by mere depth, even though the age of the same depth of earth in the immediate locality may be relatively known. For this reason, the discovery of an excavator should be checked by a geologist before the earth immediately surrounding it has been disturbed; otherwise the real significance of the find may never be known. And even a trained geologist often makes miscalculations.

Furthermore, assuming that the Trinil bones were lying in a stratum which geologists would call "Pleistocene" (which however is by no means certain), still this would not definitely establish the age of those particular fossils; for the reason that the age of the Pleistocene layers are not the same in all parts of the globe—in one region they may be ancient; while in another region where the local conditions were vastly different, they may have been laid down much more recently. The stratum in which these Java bones were found will be discussed more fully in a later chapter.

None of the geologic strata are continuous throughout the earth, nor are they uniform as to age; notwithstanding the fact that some geologists still carelessly speak of the "Pleistocene Age," the "Devonian Age," the "Carboniferous Age," the "Silurian Age," etc., as though they each universally refer to a definite period of time—and thus lead laymen to suppose that the successive layers which have given the names of "Pleistocene," "Devonian," "Carboniferous," etc., bear the same age wherever found. Such descriptive carelessness has caused much confusion amongst laymen, and has led to a general popular misunderstanding on the subject of "geologic times."

The fact is, no geologist can determine the age of a given stratum in one part of the earth, merely by reference to the estimated age of the corresponding stratum in another part of the globe. Hence, when fossils are found in the same geologic stratum in different countries, or even in the same country, i.e., in strata bearing the same geologic name—"Pleistocene" strata, for example—but lying in different regions, it by no means follows that the respective fossils are of the same age; for the different parts of the strata in which they lie may not have been deposited contemporaneously, even though these strata have been given the same relative name or classification. None other than Prof. Huxley, Darwin’s leading exponent, warned about this very thing. In his Geologic Essays, he says:

"Sir Henry de la Beche adduces conclusive evidence to show that the different parts of one and the same stratum, having a similar composition throughout, containing the same organic remains, and having similar beds above and below it, may differ to any conceivable extent in age....for anything that geology and paleontology is able to show to the contrary, a Devonian flora or fauna [vegetable or animal fossil] found in the British Isles may have been contemporaneous with Silurian life in North America and with Carboniferous fauna and flora in Africa."

Meaning of the "Eoliths"

Evolutionists, in their anxiety to assign a fabulous age to mankind, have grasped at every straw of evidence to prove their contention. Failing in their efforts to find skeletons of men farther back in geologic times than the Quaternary or modern era, they have gathered up a few oddly chipped stones (called eoliths) which have been discovered in Pleistocene, Pliocene, Miocene and other lower strata; and they have set these up as proof that man must have lived back in those very early geologic times—on the assumption that these peculiar stones must have been chipped by human hands.

Now if these ancient eoliths were symmetrical or uniform in shape, like "Indian arrowheads" for example, then they would indeed constitute very strong evidence that some intelligent, tool-using creature must have made them, back in remote geologic times. But the fact is, they are so crude that the scientists themselves are by no means agreed that they represent the handiwork of man; many geologists contending that they are simply pieces of stone which have been broken into peculiar fragments by the forces of nature—by earth strains, pressures, landslides, frost, water and ice flows, or other natural means—all of which could have happened during the long geologic ages before the advent of man.

Concerning the present-day scientific discussion relative to these early eoliths, we quote the following from Corridors of Time, Vol. 2, p. 89, published jointly by Oxford and Yale Universities, in 1929:

"The best known type of eolith is that found in considerable numbers by the late Benjamin Harrison on the plateaux near Ightham in Kent....Since then they have been found on many sites, and in gravels of varying ages; and the student of early man are divided into two camps as to their artificial origin. They have many enthusiastic supporters; but their artificial nature has been vigorously denied by Boule, Macalister, Hazzledine, Warren, and others."

Ann on the same page mention is made of some eoliths found a few years ago at Thenay, imbedded in Tertiary strata, which Bourgeois loudly heralded as specimens of human handicraft dating back to hundreds of thousands of years ago. But concerning them this recent, careful, authoritative Oxford and Yale treatise declares that "today few, if any, believe them to be the work of man." (P. 89.)

It is noteworthy that neither human nor "ape-man" fossils have ever been found in connection with any of these Tertiary eoliths. Nor are they sufficiently uniform in shape to suggest human design. And inasmuch as the scientists themselves are unable to agree that they are of human origin, they certainly cannot be set up as proof of such a theory.

These ancient eoliths conceivably are flints which have been broken or chipped by natural forces, ages before man appeared on the earth; and the evolutionists, like drowning men grasping at a floating straw, are thus vainly seeking to buttress a losing cause with this shallow evidence; just as they have endeavored to do with the Trinil, Heidelberg and Piltdown fragments, heretofore mentioned.

Age of the "Neoliths"

In the early layers of the Quaternary or modern era we do, of course, find many chipped stone implements—arrows, spearheads, hammers—which certainly were formed artificially, by human hands. But it is doubtful if any of these can be shown to date farther back than 6000 years; although the evolutionists often try to place them back to ten or twenty thousand years, at least. These modern stone implements are called neoliths; and the period in which they were made has been called the Neolithic or New Stone Age, to distinguish it from the Eolithic and Old Stone Age—and each of these "ages" is variously subdivided in the textbooks.

Now inasmuch as there is no proof that the eoliths were of human origin, it follows that that eolithic and Old Stone Age is for the most part a myth. It now seems evident that all talk about "Men of the Old Stone Age" is but a figment of the imagination, and must remain in that category until the scientists are able to produce more evidence for it than the few crude eoliths, and the three questionable fossil groups (Trinil, Heidelberg, and Piltdown), which they have assembled to date.

But the well-shaped neoliths of more modern times are indisputably of human origin. The existence of such primitive stone implements, however, by no means indicates that the men who made them were of a very low order of intelligence. Rather, they prove the resourcefulness of those early men. Regardless of their intellectual capacity, it naturally took time for them to learn how to make implements out of smelted metallic ores.

But men actually mastered that art very early also—so early, in fact, that the so called New Stone Age has now become pretty much of a myth; for bronze and iron were being used by some men almost from the beginning of the actual Neolithic period. In substantiation let us quote again from Corridors of Time, Vol. IV (published by Oxford and Yale in 1929). On page 1 of this volume we read: "It is known that the finely chipped flint arrowhead, long held to be neolithic, was used by people in the early days of metal....the Neolithic Age is thus losing its distinctness."

All this is in harmony with the Genesis account. Although man undoubtedly had to form stone implements at first—just as any man of today would have to do were he suddenly stranded like Robinson Crusoe on an uninhabited isle—yet it was not long after man’s creation until he also learned how to work in metal. Ge 4:22 tells us that Tubalcain who was only the seventh generation from Adam, was "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron."

Archeologists are now discovering the metallic handiwork of these early men, and some of it is remarkable. Says Prof. Gadd, of the British Museum, in his recent History and Monuments of Ur, "these works of art which really astonish by their beauty, belong not to the last but to the first ages." Thus does modern research continue to confirm the biblical story of creation; and to refute the fabulous conjectures of the evolution school which has long taught the libelous error that our earliest human ancestors were ignorant, apish low-brows.

CHAPTER IX How Old is Man?

DARWINISTS realize that unless they can show that man has been on this earth for at least hundreds of thousands of years, then their theory that man has reached his present heights through "slow, infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress" cannot be supported even by circumstantial facts. That is why they have endeavored so persistently to educate schoolchildren throughout the world in the belief that man originated far back in paleolithic times.

Their propaganda along this line has succeeded so completely, that today if anyone dares to suggest that he believes the Bible story, that man was created only about 6000 years ago, in God’s image and likeness, he forthwith is subjected to much ridicule. "Everybody knows," they say, "that man has been on this earth for hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, of years." But when we ask for proof of such human antiquity, all that we are shown are a few crudely chipped "eoliths" of no uniformity whatsoever, taken from the earliest geologic layers, and which they claim are of artificial origin—that is, chipped by human hands.

But, as pointed out in the preceding chapter, the scientists themselves are not agreed as to the artificial origin of these eoliths, many leading geologists insisting that they have been chipped by wholly natural forces—heat, cold, pressures, earth strains, water, glaciers, landslides, or other such means. And no human fossils have ever been found in association with these eoliths, anywhere, at any time. Hence the assumption that they indicate that man lived back in early geologic times, is entirely without factual support.

It has become quite a habit with Darwinists, upon finding a rare human fossil, to send out a report that it is "perhaps 50,000 or 100,000 years old," or "at least 30,000 years old"; but acceptable proof of such conjectures is invariably lacking when demanded. When one inquires for the proof he generally finds that it rests upon little more than that some writers have said so. And the reason why they have "said so" is that they have been trained from infancy in the "orthodox" Darwinian idea that man is a creature of remote antiquity, and they automatically try to confirm it.

But the fact is, as every archeologist well knows, that all indisputable relics of human history vanish when we push our researches backward much more than 6000 years. There is not a scrap of authentic human history, from any part of the earth, that dates further back than about six millenniums. Why is this? If it be true that men have been on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years, or for fifty thousand, or even for twenty thousand years, we certainly ought to be able to find unquestionable human records which can be shown beyond doubt to be far older than these mere sixty centuries.

Furthermore, when the human record does begin, we should find it to be of a very primitive sort; if it be true that earliest man had not then "evolved" as far as man of later times. Certainly man, at the very dawn of history, at least should be in a state of semi-barbarism, if the Darwinian theory is correct. Indeed this is the theoretical picture that has been presented to all of us ever since our early grammar school days. And naturally, we had reason to expect that some day the archeologists would confirm it. But what have they now actually found along this line?

Anthropologists have long known that the evidence points to Mesopotamia as the very "cradle of civilization." It is here that authentic human history first begins; and from that region the human race overflowed into Assyria and the Aral-Caspian basin, thence to Europe, India, China, and elsewhere; while others crossed the Arabian desert into Palestine and Asia Minor, or else traveled around Arabia by water, into Egypt.

For this reason Mesopotamia is a land of special interest to archeologists. The explorers have dug through layer after layer of debris, representing the accumulations of long centuries of human habitation; and finally have reached virgin soil, below which no human relics are found. In other words, the basic virgin soil, in the Mesopotamian "cradle of civilization," represents the advent of human habitation there. And the relics found just above the virgin soil represent the handiwork of earliest known man. And what do these earliest relics reveal? Was man at that time a primitive, brutish, lowbrow, as Darwin had led us to expect? Does his earliest records reveal a state of semi-barbarism, or a low order of intelligence? That is what many of the archeologists expected to find but it is not what they did find.

In the first place, these earliest records begin quite suddenly, and at a depth that indicate an age of not more than 6000 years. They also show that man, at the very early time, was possessed of unusual intelligence and skill, and was enjoying a high state of civilization, even superior to that of later times. In other words, the excavations reveal that man has fallen instead of having gradually evolved to ever grater heights of civilization.

Prof. Langdon of Oxford, upon his return from extensive work in Mesopotamia in 1929, described his findings of a great "flood deposit" at a considerable depth, and of the layers below it, which contain relics of the civilization that thrived there before that event. We quote from his article in the London Times, under date of March 18, 1929:

"Below this Flood layer was another, 13 feet in thickness. In the lower part of this stratum were found the remains of brick buildings, which had been abandoned and silted up for many feet...in which were brick tombs....This layer thus represented two periods—the earlier, when buildings were erected near its base; the later , when, after these buildings had been silted up, these shafts were sunk into it for the great tombs. Both periods had come to an end before the Flood layer was deposited, which is found extending unbroken over the whole site. In this layer [below the Flood layer] were found a number of objects of copper, silver and gold, stone bowls, and a quantity of plain unpainted pottery. At its base was another thin deposit...which Prof. Langdon dates tentatively at 4000 B.C.

"Below this think layer came another, three feet in thickness. In this were foundations of buildings, paved streets, as well as flint implements, stone vessels, and a large number of beaker-shaped pots, all unpainted. No copper or metal of any kind was found in this layer. At the bottom of this layer, exactly on the present sea level, is a think layer of mud, which Langdon dates provisionally at 4200 B.C. Even below this think mud layer were found some pottery of exquisite designs, more beautiful than the pottery of later times, and painted varius colors. After this came the virgin soil, below which there were no remains."

Prof. Ladd, of the British Museum, who is now making a careful study of the relics and handicraft of earliest man, as found in this ancient "cradle of civilization," observes in his recent book on the History of Ur, that the farther down the excavators go, the better became the specimens; and that the pottery found in the most ancient layers, just above the virgin soil, is the neatest and most artistically colored of all, and that the unpainted pottery made in later times is quite crude in comparison.

The foregoing discoveries of the archeologists not only indicate that earliest historical man was a better artisan than man of later times, but they also show that man did not exist in this "cradle of civilization" prior to about 6000 years ago. If men had been there for many thousands of years before that time, why is there no record of them? And if they had gradually evolved to the height of civilization which they then enjoyed, where are the relics which show that gradual evolutionary progress?

Another problem which Darwinists have never been able to explain away is this: If man has been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years, or even for twenty thousand years, multiplying as usual during all that time, why is the planet today so sparsely populated? At the present rate of increase it would not have taken long to amass a population of two billion—even after making allowance for destructive wars, famines and pestilence. Why, the, do we not have far more than two billion people now on earth, if humanity has been multiplying here for as long a period of time as Darwinists claim?

The average rate of increase of various nations and races during a given period of time is not so very difficult to computer. Some peoples, of course, have had more hardships than others, which has limited their increase; but it should be possible to strike a fair average and thereby approximate what the increase of the entire human family should be during sixty centuries. Dr. Williams in his Evolution Disproved, mentions the example of the Jewish people. Perhaps no race has experienced greater hardships throughout the centuries than they have suffered. Hence their known rate of increase, under such unfavorable circumstances, should furnish a conservative clue as to what the average rate of increase of the world at large should have been during the 6000 years since the actual dawn of human history?

If Jacob had lived 60 instead of 38 centuries ago, could he within that time have propagated a race, which now would number 2,000,000,000 souls—equivalent to the world’s present population? If so, then why could not Adam have done precisely the same thing? If, starting with one human pair, it would be possible, in 60 centuries, to produce a generation of two billion people—such as exists on this earth today—that would dispose of the necessity of insisting upon an extreme age for the human race, at least on that score. Let us now see what Israel’s average rate of increase has been since Jacob’s day.

Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, was the father of the Jewish nation; his twelve sons were the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, Jacob was born about 1900 B.C., or a little over 38 centuries ago. The current Jewish Yearbook estimates the present number of Jews throughout the world to be about seventeen millions. It is a simple problem in mathematical progression to determine at what rate the house of Jacob has increased to produce this number.

The figure 2, doubled successively for only twenty-four times (i.e., 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.) Yields a product of about seventeen million. Evidently, therefore the Israelites have doubled their population about twenty-four times during the thirty-eight centuries since Jacob’s day. This would be once doubling every 160 years, approximately. If Israel, throughout its centuries of repeated servitude, dispersions and pogroms, could double its population every century and a half, it would seem that all other peoples should have been able to do as well. Certainly the entire world must have been able to double its population at least once every two centuries, if Israel could do it every 160 years.

If Adam and Eve were created a little over 6000 years ago, as the bible suggests, and the world’s population has doubled once every two centuries (which is even slower than the persecuted Jews have multiplied), then there have been about 31 doublings since Adam’s day. And if we take the figure 2 and double it for 31 times it yields the number 2,147,483,808, which in fact is approximately the present population of the world.

Now if man has been multiplying on this earth even for 50,000 years or longer, then why does not the world have a greater population than two billion today? If Adam and Eve had been Jews, and had doubled the population as rapidly as the house of Jacob is known to have multiplied during the past thirty-eight centuries, there now undoubtedly would be more people on earth than we do have. But figuring even more conservatively than the Jewish rate of increase, we thus find that we still are able to account for the present world population by starting with only one pair just 6000 years ago. The Bible thus stands corroborated by plain statistics and common sense, while the wild guesses of the Darwinists have neither science nor reason to support them.

If the age of man is only about 6000 years, and started with but one pair in Eden, as the bible says, then it is evident that the total number of persons who have lived and died within that time could not have been much in excess of twenty or twenty-five billions. It is easily possible fort hat number of people to be supported on this earth simultaneously, even if all of them were resurrected tomorrow. The Bible is not unreasonable, therefore, when it declares that all that are in their graces shall come forth, and that "whosoever will" of both the living and the dead, shall be restored to the condition of perfect manhood from which Adam fell, and will be privileged to live forever upon this earth which also then will have been perfected.

The earth will never become over-populated, because the Creator will cause the propagation of the race to cease, eventually. Jesus implied this, when He said that in the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Adam and Eve were commissioned to "multiply and fill the earth," but not to overfill it. That commission now has been almost fully complied with.

Darwinism has sought to turn the resurrection into an absurdity, but science and reason are now making Darwinism the greatest absurdity of all; and god’s Word is being steadily corroborated.

CHAPTER X Evolution verses Redemption

EVERY important scientific argument that ever has been advanced in behalf of Darwinism has been briefly discussed in the preceding chapters. The evidence for evolutionist wanting. Nor is this a private conclusion of a lone critic of the theory; we have shown from published admissions of leading evolutionists themselves that the evidence is not sufficient to prove Darwin’s hypothesis, and that real scientists are now holding it but tentatively, and as a matter of simple "faith," not as an established fact.

But human evolution is unscriptural as well as unscientific, and therefore manifestly untrue. We are aware of the fact that many ministers and other devotees of the various churches of "Christendom" are avowed evolutionists; and they all would insist that they see nothing inconsistent between Darwinism and Christianity.

It is not the purpose of this book to question the sincerity of those who think they can be Darwinists and upholders of the Bible at the same time. But it is our purpose to show that human evolution is contradictory to Bible truth, that it is opposed to the divine plan as revealed in the inspired Scriptures; and that those who imagine they can believe both Darwinism and the Bible either do not understand the Darwinian theory or else they misunderstand the teachings of the holy Scriptures.

In the first place, the Bible plainly declares that man was a special, direct creation of God—not a creature that came into being haphazardly, or through "slow, infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress," or by "survival of the fittest." The account in Genesis is perfectly clear, that "God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." (Ge 1:27.) He was formed of the elements of the earth, after which he was infused with the breath of life, by divine power, "and man became a living soul"—Ge 2:7.

Evolutionists, on the contrary, frankly scoff at these biblical statements, or explain them away as being "an allegory," which is but another way of saying that the Genesis account is a "fairy tale." they would do away with the whole story of Adam and Eve if they could, for it doesn’t fit in with their evolutionary scheme. But if we discard this genesis narrative, we also must dispense with much of the Bible—both the Old Testament and the New—for it is referred to by more than one inspired writer, clear on down to the last section, the Book of Revelation. Jesus Himself is called "the second Adam," who will yet do for the race what the first Adam failed to do by reason of disobedience. In the New Testament, Adam is positively called "the first man" (1Co 15:45), and it reiterates that "Adam was first formed, then Eve."—1Ti 2:13.

Again, the Bible is at variance with evolution because it plainly shows that man fell from perfection into degradation, sin and death; but according to Darwin, there has been no such thing as the "fall of man." Oh, say the evolutionists, man has been steadily rising, as have all other animal and vegetable forms of life, from the very beginning of creation of the first living cell, millions or billions of years ago. It should be clear to anyone that the "fall of man" and the "evolution of man" are two diametrically opposite ideas that cannot be harmonized. If we accept the theory of human evolution, then we must discard the Genesis story of the downfall of man in Eden.

This means that we also must discard many other portions of the Word of God. The New Testament refers again and again to that original transgression, and declares that "in Adam all die" (1Co 15:22); that "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1Ti 2:14); and that "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." (Ro 5:12) It is evident that if we reject all these essential portions of the Old and New Testament because they do not coincide with Darwinism, then we undermine all confidence in the inspired Word of God in favor of "vain philosophy" and "science falsely so-called." This is why a few ardent evolutionists would destroy t he Bible if they could But the Bible is true, and will endure long after Darwinism has been forgotten.

The Bible story is harmonious with the actual discoveries of science, but disagrees with all erroneous theories. It accords most fully with reason and common sense. It declares that when the first man, Adam, left the hands of his Maker he was "very good," and in "the image of God." This of course does not mean a physical image, because God is not physical, but a spirit; while man is not spirit by flesh and blood. Adam, however, was created in the mental and moral image of God—so much so that even now, in his fallen state, God can say to him, "Come now, let us reason together."—Isa 1:18.

Adam and Eve, when created, were not "fallen" or degraded and dying but were perfect physically, mentally and morally. There was no sentence of death resting upon them originally. They could have lived here on earth, in a perfect Edenic environment, forever. Many scientists say it should be possible for living cells to rebuild or multiply themselves indefinitely, if given a perfect environment. The bounds of Eden would then have been extended until it covered the whole earth; and Adam’s posterity also would have been perfect human beings, able to live here everlastingly. The commission was to "multiply and fill the earth," but not to overfill it. When the earth had been comfortably filled with billions of perfect human beings, the further propagation of the race would have ceased; even as God still intends shall be the case "in the resurrection," and as is now the case among the angelic hosts of heaven.—Mt 22:30.

But man was created to be a free agent, able to choose his own course. His will was not restricted. In this respect also he was "in the image of God." Adam, though able to obey god implicitly, chose to disobey his Creator’s reasonable requirements. Having thus misused the perfect life with which he had been entrusted, it was reasonable and just that God should take from him that gift of life, even as he had been forewarned. (Ge 3:3.) Adam therefore began to die from the moment of his transgression, and finally went into the tomb. There he would have remained forever had not divine love devised a plan whereby he might be ransomed from death.—Joh 3:16; 1Ti 2:4-6.

The ransoming of mankind from the sentence of death, which justly came upon Adam and his unborn race in Eden, is the theme of many inspired writers of the Bible. It was for this purpose that Jesus came into the world, to suffer and die. That is why He is called our redeemer. He came "to seek and save that which was lost." An Edenic paradise had been lost, together with an entire human race. Paradise lost shall yet become paradise regained and restored; and mankind shall return to the plane from which they fell in Eden. That is why the Psalmist was caused to write: "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men!"—Psalm 90:3.

Darwinism would destroy the whole story of redemption in Jesus. If man never fell, then there is no need of a Redeemer. The doctrine of human evolution thus would make the sacrifice of Jesus Christ of none effect, and God’s whole plan of salvation null and void. If man is naturally evolving from a lower to a higher plane by inevitable law, then he would have done so regardless of whether Jesus died for him or not. Still some presume to say that they can accept Jesus as their Redeemer, and believe Darwinism at the same time! It cannot be done. They might accept Jesus as a good man, but they cannot regard Him as man’s Redeemer, if man did not need to be redeemed. Unless man "fell" into sin and death, he would not require a "ransom" therefrom.

The wonderful biblical doctrine of "restitution" is nullified by the evolution theory. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, spake under divine inspiration and announced this doctrine, saying: "times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord....Whom the heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began." (Ac 3:19-21.) The word restitution means "restoring that which was lost."

If earliest man was a low-browed brute, then restoring him to that condition would scarcely be a blessing. Yet that is what "restitution" wold imply, if Darwinism is true. Yea, it would even suggest the restoring of all creatures to their "first estate," which according to Darwin, would be a primordial form of one-celled unisexual life germs, or the earliest type of protoplasm! In other words Darwinism would reduce to an absurdity a foremost Scriptural doctrine "which god hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began." shall we take the word of Darwin, which three generations of scientists have been unable to verify; or shall we accept the harmonious testimony of all the holy prophets and apostles?

The Apostle Paul testifies to the fact that man and beast are not related; nor is there any relationship between beasts, fishes and birds, says this inspired writer. Darwin contended that all these were evolved from one primordial form, and therefore all species are really the same flesh, all belonging to the same "family tree." But Paul says: "All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." (1Co 15:39). The best efforts of the scientists to disprove this statement of the apostle have proved fruitless.

The same inspired writer declares that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." (Ac 17:26.) Modern evolutionists have challenged this statement as absurd. They deny that all men sprang from one forefather Adam, but say that some of the races have arisen independently of others; having diverged far back in the paleolithic times, before they had gotten even to the ape stage of evolution. But when proof is demanded, they have nothing concrete to offer except unverified theory. There is no scientific reason to doubt the correctness of the apostle’s aforementioned statement.

Darwinism is a delusion peculiar to these "last days"; and the scoffing of the evolutionists was foretold by another inspired writer as being on e of the "signs" that would mark the time of the Lord’s second coming. In 2Pe 3:3, 4, we find this significant statement: "there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own desires, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming...all things continue as they were (i.e., according to natural law) from the beginning of creation."

It will be noted that these latter-day scoffers would not merely contend that all things continue as they were from the creation of man. No, their argument ignores the Genesis account of Adam and Eve, and their creation and fall in Eden; and goes back to "the beginning of creation," that is, to the earliest protoplasm; and contents that all things continue according to a law that was in effect in the very beginning of creation. It is apparent that the modern theory of human evolution, which is now believed by many church people of our day, amply fulfils the aforesaid prediction of Peter.

All who accept the doctrine of Darwin must of necessity become "scoffers" at the Bible story of man’s creation "in God’s image;" of Adam’s "fall" into sin and death; of Jesus’ ransom and redemption of "that which was lost"; and of "the restitution of all things" during Christ’s coming kingdom. No evolutionist can appreciate "the promise of His coming" nor see the light of present truth, until he becomes ready to discard Darwinism as an unproven theory, and is willing to accept God’s Word at its face value. When he does this, he will come to find that the Bible, when properly understood, is thoroughly in accord with scientific discovery; but quite at variance with the irrational guesses and hasty conjectures of those who "scoff" at the divine testimony.

Evolutionists at the Crossroads (Part II)

CHAPTER I What About "Prehistoric Man"?

THE apparent eagerness of some scientists to confirm Darwinism at the expense of the Bible has led them to make many wild assertions concerning "prehistoric man" which mature scientific investigation has been unable to verify. Indeed the vaunted "science" of human prehistory rests upon a far less stable foundation than the casual reading public generally realizes.

Because a remote antiquity for the human race has been assumed and indorsed by many esteemed educators, and has come to be taught in all our great schools of learning, the average layman today naturally infers it to have been demonstrated as a mathematical certainty.

The ordinary reader, of course, does not take the time to weigh the scientific evidence and determine for himself whether or not its substantiates the claims of the Pre-historians.

But the modern scientists are by no means unanimous in supporting the hypothesis of a remote origin for man, or the corollary theory of his descent (or ascent) from brutes. Many well informed geologists, palaeontologists, archaeologists and anatomists hold a contrary view, and are prepared to cite abundant evidence to show the absurdity of the aforesaid commonly accepted but unverified opinions.

The entire hypothesis of the Pre-historians primarily stands or falls on the broad assumption of the "Uniformitarian" school of geology, which like Darwinism itself, has been foisted upon the minds of impressionable schoolchildren without adequate proof to support it, and which has led the last two generations to reach many untenable conclusions. It now appears that the assumed fundamental theories underlying Uniformitarian geology are misconceptions, which today are being frankly exposed by many serious investigators in this field.

Take for example the purely arbitrary assumption that the present slow, orderly processes of erosion and deposit have continued at this rate throughout all past ages, thereby furnishing a chronometric scale for calculating prehistoric time. Scientific dissenters rom this Unifromitarian view point out that there are reasons for believing that at certain crucial period in this planet’s history there have occurred many great catastrophes, which enabled nature to perform its work of carving valleys, upheaving mountains, and washing and remodeling the earth’s surface, with unusual rapidity. Hence, instead of thousands or millions of years being required for certain known actions, they may actually have occurred within a very short time.

These opponents of the Uniformitarians are called Catastrophists, and they are the real "progressives" in the geologic field today. But it is not the purpose of this book to discuss the criticism advanced by the latter school of geologists against he "orthodox" school of Uniformitarianism. Weighty though they be, their challenges have received scant attention from those educators who are still trying to confirm Darwin as to the origin and antiquity of man. The latter prefer to maintain the scientific status quo, and to rigidly adhere to the "long accepted: school of geologic thought as outlined by Lyell and Smith, the fathers of Uniformitarian geology.

Especially is this true of the Pre-historians—they unquestioningly accept Sir Charles Lyell’s dictum that the present slow rate of erosion and terrigenous deposits serve as a dependable measuring rod by which they may determine the age of the various geologic layers, and of any human fossils that may be found therein. And the existing exceeding slowness of these supposed "uniform geologic processes" has led them to assume that man, whose bones are sometimes found deep in the earth, must have inhabited the planet many thousands of years prior to the period assigned by the Bible’s chronology to the creation of Adam in Eden.

Pre-historians, as a class, impatiently reject the testimony of Genesis as incompatible with what they assume to be the true geologic "record of the rocks." And being also wedded to the theory of biological evolution, they feel positive that it must have required immense eons of time for their hypothetical pithecoid or ape-man to have gradually metamorphosed himself into a homo sapiens or true man, and still further vast ages for the latter to undergo his "cultural evolution," from the first crude beginning on up to the dawn of civilization.

The evolution theory also connotes a cumulatively accelerated progress, as time has advanced; and, contrariwise, a slower and still slower progress as we look backward down the corridors of time. Thus one misconception has given color to another; and Darwin’s false premise, now accepted as a basis of "scientific" reasoning, has so biased and distorted the point of view of archeologists and palaeontologists, that nearly all real evidence concerning earliest man has been warped and twisted out of shape to make it conform thereto.

This fact becomes apparent when we study the pronouncements of many modern authorities on prehistoric man. Like all scientists, they profess zeal for the promotion of true knowledge, but they have been so thoroughly prejudiced from childhood in favor of certain preconceived but unproved idea which they habitually use as a basis for their reasoning, that whenever any damaging counter-evidence is brought forth by a scientific "heretic" they are quite reluctant to give it due weight when they find that it casts suspicion on their long accepted fundamental postulates.

Scientists simply assume that the Darwinian postulates should be regarded as established beyond controversy, and they doggedly uphold them in the face of all the rapidly accumulating evidence to the contrary. They feel that it is better to soft pedal or ignore all counter-evidence, rather than upset the very fundamentals on which their whole scientific structure has been built. If the counter-evidence becomes too well known and too damaging to longer be ignored, they condescend to give it a partial hearing, but then proceed to lay it on the shelf or else distort it so as to make it seemingly align with their fundamental theorems.

An example of the foregoing fact is afforded in the recent utterances of Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborne, who, along with Dr. Alex Hrdlicka and Prof. Elliot Smith, is recognized as one of the most eminent exponents in the field of "Human Prehistory." In his well-known textbook, Men of the Old Stone Age (heretofore briefly reviewed, in Part I), Dr. Osborne devotes much space to discussing the so-called Java ape-man, otherwise known as Pithecanthropus Erectus; and he writes as though he harbors no doubt whatever about its authenticity as a bonafide connecting link between the human race and the brutes (except for one or two apparently inadvertent admission), though he knew of the many evidences to the contrary.

But further exposures compelled Dr. Osborne to amend his positive position on the subject. As early as Dec. 27, 1929, according to the reports in the daily press, he spoke before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Des Moines, and frankly reversed himself—declaring it to be anatomically impossible for true man and a quadru manus to have had a common ancestor. He proceeded to explain that in the "embryonic human hand (and foo)...there is no evidence whatever of having passed through an anthropoid limb-grasping stage"—for even the evolutionists concede that nature never restores to a species any lost faculty or part which has been atrophied through persistent disuse, whether it be a tooth, finger, anklebone, rib, tendon or nerve. "On this principle," says Osborne, "the opposable human thumbs could not spring back from the partly atrophied (or rudimentary) ape thumbs."

Now it would seem that such an admission, coming from the great Osborne himself, would have generally unsettled the faith of men of science in the Java ape-man, Pithecanthropus. But what do we find? Even the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, of which Dr. Osborne is the honorary president, and various other great museums throughout the world, continue to display the fanciful reconstructions of this imaginary monstrosity, for our schoolchildren to gape at in wonderment and have registered in their plastic minds the admittedly erroneous idea that they are looking upon a true portrait-bust of their early forefather of hundreds of thousands of years ago. Thus, notwithstanding all counter-evidence, and the admission of Dr. Osborne and others, leading educators and writers of textbooks still take Pithecanthropus for granted, and continue to cite it as an indubitable link in the chain of evidence which still refer to these Java fragments as though they constitute unquestionable evidence for Darwinism.

Dr. Dubois himself was so disappointed over the early rejection of his specimens by the aforesaid congress of scientists that he sealed them up from further examination. He made plaster casts of them and passed these out for other scientists to examine; but the originals have never again been permitted to be studied by anyone from that day to this. Just why Dr. Dubois took this course is not altogether clear. One wonders if his action was prompted by jealousy of his reputation, and fear that first-hand investigation of his ape-man’s "skull-cap" might reveal it to be no more than the knee-pan of a stegodon (an extinct species of elephant), even as did another supposed "Pithecanthropus skull" which was unearthed in 1926 by Dr. Heberlein in this same Javanese field.

Of course, the Dubois fragments were found in strata which also contained bones of extinct animals, some of which are generally classed as belonging to the Tertiary, or early Quaternary age. But as to whether these prove a remote antiquity for the Dubois human thighbone, we can do no better than refer to the following criteria for determining the authenticity and dependability of such fossil remains, as given by the eminent authority on evolution and prehistory, Dr. R. S. Lull, in his The Ways of Life. In that work he warns students of the following three things that may lead them to false conclusions:

(1) The stratigraphic position of the specimens—i.e., whether or not they were in undisturbed strata when found. A "prehistoric" skeleton or bone may turn out to be but an "intrusive burial" of relatively modern times, in which case the stratum in which it is found proves nothing as to the specimen’s antiquity. The "Cuzco Man" of Peru, at first acclaimed as of enormous antiquity, proved on further examination to be but the skeleton of a man belonging to our historic period, having been covered up by a misleading talus of very ancient rock which had slidden down from the cliffs above, and which had led the original discoverer to a grossly wrong conclusion as to the skeleton’s age. In like manner the Mongolian expedition was prematurely jubilant over the finding of human remains buried in tertiary strata, and because of that fact hastily proclaimed that the specimen was that of a man who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago; but later they found unmistakable evidence that the remains were of comparatively modern character, evidently having been buried there not so many centuries ago.

(2) Degree of fossilization. Prof. Lull points out that in saturated soils which contain a high percentage of minerals in solution, the impregnation of the bones may be very rapid, and give them an unwarranted appearance of extreme age—as seems to have been the case with Pithecanthropus.

(3) Association with bones of extinct animals of known antiquity. Concerning the weight to be given to evidence of this kind, such as has been urged in behalf of the Java "ape-man," Prof. Lull makes the following frank admission: "Here again...a chance for error arises, for the sediments are sometimes eroded and then redeposited, and the contained [extinct] animal bones may thus be older than the strata in which they are found." True, in that case they usually are abraded; but even that is no absolute test, for fossils of the very same age as the strata in which they are found also may be abraded; especially if the sediments are those of an active stream, or of a wind-whipped shallow sea, such as surrounds the Island of Java.

The foregoing facts serve to cast grave doubts upon the claim of remote antiquity for the Java thighbone, and indeed for the stratum itself in which the specimen was found. Geologists, of course, classify successive rock formations and their component strata, not according to their mineral texture (which is wholly unreliable), but according to their fossil content—and even this may often lead them astray, as the above warnings of Prof. Lull clearly show. When the "Rhodesian man" was found in Africa a few years ago it was heralded as of vast antiquity. It was covered with tons of mineralized bones which gave the appearance of remote age; but they later proved to be those of modern African fauna, and thus quite discredited the earlier claims of the discoverer. Were it not for the preconceived and deeply ingrained prejudices of educators in favor of human evolution, the exaggerated claims for the Java Pithecanthropus would also be rejected for lack of supporting evidence.

CHAPTER II Neanderthal and Other "Dawn Men"

HERETOFORE we have considered the arguments which have been advanced in behalf of the remote antiquity of the human thigh bone which forms a part of the so-called "Java ape-man" collection of specimens. We have seen, according to the admissions of no less an authority on evolution than Prof. R. S. Lull, that a remote antiquity for this human bone cannot positively be assigned merely upon the degree of its fossilization; nor can such a conclusion be deduced from the mere fact that it was found in association with fossils of extinct animals, nor from the apparent "tertiary" age of the stratum in which it was buried.

This thigh bone, however, had a protuberant growth on it at one point, and was, to this small extent, different from a normal modern human femur. This deviation has been pointed to by Dr. Dubois and others as evidence that it did not belong to a modern true man, but to a primitive anthropoid creature that had not yet advanced to the "true man" stage of evolution. Prof. Lull also suggests that such anatomical deviations from modern types may be evidence of remote antiquity; but he admits that it is by no means an infallible test, for it may be due to disease. In the case of the Java specimen, it may have resulted from syphilis.

Indeed, some authorities are disposed to ascribe all such structural departures, to pathological abnormalcies—cretinism or acromegaly, for example. Cretinism is due to insufficient development of the thyroid gland; and may result from lack of iodine in the atmosphere—as in Alpine districts, where cretinism is very prevalent today. Acromegaly is due to an impairment of the pituitary gland, which leads to an overgrowth of bone and other abnormalities. It is possible that the population of whole districts may be affected similarly, because of peculiar external conditions which commonly surround them; and it is conceivable that under such conditions, which may have existed for a long time in certain regions during the past, such afflictions may have become hereditary for successive generations, resulting in an apparent "race" of monstrosities.

According to some authorities, the "Neanderthal" group of skeletons represents just such a type of acromegalous monsters. When the first Neanderthal skeleton was found in Europe some years ago, leading anatomists agreed that it was merely an individual monstrosity caused by disease. There is nothing about these Neanderthal skeletons to show any kinship with the ape; they are entirely human, although there are no men like them on earth at the present day. Even evolutionists admit that the Neanderthaler could not have descended from the so-called Java ape-man, Pithecanthropus because the thigh bone of the latter group called for a creature that walked erect like man of today, while the Neanderthal man was stooped. Nor could Pithecanthropus have descended from the Neanderthals, for the latter lived in much more recent times. Furthermore, the cranial index of the Neanderthal men is very high, as compared to the low index of Pithecanthropus—whose skull cap is probably that of an extinct species of chimpanzee, as heretofore explained.

In the preceding chapter we referred to Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborne’s open repudiation of his earlier faith in Pithecanthropus as a "missing link"; but this does not imply his conversion away from the evolution viewpoint. On the contrary, he is still looking for man’s primitive ancestor. In fact, he seems to believe that the "missing link" is already pretty well identifiable in the Piltdown fragments found by Dawson, in England, a few years ago; and which he refers to as the "Dawn Man."

His careful reexamination of these dubius relics—so dubious that they were readily rejected as evolutionary evidence by other competent scientists—now convinces Dr. Osborne that earliest man emerged upon this planet some million and a quarter years ago! This more than doubles even the hastily assumed antiquity of the "Java ape-man." But Curator Gerritt S. Miller, of the Smithsonian Institution, an equally eminent authority, places the Piltdown eoanthropus in the same category as the Java Pithecanthropus —pronouncing both of these groups to be mere collections of bone fragments "too incomplete and uncertain" to warrant any definite conclusions as to their significance.

Three seems to be a strange and inexplicable fascination in this hunting game of the scientists for the elusive "missing line"—a search which has taken them with unabated ardor out into the hidden fastnesses of the Gobi Desert, up into the Alpine heights, down across the yawning Sahara, and into the African wilds beyond; as well as into many other lands in both hemispheres—at great expense of time, effort and money, notwithstanding the meagerness of returns and the frequency of disappointments, as one after another of their prematurely heralded "missing links" has turned out to be but another embarrassing mistake.

Still the hunt for the "missing link" goes on. It has turned now to the North American Field, which already has been quite thoroughly combed—yet not one single bona fide specimen has been found to date. True, time and again "important finds" have been announced; and these have been played up in spectacular fashion in the newspapers and magazines as "positive proof" of man’s remote antiquity upon this continent—but each and every one of these "finds" has been discredited.

Among these widely heralded American discoveries was the "Calaberas skull" of California; the "fossil man" of Vero, Fla.; the Natchez pelvic bone; the Trenton crania; the Lancing (Kans.) Skeleton; the Nebraska "loess man"; the southwest Colorado man; the New Mexico man, etc. Quite recently, near Scott’s Bluff, Nebraska, primitive tools were found, which had been fashioned from the bones of extinct elephants and bison antiquus. And these tools were accepted by many educators as proof that man inhabited this locality at least half a million years ago.

But what positive proof do we have that these faunal species of animals became extinct in North America at such an early date? None! Unmistakable Indian portraiture of mastodons (now extinct) have been found, and some ethnologists also claim that the historic Indian "thunder bird" myth is a vague tradition from the days when mammoths roamed the wilds of some sections of this continent and were hunted by the Indians. Quite recently Dr. W. B. Scott, professor of geology and paleontology at Princeton University, made the discovery of a complete mastodon skeleton, near Quito, Ecuador. This skeleton bore marks of having been killed, and no indications of great age; and Dr. Scott said that he is convinced that the animal had been killed in typical Indian fashion at a date not exceeding five centuries ago! He deduces therefrom that the now extinct mastodon must have been contemporary with historic aborigines, in some sections, almost down to the time of the discovery of America by Europeans.

The consensus of opinion among well informed archeologists is that the American Indian has not inhabited this continent but a few thousand years at the most, and that there is no bona fide evidence of any prehistoric predecessors of them on this hemisphere; but that they are related to the Malays who must have migrated from Asia, either by way of the Bering Strait or over the Aleutian chain of Islands, which may have formed an uninterrupted land bridge between Asia and North America within historic times. Certainly every effort to assign to them or to their ancestors an extreme age, has failed of proof. Dr. Hrdlicka has prepared a special bulletin (No. 66) entitled "Recent Discoveries Attributed to Early Man in America," in which he discusses these mistaken "finds" aforementioned, and admits they are modern.

Prof. R. S. Lull also sums up the situation in similar fashion. After mentioning that numerous human bones and artifacts have been found in North America in association with "Pleistocene" mastodon and bison antiquus, and which also agree with the said extinct animal bones in their degree of fossilization, he then nevertheless admits that "the anatomical test does not corroborate the other criteria in point of antiquity, for each specimen presents features in no way different from those of existing North American Indians."

The factual tests applied by true science thus refute the wild theories of evolutionary geologists and palaeontologists, both as to the antiquity of these extinct mammal species and as to the age of the strata which contain them. These bones are those of modern Indians; and not even the evolutionists believe that Indians have dwelt here for 500,000 years—the age hastily ascribed to some of these North American "finds."

Nevertheless the search for proof of human antiquity continues to be pushed with indefatigable zeal. Only recently Mr. Edgar V. Howard, a Philadelphia archeologist, reported a "find" in New Mexico, of a skillfully chipped spearhead and the remains of a camp fire, in association with the bones of elephants and camels; whereupon he conjectured that the man who made the spearhead and the campfire must have lived there at least fifteen or twenty thousand years ago. Bit if, as asserted by Prof. Scott above mentioned, even the now extinct mastodon lived on this continent as last as five or six centuries ago, it should not be surprising if we occasionally should find modern Indian spearheads and arrowheads, and the ashes of campfires in the same strata which contain the bones of elephants and camels. A few of these may have roamed the western plains of North America until not so long before the coming of the white man to this new world.

But to each successive "find" a remote antiquity is invariably assigned—otherwise it would not make exciting "copy" for the Sunday supplements, nor lend any support to the Darwinian hypothesis. Each specimen is acclaimed by the discoverer as a new species of Homo, and he is given a geological Latin name to correspond. For example, we have the Peking man, called Sinanthropus Pekinensis; and Mt. Carmel man, Paleanthropus Palestinus; also the Oldoway man, of the Lake Victoria region. Then there is the Lloyd’s skull, dug up in London and endorsed by no less an authority than Prof. G. Elliot Smith. Only the back part of this skull was found, and there was no way of determining whether the forehead may have been high or low, or what the brain capacity might have been. Nevertheless Prof. Peake, of Oxford, feels sure that "it must have been a creature of low intelligence."

It seems that every shred of hypothetical evidence is eagerly welcomed, if it serves to suggestively uphold the theory of human evolution and appears to cast discredit upon the Bible story of Adam’s creation and fall. Yet the entire Darwinian theory of man’s remote origin and slow progress, from primitive savagery on up to civilization, rests upon the flimsiest of foundations. All the actual evidence is directly to the contrary. We find at the very dawn of recorded history, in the thickly populated regions, not a primitive development but as high a plane of civilization as was ever reached in later times, until the modern era of printing and other mechanical inventions for increasing knowledge supervened. Furthermore, the archeological evidence shows that the average brain capacity of ancient historical men was fully on a par with our own of today—while all evidence of "prehistoric" men is admittedly incomplete, and rests upon misconception and conjecture.

The antiquity of most of the "finds" is simply assumed from their depth below the surface; and the age of their level is estimated by a wholly arbitrary geologic scale, based upon the present rate of terrigenous deposits in certain localities. And because under ordinary modern conditions sedimentation takes place slowly, the pre-historians assume that this rate has been uniform throughout terrestrial history. They seem to quite disregard the fact that under flood or catastrophic conditions the rate of deposit is vastly accelerated. Thus in the Somme Valley, where it is now known that the forests disappeared only a few centuries ago, and where peat now grows at the slow rate of less than two inches a century, the investigators at first insisted that the fossil flora and fauna at the bottom of these peat beds must be many thousands of years old, since they now are nearly 30 feet below the surface.

These enthusiasts overlooked the now well known fact that under dense forest and swamp conditions (as once prevailed in the Somme Valley) peat grows so rapidly that within a century it may add two or three feet, not inches, to its depth. This was proven when eventually there was found, near the bottom of these same Somme peat beds, relics of Roman pottery, Roman bricks, iron tools, and a boat, which showed that as late as the early Christian era these beds were actually navigable lakes.

The same error in calculation was made by the pre-historians in England, Scotland, Ireland and Denmark, where the age of the peat bogs was erroneously estimated on the basis of their present growth of an inch or two a century. Yet deep down in these beds have been found Roman roads; and in Ireland, at a depth of 20 feet, was found a relatively modern pair of well made double-soled shoes and a crock of butter! They are admittedly only a few centuries old; but according to the scale of estimates adopted by Sir. Charles Lyell, father of "orthodox" uniformitarian geology, these relics should be at least 16,000 years old! Thus it is seen that the more critically one enquires into the actual evidence on which the pre-historians have based their exaggerated estimates of human antiquity, the less convincing it is found to be.

CHAPTER III Other Scientific Miscalculations

EVERY particle of evidence thus far advanced in support of the theory that man has been on this planet for hundreds of thousands, or millions, of years, when sifted to its foundation, is seen to rest upon wholly unproven conjectures. Some of these already have been mentioned, and others will be discussed as we proceed; but none of the theories of the pre-historians is more faulty than their foundation doctrine which holds that the age of earth’s layers, and of human fossils found therein, may be computed by means of the present known rate of erosion and sedimentary deposit.

It also is impossible to accurately calculate geologic time from the present known "oscillations of land levels," i.e., from the time now required for the alternate elevation and depression of the earth’s surface in certain localities; as for example, along the Atlantic seaboard. Yet the pre-historians, relying upon certain estimates of the "uniformitarian" geologists, have placed much dependence upon these oscillations; quite ignoring the well known fact that the rate of such oscillations could not have been "uniform," because of vastly varying terrestrial conditions throughout geologic times. As a consequence their calculations, based upon present oscillations, have led them to many absurd conclusions.

Early geologists discovered that portions of the Baltic seacoast are now being elevated at the slow rate of about 2 1/2 feet per century; and upon the basis of this fact a "geologic chronometric scale" was readily adopted and given a universal application. They said this chronometric scale of oscillation could be used to determine the age of the coal beds—and then proceeded to publish figures.

But in doing so they quite ignored the fact that in various great coal beds whole trunks of trees, still standing erect, are not infrequently found. Some of these pierce several successive coal beds, between which are the usual intercalary layers of marine sand and shells. Do the uniformitarian geologists think it conceivable that the same tree trunk could have stood erect and unrotted throughout hundreds of thousands, yea millions, of years, during which the land alternately arose above, then sank below, the sea level, at the present slow rate of oscillation?

The evidence seems clear that in times past there have been successive elevations and submergences in varius localities, which have taken place within relatively short periods of time; and the finding of human fossils deep down in these regions is no valid evidence of a remote antiquity for man.

These oscillations have been very erratic in various regions, even within quite recent times. Within 300 years there has been a 110 feet rise in the sea bottom near Nova Zembla; there is now in progress a gradual rising of 4 inches per year in the sea bottom at the port of Adelaide, South Australia; and the Texas shore line, near Matagoas, has risen 22 inches in 17 years. It is apparent, therefore, that there cannot be any reliable chronometric scale for calculating geologic time—whether it be based upon surface oscillations or upon erosion and terrigenous deposits—because local conditions are continually varying even today, and may have varied enormously during certain periods throughout geologic time.

Needless to say, no indisputable remains of man ever have been discovered imbedded within the basic aqueous rocks; that is, below the modern or "Quaternary" strata. The entire questionable evidence thus far advanced in behalf of "Paleolithic man" is found among the loose, unconsolidated material that covers the bed rocks; and much of it comes from the so-called "glacial drifts," which are presumed to comprise a residue from the Ice Age.

Many books have been written concerning these glacial drifts, and the supposed "paleolithic" human remains found in connection therewith; and a wide diversity of estimates have been promulgated by the pre-historians as to the remoteness and duration of the Ice Age. But the consensus of opinion among many geologists places the last "ice-recession" of the final great Glacial Epoch at no less than 50,000 years ago; and that is claimed by the pre-historians to constitute an important index for calculating the minimum antiquity of man.

But granting the reality of an Ice Age, is there definite proof that its final phase ended as far back as 50,000 years? As to this, geologists are not entirely agreed. Indeed, George Frederick Wright, a conservative geologist, has presented convincing evidence that post-glacial times extend no further back than a few millennia—not more than 10,000 years, according to his careful estimate. In proof of this he calls attention to the following facts:

(1) The small extent of "weathering" of the reputed Glacial Age rocks, which do not suggest a remote antiquity.

(2) The apparent short duration of the reputed glacial lakes.

(3) The rapid rate of accumulation of sediment in these glacial lake bottoms, which by no means suggests that it has been going on for more than a few score centuries, and nothing like 50,000 years.

(4) The slight enlargement of admittedly post-glacial river channels.

(5) The known rate of recession of water falls, such as Niagara, which also suggests that it could not have been going on more than a very few thousand years at the most. Wright contends that all nature thus testifies against a remote antiquity for the Glacial Epoch, and of man upon this planet.

The earliest investigators derived most of their information of "prehistoric" man from human remains found in the Swiss lake-dwellings, or from the "kitchen middens" (or refuse dumps from ancient habitations) along the Baltic shores, or from the barrows (or burial chambers) of Brittany and the Orkneys, or from the bone caverns and river drifts of southern or central Europe. It was soon decided that none of the first three sources antedated the Neolithic or New Stone Age; but various relics from the river drifts and bone caves were classed as truly Paleolithic, owing to the crude workmanship and obviously primitive character of these artifacts.

The river-drifts here referred to consist of elevated gravel terraces that line certain ancient valleys, some of which are 100 feet or more above the present river beds. These gravel strata are regarded as cross-sections remains of the river’s bed in ancient geologic times; and their present eminence is pointed to by Uniformitarian geologists as proof that at least fifty thousand years must have intervened between them and the present day—on the theory that the river has thus gradually worn down its channel to the present level during these many millennia—and their calculation is of course based upon the known present slow rate of river action. Hence any human relics found in these high gravel terraces are immediately assigned an age of 50,000 years or more!

But is there indisputable proof that these "men of the river Drifts" actually lived so far back in antiquity as the Uniformitarians have assumed? There is much convincing evidence to the contrary. Indeed, geologists now point out that these present placid rivers were once broad and madly rushing torrents, perhaps carrying jagged ice floes and enormous tumbling boulders along their beds, which would permit a vastly more rapid rate of channel-cutting and sedimentation to take place in a few decades than the Uniformitarians would think could have been accomplished in several thousand years.

Thus when human artifacts were discovered at St. Acheul, at a depth of 40 feet, in strata that was classed as "Lower Chellean," the savants assigned them to antiquity of 100,000 years. But they were not so prompt to assign such age to the city of Rome, when they found that its ancient Forum is buried nearly 40 feet below the level of the modern city, for they remembered that Rom was founded only in 759 B.C.

The bone caverns are supposed to supply abundant evidence concerning "Paleolithic" man, though they also yield many admittedly more modern relics—Neolithic implements, and sometimes bronze objects. In some cases the reputed "Old Stone Age" specimens are below the Neolithic remains, and separated from them by a layer of hard material that is totally destitute of fossils. This curious circumstance caused Wright to hastily conjecture that the fossils below this intermediate hard layer are those of antediluvian man, and that the barren intercalary layer represents a hiatus caused by the Noachian flood. But this theory had to be abandoned when it was found that in other localities there is no such layer separating the two kinds of relics.

At Boggy Bay, Devonshire, also at the Cape of Good Hope, and in various other fields, archeologists find both the "Old Stone Age" and "New Stone Age"planes of culture strewn together at the same level—which seems to show that at least in these localities the two ages were contemporaneous. Although Sir John Lubbock’s early dictum that "Paleolithic man possessed no pottery" has long been cherished as a fundamental fact by the pre-historians, yet it now is well known that potsherds are not uncommonly fund in association with "Paleolithic" remains, in the bone caverns. We lack space in which to enumerate more than a very few such instances.

At Furfooz, Belgium, 13 adult and infant skeletons were found in association with the bones of reindeer, horse and wild boar; also a whistle made from reindeer bone, an earthen vase, and Paleolithic arrow tips. In a cave near Nuremberg, Bavaria, were found human bones mingled with those of cave lions, bears and hyenas; also split bones of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, along with those of horses, oxen, wolves, pike and carp. This same cave also contained clay spindle whorls, and crude pottery ornamented withe "modernistic" zigzag lines. Here then we have evidence of a Neolithic culture prevailing back in supposedly anterior post-glacial times! Also, in the Blauenburg cave, at Wurttemburg, Paleolithic flint knives and bone instruments, together with fragments of pottery and remains of campfires, were found along with bones of the cave bear, lion, reindeer, mammoth, rhinoceros, horse, fox, duck, heron and swan. These instances seem sufficient to disprove the early theory that "Lower Stone Age Man" never ate his meat boiled!

But notwithstanding this practical obliteration of the line of demarcation between the so-called "Old Stone" and "New Stone" ages, many leading pre-historians still cling to the academic theory that the ages of Rough Stone, Polished Stone, Bronze and Iron, followed each other in orderly sequence and that each of these "ages" required immense intervals of time to achieve fruition and "evolve" into the next higher "plane of culture." But there is as little foundation for this hypothesis as there is for their varius other conjectures concerning human antiquity, which we have heretofore reviewed.

CHAPTER IV The Myth of Distinctive Ages

THE archeological discoveries of the past few years have discredited the hitherto respected but wholly academic theory of the pre-historians concerning the "Rough Stone Age," "Polished Stone Age," "Bronze Age," and "Iron Age"; by showing that ll these various kinds of materials were used by man during the very same period, at least in many localities.

But notwithstanding this practical obliteration of the lines of demarcation between these artificial ages or "stages in human development," the Darwinists are loath to let theory yield to actual discovery in this matter, because to do so would undermine their fundamental hypothesis that man slowly developed his physical and intellectual organs and powers during immense eons of time.

Naturally it would require a remote antiquity for man in order to bring about such physical and cultural changes by an evolutionary process working slowly through countless successive generations. Hence pre-historians proceeded to set forth in quite positive terms that the Paleolithic period was immensely longer than the Neolithic or Polished Stone age, and that the Bronze age was shorter than either of its predecessors—not because there is any actual evidence to warrant these arbitrary assumptions, but because the Darwinian theory demanded it.

This idea of the "ages" is still being set forth in all our modern school textbooks, whose authors seem never to have observed that such a theory is now in open conflict with actual archeological discovery and verified historical facts. However, some are candid enough to admit that the various ages have been contemporaneous "to some extent." Indeed they were! The American aborigines were in the "Neolithic Age" down to the European migrations of the 10th century and onward, while some were sparingly supplementing their stone implements with copper tools.

On the high-walled Tiburon Island, in the Gulf of California, the Seris tribe of Indians have not yet learned even to make their weapons out of stone—much less to fabricate them from bronze or iron—but use spears made of wood, with the points hardened by fire. The early voyagers to Australia and the South Seas found the inhabitants dependent upon weapons made of stone, bone and shell. But when iron was introduced it was promptly appreciated and adopted. Thus the transition from stone to iron was abrupt, with no intervening age of bronze.

The evidence for ana independent "Bronze Age" anywhere on earth is exceedingly slender and questionable, and scarcely exists outside the academic textbooks. The two oldest known civilizations—Babylonian and Egyptian—seem to have used both bronze and iron concurrently. Recent discoveries in northern Russia show that the prehistoric inhabitants passed directly from stone to iron.

In 1930 an Italian scientific expedition found evidence in Rhodesia, South Africa, that some ancient race in the "Paleolithic" stage of culture, nevertheless had also learned to smelt iron. This evidence was found buried six feet below the floor of a cavern. Unlike most savage races, the African aborigines seem to have acquired the art of iron mongering at a very early date; and this, like most of their other primitive arts, appears to have spread over that "dark continent" as a result of their early contact with Ancient Egypt.

When the Swiss "lake-dwellings" were first discovered they all were assumed to antedate historic times by many centuries; but further investigations disclose iron lance-heads, copper coins, bronze vases and ornaments in Etruscan, Greek and Roman manufacture, in many of them. This proved that they belong to historic times. Lake villages continued to be built in Europe until well within the Roman Christian era. Some in Ireland were occupied as recently as Henry VIII, and iron objects are common in all of them.

It seems entirely reasonable that all of the European lake-dwellings belong to historic times, but that those located near the borders of Gaul and Italy came into contact with the Roman trade; while contemporary eastern lake-villages, because they were shut off from communication with the Roman marts by impassable Alpine ranges, are destitute of such objects of civilization as are found in the more western villages.

Any student of human prehistory, when once he has disabused his mind of the erroneous concept of an evolutionary sequence of Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron cultures throughout the earth, must admit that these "ages" cross each other at nearly every turn. Further examples are: the Scandinavians used bronze weapons down to the 10th century A.D., while flints also are found in the dolems and tumuli of the 5th century A.D. In Japan, stone implements continued in general use until the 8th century of our era.

The Egyptian archers of the Thothmes’ armies used stone-tipped arrows; and knives of flint, also are found within the sarcophagi of that period, notwithstanding their high civilization which, according to the academicians, should have taken them out of the "Neolithic Age" many centuries before that time. As late even as the period of the Ptolemies (contemporary with the Maccabees in Judea), we still find Egyptians using arrowheads tipped with flint or bone.

The highly civilized Greeks also sometimes used knife blades of flint; and in the rubbish-heaps of Mesopotamian cities, where civilization flourished at a very early date, we find flints mingled with implements of the various metals—iron, bronze and lead—while in Liguria (ancient northwestern Italy) no trace of the metals appears until the Roman conquest. The Lapplanders retained stone tools as late as two centuries ago. The present day Abyssinians still use stone and metal simultaneously; and almost within the memory of living nonagenarians the smiths and tinkerers of the more secluded districts of Ireland used hammers and anvils made of stone; while the Kaffirs of South Africa and the Berbers of North Africa continued to use flint spears right down to modern times.

Pre-historians have assumed that the "Bronze Age" lasted for at least two or three thousand years before man culturally evolved into the "Iron Age." But why? We know, from our early contact with uncivilized Indians, that new arts invariably spread like wildfire over enormous areas, no matter how scanty the population; and the only check on their expansion was lack of the wherewithal to barter for them. Doubtless it ever has been thus among all people.

At the dawn of history civilization was confined to a few favored regions, where the bulk of the world’s population was congregated—namely, in the rich Mesopotamian valley between the Euphrates and Tigris; and later, in the delta and valley if the Nile. For a long time after this, the outlying regions were but sparsely populated with roving bands of hunters or semi-pastoral nomads, whose culture necessarily was rudimentary. But gradually the arts of civilization gained headway even among the, through occasionally contact with roving traders, after which these nomads began to adopt settled habits, established permanent homes, and follow an agricultural life.

The Gauls originally were a race of roving plunderers, but had settled and become semi-civilized by the time Julius Caesar subjugated them in the first century B.C. The same was true of the Germans, whose rudest and most barbarous tribes were those living farthest east from the Thine and the Danube. But subsequent contact with civilization soon wrought a great change in all these people—it did not require vast centuries for them to culturally evolve, or to learn how to work in metal, nor was there a "Bronze age" among them, separate and distinct from the "Iron age."

Of course in various restricted localities, such as in certain parts of Asia Minor and Crete, where several successive settlements have occupied the same sites, there is evidence that the earlier inhabitants were confined to the use of some stone implements, and that the metallic arts were slow in reaching them from the more populous and civilized centers. But this is no valid argument for the academic "ages" and the remoteness of human origin—it merely indicates the remoteness of these historic people from the great centers of civilization; a remoteness as relatively great, according to population ratios, as Britain was from Rome in Caesar’s day, or as the Antilles were from Spain at the time when Columbus embarked at Palos for his hazardous voyage of discovery.

Because there was a "Bronze Age" in the Aegean Isles and on the adjacent continental shores, is no reason for postulating such a stage of independent development as being universal among mankind, and a necessary prerequisite to the age of Iron; for the general evidence everywhere is to be the contrary. And it is sheer assumption that an early independent "Bronze Age" lasted 2000 years anywhere, as the textbooks have taught.

The bronze weapons found within the Danish barrows were first thought to be evidence of that so-called early "Bronze Age," until they were also found in conjunction with plank coffins, woolen garments and felt caps of quite recent manufacture. Some of these barrows contained wooden cups which had been turned on a lathe—and it is generally conceded that the turning-lathe was not introduced into northern Europe prior to the Christian era.

Ancient tombs, near Tallstaadt, Austria, have been found which contained many bronze swords, and a few iron axes and knives; suggesting that iron, being the scarcer and more precious metal, was reserved for manufacture of small indispensable tools, while during the same period copper, being more common, was used far more generally. Tacitus relates that in his time iron was so scarce among the Germanic tribes, that their iron spearheads had to be made characteristically short and narrow.

The truth concerning the various "ages" of stone and metal, is now seen to be that implements of all these materials were used contemporaneously in many parts of the Old World, even as they later came to be used in America. When the mediaeval tomb of one Harold Hildetund was opened at Lecturia, Denmark, it disclosed stone wedges which had been buried with him. This tomb dates from the 8th century A.D. And this is but one among almost innumerable instances showing that stone, as the cheaper material, continued in use among the common people long after the chiefs and nobles were using bronze and iron.

At the same time that Roman Britain was in the "Iron Age" the wild tribes beyond the western and northern frontiers of the conquered areas confronted the legions with stone-headed spears and arrows. An analogous condition prevailed in the more isolated districts of Europe well up into mediaeval times. Europe’s first iron was obtained from Greek and Roman traders, and was an expensive "luxury"; but later, when the natives learned the art of mining and smelting their own ore deposits, iron became a comparatively cheap commodity and gradually came into common use.

With the overthrow of the academic theory of the distinctness of the "Stone Age," the "Bronze Age" and the "Iron Age," evolution has thus lost another of its one-time favorite arguments for human antiquity. Before the archeologists had disproved their hypothesis of the successive "ages" in human development, students had no valid basis for doubting that the theory was true, and that man thus gradually "evolved" through these various stages or periods of civilization during until millennia, back there in remote prehistoric times. Now these "ages" have all been thrown into a common scientific melting pot as a result of actual discovery before the archeologist’s spade. The facts are now becoming more and more evident, that earliest man was highly civilized, that he soon began to master the metallic arts, and that all this began at the dawn of history, not so very long ago.

CHAPTER V Theories Fabricated—Slight Evidence

WE HAVE pointed out in preceding chapters how the theory of human evolution demands long, distinctive "ages" in human cultural development, and that is why the pre-historians have combed the earth for some evidence upon which to base such theory. But the more they have delved into the earth’s crust in some hope of finding paleolithic skeletal remains and human artifacts in support of "prehistoric man," and clear evidence of an enormously long "Old Stone Age," "New Stone Age," "Bronze Age" and "Iron Age," during which he gradually "evolved," the more disappointed the thoughtful scientists among them become.

Many of the archeologists and fossil experts are ready enough to acknowledge the paucity and questionable character of the so-called skeletal remains of prehistoric man—for example, the Trinil fragments, the Heidelberg jaw, and the Piltdown specimens. But they continue to claim vindication for their prehistoric theories, in the undeniable abundance of artifacts which have been found in various parts of the earth in all stages of manufacture—from the rudest flint clippings, to arrows, spears, knives and other utensils which evince high excellence in design and workmanship. These have been found at almost any level, down to about 50 feet.

The academicians have taken these artifacts, and have proceeded to sort, grade and classify them, according to minute differences in design, material and workmanship; and then they place them upon exhibit in such an order as to suggest a slow process of human evolution throughout long "ages," from the first crude beginning of the "Old Stone Age"on up to a high degree of "cultural development," which they say was attained only after hundreds of thousands of years of constant effort.

It is on this array of artifacts that the archeologists must rest their case for "Paleolithic Man," and it is upon each minute variation in design and degree of excellence of workmanship that they postulate the passing of vast ages of time, during which the inventive faculties of this creature of evolution were ponderously active; for example, striving for many long generations to gain enough intelligence to hit upon the bright idea of boring a thread-hole through a bone needle, or learning how to put barbs on a fish-hook to prevent the catch from slipping away.

The grand result of all this theorizing of the pre-historians is an academic classification of the "Paleolithic" period into The Old Stone Age, which is subdivided into the (1) Upper and (2) Lower Stone Ages. And these are again subdivided into (1a) Magdalenian, (1b) Solutrean, and (1c) Aurignacian; and (2a) Mousterian, (2b) Acheulean, (2c) Chelean, and (2d) Pro-chelean periods respectively.

And below all this is the "Eolithic" age, which is supposed to be the crude beginnings or forerunner of the Old Stone Age; as represented by various oddly chipped rocks, which however are absolutely indistinguishable from fragments that can be chipped or split by frost, landslides, water, and other natural causes. For this reason even some of the pre-historians themselves reluctantly reject this evidence of a distinctive "Eolithic" age of man. Others now seek to apply the term "eolith" to all crude, unpolished specimens of the so-called Old Stone Age; as distinguished from the polished or finished "neolith" of the New Stone Age. But the academic "eoliths" on display in our museum are presumed to evince a distinctive "eolithic" age in man’s development, prior to the Old Stone Age proper, before man or ape-man had gained sufficient intelligence to know how to specially design a tool.

No one need take very seriously those specimens labeled "Eolithic" in our museums, for there is no certainty of an age or stage of culture when man invariably picked up handy flints as nature had fashioned them and used them for tools, without more. But the pre-historians have conjectured that such a stage of culture must have preceded the stone chipping stage, because the evolution theory demands it. They know that modern archeology has now revealed that man at the very dawn of history was highly civilized; hence the evolutionists must presuppose long, unfathomable ages of gradual development prior to that time, during which man passed through many successive hypothetical states.

Since an "Eolithic" age is essential to the theory of progressive cultural evolution, not only is it contended for by pre-historians generally but it also is placed far back in the Tertiary geologic far, so as to antedate the so-called Trinil "ape-man," whom they say belongs to the early part of the later Pleistocene period. But unfortunately for the integrity of the theory, geologists from time to time make discoveries which seem to hopelessly scramble these period and throw the academic calculations into confusion.

For example, certain unmistakable Paleolithic implements (called the Foxall and Red Crag rostro-carinate flints) were found imbedded in Tertiary strata, in association with a human jawbone of modern type. This quite upsets the academic theory of human development, suggesting (if anything) that true man, already culturally developed, mut have existed long prior to the Trinil Pithecanthropus, and then degenerated down to the ape-man level! But, as was explained in the preceding chapters of this booklet, the findings of such fossils in Tertiary strata are not necessarily proof that man has been on earth during remote period of time. Local disturbances of the earth’s crust may account for it, to say nothing of the possibility of an "intrusive burial" within historic times.

To correspond with the various hypothetical stages of cultural evolution for primitive man, geologists have postulated a grand series of climatic changes, accompanied by slow migrations of faunal species over vast periods of time. Owing presumably to oscillations of land levels, Europe has undergone alternating changes of climate, ranging from frigid to sub-tropical, during which it experienced tundra, then forest, then steppe conditions, in turn; accompanied by migrations of animals appropriate thereto. These successive climatic fluctuations, say the pre-historians, probably required untold millennia. They assume this in order further to substantiate the extreme length of time, which they claim has elapsed since human artifacts first made their appearance here. Hence they have worked out these successive climatic periods into an elaborate and systematic chronological scheme; but it has no more substantial basis for it than mere academic imagination.

Readers of this treatise who wish to go over their evidence, will find it set forth in detail in any standard work on human prehistory—showing each hypothetical stage of flint-chipping culture with precisely the type of fauna that each successive group of flint chippers subsisted on. They tell us that Chellean man was contemporary with the southern mammoth, the hippopotamus, the straight tusked elephant, the broad-nosed rhinoceros, the spotted hyena, the lion, bison, wild ox, red deer, roe deer, brown bear, wolf, badger, martin, otter, beaver, etc

The middle Mousterian man, the pre-historians say, was contemporary with the wooly rhinoceros, the reindeer, the Arctic hare, Arctic fox, ibex, horse, cave lion, cave hyena, bison, wild cattle, giant deer, etc.

The Solutrean man, the books tell us, was contemporary with the mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, musk ox, reindeer, arctic hare, wolf, fox, beaver, brown bear, bison, horse, wild cattle, etc. As one reads over the literature of the pre-historians he becomes much confused. It is curious how all these various tundra, forest and steppe species seem to be represented in all these ages, and to be generally mixed up. It is hard for anyone to reconcile this inexplicable phenomenon with the theory of enormously long, distinctive period of "grand climatic" changes.

The Solutrean period is generally referred to as the "Reindeer Age" of western and northern Europe, during which a sub-arctic climate prevailed there. The Cro-Magnon men of this period subsisted largely on the reindeer herds, which wandered over the tundras. Immense piles of their split and broken bones have been found at the old hunting-camp sites, notably at Solutre, from which the age derives it name.

The pre-historians insist that the Solutrean period must have been at least 15,000 or possibly 30,000 years ago. Yet it is acknowledged that the bones are remarkably well preserved, and scientists admit that it is a mystery why the gelatin content has not deteriorated after such a great lapse of time. It is assumed that when the climate grew warmer, the reindeer migrated northwest into Lapland, many thousands of years ago. But this theory ignores the historical fact that as recently as 1200 A.D. there were reindeers grazing in Scotland, and the Norwegians used to cross the North Sea to hunt them.

It also seems incredible that steppe and tundra conditions should have prevailed simultaneously yet there are great quantities of bones of wild horses strewn about the reindeer camp sites at Solutre. How could horses have lived on frozen tundra, with no steppes on which to graze? It seems more reasonable that the Solutrean period did not have an entirely arctic climate, and was not so far back in antiquity as the pre-historians would have us believe.

Another prehistoric beast whose relics have been used as an index in determining antiquity, is the giant deer or Irish elk. This creature is said to have been a contemporary of primitive man far back in the Old Stone Age; also the mammoth, woolly elephant, and cave hyena; and that all these animals became extinct before the historic period of man began. Here again we have an instance where the pre-historians seem wilfully oblivious to facts, whenever the facts are contrary to their preconceived theory of human evolution.

It is known that the giant deer survived in Ireland down to the 14th century A.D., and is alluded to in the chronicles of that time as "the great black deer." Its bones have been found there, in association with iron weapons. Some of these skeletal remains of the giant deer are so recent in point of age, that undeteriorated sinews and strips of hide are still attached thereto. It seems evident that if the scientists could forget for a time academic theories as to human antiquity, and consider each on its merits, disassociated from preconceived notions which blind them to the facts, they would arrive at very different conclusions as to the age of the various artifacts of early man; and would not continually seek to force him farther back into antiquity than known facts actually warrant.

CHAPTER VI Is Man’s Mental Capacity Increasing?

PRECEDING chapters have given consideration to the so-called Java ape-man, known as Pithecanthropus Erectus; and have also made mention of the questionable Piltdown fragments, now sometimes alluded to as the "Dawn Man"; also the Heidelberg jaw, or Homo Heidelbergensis; and we have seen that they do not furnish very convincing evidence either for evolution or for human antiquity.

Gregory names and defines no less than 26 separate "races" of European paleolithic man, and numerous subdivisions or sub-races. Lull accepts these 26 hypothetical races with childlike faith, and adduces therefrom that human antiquity must be very great because this assumption "supplements and reinforces" the assumed "known antiquity" of the Heidelberg jaw. His argument is that it must have required enormously long lapses of time for the slow processes of physical variation to have evolved so many modifications of the original type, as Gregory says have existed. In other words, one purely fanciful conjecture is relied on to "prove" another wholly arbitrary assumption.

Of such texture as the above are the voluminous data amassed by the pre-historians. Space forbids our citation of similar tenuous arguments, with which their literature is replete. In their anxiety to disclaim filial obligations to father Adam, scientists have invented an ancestral brute-man substitute, and have erected an elaborate card-castle of fantastic pseudo-science founded upon misconceptions and false guesses, in which the monster may dwell. Yet so alluring are the theories of the pioneers of prehistory, that many latter-day scientists cannot bring themselves to relinquish them—no matter how contradictory they may be to the facts as now known.

An example of the divergence between fact and theory is found in the cranial index of the Cro-Magnon skulls, which discloses a higher average brain-capacity than that of modern civilized man. Now the evolution-pre-historical theory would seem to demand that the brain capacity of these Cor-Magnon "men of antiquity" should be far below that of existing savages. Cro.-Magnon men were contemporary with the mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, reindeer, bison and wild horses; for they painted pictures of these animals on the walls of the caves in which they dwelt. Therefore, according to all scientific calculations, the Cro-Magnon man must be classified as "prehistoric"; yet his physique would shame our modern athletes, and his intellectual powers must have surpassed those of our present-day college professors.

Al that Cro-Magnon man lacked was our educational facilities and mechanical equipment. Given these advantages, he would have surpassed us. In short, Cro-Magnon man quite disconcerts theory of human evolution; for if we today represent an advanced stage in human development, then he at that early date should have been below the level of our South African Bushmen.

If the pre-historian scientists were not obsessed by their own false premises regarding man’s very slow and gradual cultural evolution from the eolithic plane, they might glimpse the truth that man’s historical career reveals a record of progressive degeneration, rather than one of "slow, infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress." Man’s course has not been uniform, steady and upward. It has been frequently interrupted and suspended. Sometimes there were period of reinvigoration and apparent recovery, where isolated and retrogressive sectors renewed contact with the parent culture. But for all that, history as a whole testifies to a prevailing downward rather than an ever upward course.

If there exists, inherent in the laws of nature, an evolutionary urge toward perpetual betterment, why have not primitive races achieved civilization spontaneously? There is no record of such achievement. Civilization’s cradle was in Mesopotamia, and thence spread out in all directions over the earth. Wherever conditions of soil and climate specially favored a settled and orderly existence, there the seeds of civilization effected a lodgement and a branch was established. Modern mechanical invention has conduced to make humanity independent of topography, of wind and weather, and thus has favored a rapid multiplication of the race within the past few centuries. But in more ancient times dense populations were restricted to certain favored regions—those districts which were not too high above sea level, nor too cold, nor too hot, and where there was suitable rainfall or else a fertile valley.

Because of other physical advantages, ancient Babylonia, lying between the Euphrates and the Tigris; also Persia just beyond it; and the delta and valley of the Nile; also Asia Minor and Greece, were peculiarly adapted to human propagation. And the so-called progressive march of civilization has been coincidental to the increase and spread of humanity over the earth. Where the populations have been dense, they learned from each other and made some progress for a time; and where conditions did not favor dense populations, progress was at a standstill.

The careful and unprejudiced student of history readily perceives that the further back he goes, the scantier and less scattered was the earth’s population. Dense populations, of course are impossible except where the people remain stationary and follow an agricultural life. Roving nomads require vast areas for pasturage of their flocks, and their shifting life prevented their rapid increase; hence they remained numerically insignificant. Likewise hunters and fisher tribes, which require wide ranges of forest and savannah for their subsistence, did not multiply very rapidly. The same was true of those who inhabited tropical swamps and frozen tundras; the constant rigors in the struggle for existence kept them down. Only in modern times has mechanical ingenuity been able to surmount these handicaps to productivity.

Conditions of modern life tend to create for us a false perspective in viewing the past; and pre-historians have shown themselves not to be exempt from this bias—for they have postulated dense populations where only meager tribes could have existed. Likewise they seem to have taken for granted that there must have been ready communication between widely separated communities, when in fact they had only dugout canoes or their own feet for transportation facilities.

Hence the evidence of so-called "lost civilizations," as for example the Mayas and Minoans, have been over stressed and exaggerated. A few decades ago we read with awe in our schoolbooks about the lost "mound builders" who had a high civilization on this continent in prehistoric times! But that was before they discovered Spanish swords and French medals buried beneath the mounds. Now it is agreed that these mounds were built by the American Indians, not by an ancient high civilization, and they continue to build and use them after the coming of the first white men.

Probably the chief reason why the doctrine of progressive cultural evolution appears logical to the modern public, is that recent history presents a record of almost uninterrupted material progress. It is generally forgotten that this march of progress virtually began with the inauguration of the era of mechanical inventions which ushered in the "Industrial Revolution" of the late 18th century. Prior to that time, barring few signal acquisitions—such as the invention of the compass, gunpowder and printing—the material civilization of mankind had not risen throughout the centuries above the level of ancient Babylon, Egypt, or of the Greco Roman world.

Nevertheless, owing to natural increase of population, civilization expanded, and gradually pushed out nuclei into the wastes. When the era of mechanical inventions supervened, its beneficent effects became most conspicuous in improvements in facilities of inter-communication and for education. These two factors are principally responsible for the rapid spread of European civilization over the earth.

We must disabuse our minds of the erroneous concept that our early ancestors were primitive, brutish, lower in intellectual powers than present-day savages. These existing savages are not surviving examples of what our remote forefathers were like. On the contrary, they represent degenerate types of men, descendants of strays and fugitives who entered the outlying wildernesses beyond the confines of the settled, civilized areas, to undergo gradual retrogression under the stress of prolonged unfavorable conditions. Such degeneration has occurred within comparatively recent times, where frontier settlements have lost contact with civilization and have retrogressed within a few generations to very "primitive" conditions.

If this is possible with men who possessed at least many of the things of modern civilized life, such as iron, gunpowder and horses, how much greater the likelihood of such retrogression where the wanderers had to depend on weapons and implements fashioned from wood, bone and stone! A very few generations of life in the wilderness seem sufficient to instill complete forgetfulness of original culture.

That there is no inherent law of cultural evolution is amply shown by the foregoing facts. But you may take any modern "primitive" people, and give them favorable opportunities for improvement, and they are quick to adopt our material culture. African Negroes and Malayan head-hunters now throng to the moving pictures; and Eskimos, squatting in their snow igloos, eagerly enjoy modern radio concerts. The sons and grandsons of scalp hunters now drive automobiles, punch typewriters and talk over the telephone. All this they got through one or two generations of contact with European civilizations. But left to themselves they would have continued on as barbarians, just like their tribal forefathers.

We should not lose sight of the fact that the average American or European is better informed today than most people were a few decades ago, mostly because of present-day opportunities, and not because of superior mental capacity. Men now enjoy increased knowledge owing to the wide diffusion of education among the masses, and the general enlightenment sponsored by easier means of intercommunication. The modern individual possesses no greater intellectual capacity than did his forefathers, but has the advantage of building upon the accumulated knowledge and experience of his predecessors.

From every point of view it seems that the theory of human evolution has failed of material proof. Its proponents have assumed a remote antiquity for man, not because they have discovered facts that suggest it, but because their preconceived theory requires it; and they have sought to bend and twist the evidence to conform thereto. They have conjectured that the earliest man was but one step above the brute, not because the findings of the archeologists imply it, but because the theory of evolution demands it. But the actual discoveries of the archeologists now have revealed that earliest known man was highly civilized.

Scientists are being made to revise their theories along many lines today; and now it seems that the time has come for them to do some major revisionary work concerning the origin and the age of the human race. And when they have completely revised their theories to conform fully to actual discovery, they no doubt will find, much to their amazement, that at last they are not far away from the facts as the Bible all along has presented them.

(Finis)