Kreitsauce's Musings

We should all be very grateful for what science has allowed us to achieve. The medical fields have provided us with the ability to heal many wounds and diseases previously thought to be untreatable. Technology has allowed us to communicate and travel efficiently. Yes, because of scientific principles and dedicated men and women willing to spend years of their lives researching, writing, and peer-reviewing what has already been written, you and I are able to enjoy very different lives from our forbears. We can be confident in scientific discovery because it is based on solid evidence and a desire to “follow the evidence wherever it leads,” as Carl Sagan once famously said. Would it surprise you, then, to learn how little evidence we have of human evolution?

HIDE AND SEEK

Have you ever seen an actual fossil of a human ancestor? Probably not. I haven’t. The vast majority of the authors of textbooks on paleontology haven’t. Curators of the museums of natural history around the world usually haven’t. Only a very, very small handful of people have ever been privileged enough to see such fossils. I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy afoot. I’m saying that, because they are so rare, so valuable, and so fragile, human ancestral fossils are very unlikely to be on display or studied. In fact, most of us have never even seen a picture of an actual fossil. According to Marvin L. Lubenow, whose book Bones of Contention provided many of the “diving in” points for this series of blog posts, the total number of people who have access to ancestral fossils is fewer than the heads of state in the entire world.

William King, the man who declared Homo neanderthalensis to be a different species than modern-day humans in 1864, never saw the actual fossils. He did so after reading a description of them. Darwin never saw a single human fossil. Thomas Huxley never saw original fossils either, but he took great pains to describe them in his 1863 work Man’s Place in Nature.

People publish vast amounts of research with unverified data! Germany built a two-story museum to celebrate the discovery of Steinheim Man in 1933. Visitors never saw the actual fossil though. They viewed plastic replicas. The actual fossil was kept in a safe set into a stone wall in an old military outpost several miles away. In their article in the October 1995 edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Braun, Hublin, and Boucher note: “While it was never described in great detail, this fossil played a central role in various evolutionary models.”

Of course, there is a good deal of politics in this field as well. Teuku Jacob, former curator of Gadjah Mada University, was known for his jealousy of the Homo erectus fossils from Java in his possession. Swisher, Curtis, and Lewin write:

“These fossils, the prized objects of Jacob’s collection are rarely seen, even by professionals in the fossil-hunting business. Scholars with serious research programs have to apply to Jacob for permission even to see them, let alone touch them, for scientific study. And even those few who succeed in obtaining official permission have to wait for Jacob’s final OK, for he alone is permitted to remove the fossils from the safes.”

Donald Johanson, the discover of Lucy, agrees that “only those in the inner circle get to see the fossils; only those who agree with the particular interpretation of a particular investigator are allowed to see the fossils.”

CIRCLING THE WAGONS

There’s one exception to this almost xenophobic protection of the fossils. In 1984, the American Museum of Natural History in New York sponsored an exhibit in which more than forty of the original fossils were brought together for the first- and probably last- time ever. There were special guards over the fossils and the curators that traveled with the fossils. The fossils were placed in special cases. Work on the subway line beneath the museum was halted to avoid vibrating- and possibly damaging- the fossils.

What prompted this gathering of the fossils? In his book Ancestors: The Hard Evidence, Eric Delson tells us that there were those in the scientific community who were concerned about the rising popularity of creationism. Delson, who was a scientist at the American Museum, tells us that creationism was a “great and growing concern” at the museum. The primary purpose, then, was to show professionals and lay people the evidence for evolution, and they avoided making any statement concerning creationism at the museum so that they would not “dignify…creation science.” Their words, not mine. What are these guys afraid of?

BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

Paleoanthropology is in a strange position. Unlike most- if not all- other areas of science, workers in this field rarely have access to the material their science is based on. They are usually one step or so away from the actual evidence. Too often, creationists have been guilty of downplaying the importance of human ancestral fossils. In reality, they are unique and valuable, but because of their value, an insufficient number of scientists have been able to study them in depth.

What do they work with then? They work with casts and descriptions others have written of the fossils. Casts may be reliable if the molds used are detailed enough and if the materials maintain their intended shape. However, casts can be far from ideal. They lack the detail of the original. Becky A Sigmon of the University of Toronto says that there is a general consensus among paleoanthropologists  that “casts should not be used as resource material for a scientific paper.” (See her collection of papers on the subject for more information.) She has a good reason for saying this. At the American Museum exhibit in 1984, when the original fossils were to be placed into their mounts (which had been based on the casts available), most of them did not fit. Casts simply aren’t substitutes from the originals. Lubenow further complains that “casts of only a small percentage of the total fossil material and less than half of the most important fossil material are available for study.”

Scientists are then forced to turn to description of fossils in scientific literature, which is the most common form of source material for scientific work. How can a field of science continue to function and inform public opinion if there is so little readily-available information? How can we be expected to believe what few have seen? As John Fleagle of the State University of New York, Stony Brook has said: “The big awkwardness right now is when someone announces they have found a specimen that overturns everything we know, but almost no one has seen it.”

Talk about blind faith! My point is this: if we are to believe that humans evolved in the manner most Darwinists claim, there must be more evidence. Right now, there’s just not enough out there for me to buy into.