Genesis and Early Man, Part V:
The moment we want to stop believing in anything we have hitherto believed in, we not only find that there are many objections to it, but also that these objections have been staring us in the face all the time. (George Bernard Shaw)
Fig. 12. Mr. and Mrs. Hesperopithecus, reconstructed from the tooth of a wild pig found in Nebraska. These figures are redrawn from the "Illustrated London News" in 1922. This explanatory text accompanied the sketch: "The poise of the head should be noted, large muscles from the occiput to the back and shoulders have to counteract the prognathous head and heavy jaw--a simian character." It is amazing what can be guessed from the tooth of a wild pig. The gullible public can never really know how much imagination and how little science enter into such reconstructions.
IN A UNIVERSITY, although the spirit of competition between disciplines is not overt as it is in the business world, there is nevertheless a certain competitiveness. The amount of money which is budgeted for each department is quite naturally related to the enrollment in the courses it offers, so that there is a certain amount of rivalry when it comes to attracting students. Very large universities, of course, or wealthy universities, do not have to worry too much when classes are mere handfuls. When we were studying cuneiform in the University of Toronto, there were only three of us; yet it was probably at that time the largest class of its kind in the world...The university could afford to sustain it for prestige, if nothing else.
The factor which decides for a large proportion of students what courses they will enroll in is public interest at the time. And by interest I would include also what might be called "market demand," which of course is a reflection of public interest. So there is a tendency in learned circles where the subject matter lacks the advantages of immediate practical importance, to seek to arouse public interest by methods which are not always strictly scholarly. Anthropology has been, I think, one of the chief offenders in this respect, yielding all too frequently to the temptation of attracting attention by advertising in ways which are more entertaining than scholarly.
Some disciplines like psychology always have a wide appeal, and it is not too difficult to obtain student enrollment or a publisher for even very commonplace observations. Astronomy appeals because the very magnitudes involved lend wings to the imagination. The applied sciences make their way with ease, novelty or practical advantage having their own compulsions. But anthropology has somehow or other always been tempted to emphasize, a little bit at least, the grotesque aspects of its subject matter in order to gain a hearing. This was particularly so at the beginning, a hundred years ago. But it is still unfortunately the case. One of the best ways to introduce a subject, either to a class of students or to a reading public, is by the so called historical method, in which the complexities are led up to by tracing their supposed course of development through simpler stages--as though one might explore the complexity of adult human behavior by tracing back to the stages of childhood development. For some reason, where most other sequences start with the simple and proceed to the complex, anthropology seems to lean towards a policy of starting with the ugly in order to lead to the refined, making the assumption that in the historical process of development, "first things" (even faces) must always be ugly. In any sequence of illustrations, man's ancestors will always be assumed to be uglier as they are more ancient. This is entirely presumptive, for the first man need not have been ugly at all. But once this evolutionary assumption is made, it becomes self-validating for the simple reason that fossils are thereafter arranged in sequences to demonstrate it. Reconstructions, by which I mean pictures or models of man's supposed ancestors, could on this principle be put in the "right" order by a child who knew absolutely nothing about human history. He would only have to be told that the ugliest were the earliest--and the rest could be left to him. This may seem like an absurd oversimplification or even downright misrepresentation. And it may actually be an exaggeration. Nevertheless, we shall show that anthropologists themselves, ancient and modern, seem to enjoy reinforcing the popular philosophy in this way, not because the facts warrant it but because the public expects it. And this is one of the favorite ways of achieving notoriety--or in more scholarly terms, "recognition." A man's reputation is "made" if he can find some fragment out of which to create a very ancient (and ugly) ancestor.
Anthropology saw its first heyday of popularity with the sudden emergence of volume after volume devoted to the curious ways of savage people. Once it had been agreed that these "savages" represented a necessary stage in human history before man achieved his present civilized condition, it was inevitable that the process should be extended backwards and that those representatives of the human race who stood in the same chronological relationship to primitives that primitives do to us, should be as utterly brutish and bereft of culture relative to native civilizations as native civilizations were felt to be towards the civilized European. Thus no matter how upright and noble our first parents may have been in actual fact, it was absolutely essential to present them as anything but noble and upright. Indeed, if Adam and Eve had actually been dug up with the appearance which we believe they must have had when they came from God's hand, they most certainly would have been rejected as frauds. This is no exaggeration. Quite a number of modern skulls have been dug up from strata which demonstrated that they were very early examples of modern-type men, and virtually without exception they have at one time been rejected on one pretext or another and "smitten from the record."
So, reverting to those earlier days of anthropology, we find museums coming into being and taking the form of a kind of Madame Tussaud's where the wonder-weary public were invited to enjoy the questionable stimulus of viewing their supposed ancestors whose chief glory was their bestial appearance. Even animals have some beauty. But these really have none. The slightest excuse served to create a missing link out of some tiny fragment of doubtful identity. And even before Darwin's Origin of Species was published, P. T. Barnum (1) was inviting the public to see his collection of curiosities including some genuine "primitives," and other miscellaneous fossil items. In 1842 Barnum's Circus Exhibit (by combining it with Scudder's and Peele's Museums) became the basis of the American Museum in New York City, enlivened with freak shows and stage entertainment. It is said that Queen Victoria was once told an "off-color" joke and that her shattering response was, "We are not amused." But, unlike Queen Victoria, the people of her time were highly "amused" by these anthropological displays, and it has only been in very recent years that museums have begun to tone down some of their more entertaining reconstructions of man's supposed ancestors.
A. E. Hooten, in one of his many informative and entertaining volumes, told the story of a certain prelate who ridiculed the Hall of Man in New York in which so many of these reconstructions had been neatly lined up to give the desired effect. He pointed out how Henry Fairfield Osborn, who was responsible for it, denied the accusation that this was not science; and in an article in a newspaper, closed by saying triumphantly, "The Hall of Man still stands." Next day, apparently, the prelate in his reply closed with the words, "The Hall of Man still lies!" Hooten remarked: (2)
There is just enough truth in that statement to make it cut. Some evolutionary exhibits and reconstructions of extinct men have been carried out with the elaboration of details and assumption of omniscience which are not justified by the scientific data on hand. It is absolutely impossible to infer from the human skull the morphological details of the eyes, the ear, the tip of the nose, the lips, the form and distribution of hair, and the color of skin, hair, and eyes. So that I think the laugh was on the side of the archbishop because the scientists have overreached themselves and gone beyond their evidence.
Hooten was always known for his keen wit and I think he must have been a very healthful influence in his day, but evidently his words were not heeded, for the making of these reconstructions has proceeded apace. The above had been written in 1937, but ten years before this, Hooten had referred to another astounding piece of nonsense: (3)
A well known Latin American Paleontologist worked the pampas formations to such an extent that he caused a fossil monkey to evolve into a Homunculus patagonicus, and created from an Indian atlas bone and the femur of a fossil cat, the common ancestor of all existing men!
Perhaps a classic example of this kind of fallacious reconstruction revolves around the appearance and disappearance of Hesperopithecus. In 1922 a single molar tooth was found in a Pliocene deposit in Nebraska. A Professor Osborn described it as belonging to an early type of pithecanthropoid, which he named Hesperopithecus. At the same time the eminent Elliott Smith in England induced the Illustrated London News (4) to publish a double-spread reconstruction of Mr. and Mrs. Hesperopithecus--all on the strength of this small tooth. Subsequently, it was established that the tooth belonged to a peccary, and Hesperopithecus disappeared from view. However, in the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, since the previous edition had listed Hesperopithecus with all honors, it was necessary to make some reference to the fact that this specimen had vanished. But the horrid truth was concealed as far as possible by disclosing no more than that the tooth was eventually found to belong to "a being of another order," which is another way of spelling "wild pig."
It was a great day in the annals of evolutionary anthropology when, in 1857, a fossil skull was found by Fuhlrott near Dusseldorf, at a place ever since universally known as the Neanderthal Cave. This skull was precisely what the doctors had ordered because it lent itself to reconstructions which would satisfy, in terms of ugliness, even the most demanding of viewers. The reconstructions which have been made of this much maligned gentleman are legion and they are a clearer evidence of the stimulating effect of imagination than they are of scientific objectivity. The fact of the matter is that Neanderthal Man was evidently suffering from chronic osteo-arthritis, (5) an ailment which forced him to adopt a stooped posture, inviting a comparison with the gait of an ape while in fact having absolutely nothing to do with it.
In 1940, in the University of Knowledge Series, published in collaboration with a number of eminent authorities in various fields, there is a volume entitled The Story of Primitive Man, which is the joint work of Mabel Cole and Fay-Cooper Cole of the Department of Anthropology in the University of Chicago. The jacket cover has a reconstruction of Neanderthal Man with his head thrust forward and an almost entire absence of neck (a peculiarly apelike feature). The same gentleman, his apishness slightly more accentuated, if possible, carries his club across the frontispiece on page xii. On 40 a closeup gives the reader an even clearer picture of this vacuous-looking idiot, while on the opposite page the book pictures his family, including a child of about eight or ten years of age who looks even more stooped than his elders. Fig. 13 shows a recent reconstruction--the stoop at last removed!
Fig. 13. This is Neanderthal Man as constructed for the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Until recently, the exhibit portrayed Neanderthal as a stooped man--his wife and son stooped accordingly At present, however, the display shows him upright rather than stooped, for the reasons stated by the author in this volume. Photos used by permission of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
It is common knowledge, now, not only that Neanderthal Man walked erect precisely as healthy modern man does but that he actually had a greater cranial capacity, in excess of 1600 cc., compared with modern man's 1400 cc. Many today believe that Neanderthal Man is still with us and that we would scarcely look at him twice were we to meet him on the street in modern clothes. The impressions which can be created by an artist, starting with the same basic skull, are apt to be quite varied indeed, as will be seen by the three drawings in Fig. 14 which I have copied from the sources indicated.
Fig. 14 (TOP) This Neanderthal skull (A) from La Chapelle-aux-Saints was in due course reconstructed (B) for the Field Museum of Natural Hitsory, Chicago, to show how our primitive ancestor looked. It was reconstructed (C) by J. H. McGregro to show how "modern" he really might have been in appearance. Fig. 15 (LOWER) Huxley's falsified figures of primates and man.
In 1939, a year earlier, Alberto Carlo Blanc and Sergio Sergi reported in Science the finding of a Neanderthal skull in a cave at Monte Circeo in Italy: (6)
Two other Neanderthal skulls have been found in Italy, one in 1929 and the other in 1935, both in the Sacopastore region near Rome, but neither is as well preserved as the new discovery. However, the occipital opening at the base of one of the skulls was particularly well preserved enabling Professor Sergi to establish for the first time that Neanderthal Man walked erect and not with an ape-like posture with head thrust forward as previously believed. The horizontal plane of the opening in the skull shows that the bones of the neck fitted perpendicularly into the opening, causing the posture to be erect as in present day man.
It is true that this news may have come too late for the printer to agree readily to making any changes in the dust jacket of the book or the illustrations in it, yet it seems likely that if this had been a publication dealing with physics or chemistry in which a basic error of such importance to fundamental theory had been made known to the author one year before his book was published, he would most assuredly have made some attempt--for his own reputation's sake, if not in the interests of truth--to correct the error, either by changing the text or appending a correction notice. But anthropology apparently does not feel any such necessity.
A report from the Associated Press, (7) on the finding of Tepexpan Man not far from Mexico City underscores the uncertainty of popular reconstructions. Following the usual custom, the public had at first been presented with a portrait of this gentleman, appropriately downgraded in appearance to fit current theories of man's evolution. But in an interview, M. T. Newman said, "Look at some of the reconstructed heads of this individual...They look thick-headed, stupid, and bestial. But now we are trying to be more realistic...Obviously, early man had to be intelligent or he would not have survived." The Smithsonian Institute had taken the same skull, and T. D. Stewart and a Washington artist, Leo Steppat, set to work reconstructing the head. The result was, in the words of Dr. Newman, "Not a bad looking fellow--not too far removed from a typical southwestern Indian." The fact is that there is a strong tendency on the part of anthropologists to take advantage of public gullibility and to supply, upon the slightest pretext, hypothetical missing links, because as Wilson Wallis said, (8) "Since the day of Darwin, the evolutionary idea has largely dominated the ambitions and determined the findings of physical anthropology, sometimes to the detriment of the truth."
Recently, in a notice in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, which I presume was written by the editor (the same T. D. Stewart), the following warning with respect to such reconstructions was issued: (9)
From the skull, it is quite impossible to reconstruct the character of the hair, eyes, nose, lips, ears, eyebrows, skin creases, fullness, or expression. In short, it is impossible to reconstruct the appearance of the face.
Nevertheless, such fancy reconstructions are to be found in almost every book dealing with the evolution of man. It is highly desirable that they should be dropped for they do real harm. Their creators have endowed them with traits and expressions which follow the formula that the earlier the type, the more brutal; the later the type, the nobler of expression. The probabilities are that the expression of early man was no less benign than our own.
How completely true this observation is was beautifully borne out in 1937 when Karl Absolon reported his amazing findings at Vestonice. A summary of his work appeared in the Illustrated London News (10) and here we have a series of photographs of the beautiful carved head, done in ivory. In Dr. Absolon's words, it is "the earliest known portrait of a human being." In his article, he remarked:
There was little hope of obtaining anything clearer anthropologically than current reconstructions. It can therefore be imagined what a surprise it was for anthropology when the sculpture portrait of fossil man was brought to light in Vestonice. Some heretic, some sacrilegious man had deserted the religion of his fathers, and in defiance of all tradition carved the portrait of a true face. The portrait shows a very noble, fine, animated face--a long nose, arched ridges over the eyes, and a long chin.
Absolon remarked, "The face recalls some classical portrait from some old oriental civilization, or even a modern drawing, such as the head of Christ by the Dutch painter, Jan Troop, in his Night in the Cathedral."
Wood Jones was always speaking out against reconstructions of any kind, which were merely intended to prejudice the viewer's mind in favor of an evolutionary history. He said, with some scorn: (11)
In the story of the origin of the proto-human stock, and the subsequent emergence of man, there is but little legitimate room for most of the fancy portraits with which pseudoscience has been so ready to arrest uninstructed attention. We have all grown used to the picture of the slouching brute with shaggy hair and elongated arms that is lumbering into a stage of partial uprightness as it toils along the pathway of the origin of man.
One of the most recent and most sumptuous publications upon the comparative cerebral anatomy of the primates has shown this progress in graphic form that renders the ascent the more vivid, since it depicts it as taking place up the laborious slopes of a hillside. Here the slouching hairy beast toils lumbering upwards, seizing sticks and stones as weapons by the way, and passing from stark hirsute nakedness to the comparative modesty of a skin apron and ultimately to the decent obscurity of a cave.
Were it well attested that man was derived from the stock of the large brachiating anthropoid apes, especially were there any justification for the greatly labored "gorilloid" heritage in man, these pictures might claim sanction, as do those of the ancestral horses from the findings of comparative anatomy and paleontology, but this sanction is wholly lacking.
There is no justification for the picture of the slouching, semi-erect Ape Man, though every investigator who...attempts an interpretation of the remains of some ancient human skeleton seeks first to determine evidences of the presence of these characters.
If one were to compare the impression created in the mind by the carved head found by Dr. Absolon and the reconstruction of Neanderthal Man which was displayed in the British Museum, there is no doubt that, of the first, one would certainly say, Here is a thoughtful, intelligent individual--perhaps even a philosopher. And one would say of the other, Here is a brutal man little influenced by culture and probably with essentially animal tastes and little power of reflection. We associate a low intelligence with unrefined features sometimes the association is justified, but sometimes it is not.
Fig. 16. This series of four photographs (A, B, C, D) shows the stages of reconstruction of Pithecanthropus erectus. (E) The Russian delegate to the 1958 Cairo Conference.
If one compares the reconstructed face of Pithecanthropus erectus shown in Fig 16 with the photograph of a Russian delegate to the Cairo Conference which took place in 1958, the fallacy of such association becomes at once apparent. For however much we may disagree with Russian ideology, the fact remains that this delegate must have been a shrewd and highly intelligent man, since the Russians would not make the mistake of sending an idiot to represent them. It may be that this delegate did indeed have a larger brain than Pithecanthropus, with whom we are comparing his head form. But it is not at all certain that cranial capacity is related to intelligence, and therefore Pithecanthropus could have had much more intelligence than we give him credit for, in spite of the fact that his cranial capacity, according to Howells, (12) was between 950 and 1000 cc. in volume. According to Jan Lever, (13) Anatole France had a cranial capacity of only 1100 cc., as did also Gambetta and Justus von Liebig. Franz von Weidenreich questioned seriously whether anything at all could be determined with respect to intelligence on the basis of cranial capacity. (14) Franz Boas expressed the same opinion: (15)
By analogy we associate lower mental traits with brute-like features. In our naive everyday parlance, brutish features and brutality are closely connected...We are also inclined to draw inferences in regard to mentality from a receding forehead, a heavy jaw, large and heavy teeth, perhaps even from inordinate length of arms, or an unusual development of hairiness. It appears that neither cultural achievement (in this case, associated weapons, etc.) nor outward appearance is a safe basis on which to judge the mental aptitude of races.
It is not surprising, therefore, to find Gaylord Simpson, (16) in a review of LeGros Clark's History of the Primates: An Introduction to the Study of Fossil Man, remarking with manifest approval, "The book contains no restorations of prehistoric men or other fossil primates, and is not provided with a graphic phylogenetic tree." Simpson adds, "This is a well written, modest book, for which we should be duly thankful." After all this, it is amazing to find Sir Gavin de Beer publishing an impressive Atlas of Evolution in 1964, which is replete with "wholly speculative portraits" of fossil protohominids and men such as Proconsul, Java Man, Pekin Man, Neanderthal Man, etc. (17) As an illustration of how wildly such modern reconstructions of a single specimen can differ from each other, Fig. 2 (Chapter 1) shows three alternatives for Zinjanthropus, which many anthropologists, including a number of Christian anthropologists, believe to have been one of man's ancestors. I venture to suggest that "one of man's ancestors" is an understatement. If there is any scientific validity whatever in these three reconstructions, Zinjanthropus must have been three of man's ancestors. It makes one wonder if anthropologists are even taking themselves seriously, let alone expecting the intelligent public to do so.
There are other kinds of reconstructions which are equally deceiving and more so, because the deception is so subtle. The originators of such illustrations must know that they are less than honest, and yet they do not hesitate to adorn their works thus nor is any protest against such misrepresentations raised by their colleagues.
An excellent example of what I mean will be found in an authoritative work by Weidenreich entitled Apes, Giants, and Man. In Fig. 17, which is redrawn with precision from the original, two series of three skulls in section are shown, with the brains indicated by stippling. The object of this particular series is to show how the brain may be enlarged progressively in two different "species." I have put the word "species" in quotes for a very good reason. In column 1 we have three animals who genuinely belong to one species, an Irish Wolfhound, an English Bulldog, and a King Charles Spaniel. In column 2, as a parallel series, are shown the skull of a gorilla, of Pithecanthropus, and of a modern European.
The object of these two series of skull outlines with the size of the brain indicated, is simply to convince the unwary that just as a wolfhound can become a spaniel (by artificial selection, of course), so the gorilla can become man (by natural selection, of course). What has changed the facial form of the first series is the fact that the brain has been enlarged for some reason by a process of breeding. The assumption is then made that the same thing probably took place with respect to man, his enlarged brain resulting in the kind of facial form which so distinguishes him from the apes. Pictorially, the two series of skulls present a convincing parallelism. But anyone who does a little thinking about the matter will soon see that there are several major fallacies in this scheme. To begin with, it is obvious to any lover of dogs that despite the affection and gentleness of spaniels which makes them such desirable pets, they do not have the intelligence that the wolfhound has, i.e., the intelligence of the Alsatian type of dog, the type used for police dogs and for "seeing eyes" for blind people. And if it came to survival, there is not much doubt whether the first animal or the last animal in Weidenreich's series would stand the best chance. Altogether, then, even granting that these are indeed one species so that some kind of natural selective process might by a strange freak of circumstance bring about the evolution of the spaniel out of the English Bulldog out of the Irish Wolfhound, it would certainly be a freak circumstance and not the normal pattern as visualized by the evolutionists themselves. If the spaniel were turned wild, it is almost certain that after a few generations it would revert to the wolf dog type, so that Weidenreich's canine series really demonstrates precisely the opposite of what he is trying to prove.
Turning, then, to column 2, we have an even more ridiculous situation, really, because we know that gorillas and modern men do not belong to the same species--whatever may be said of Pithecanthropus. Thus, in reality, the whole business is not merely unscientific, it is positively deceitful. It only shows how a false concept can so dominate the thinking of an otherwise highly intelligent man that even devotion to truth is weakened. In any struggle between the first specimen and the last specimen in column 1, the first specimen would undoubtedly be the victor. By contrast it is most likely that the reverse would be true in column 2. In what sense, therefore, does this contribute anything either for or against the theory of the evolution of man?
It is interesting to find in the same volume which contains this highly deceiving series of drawings, that the learned author draws attention to the way in which Thomas Huxley committed the unforgivable sin of presenting the same kind of deceptive diagram. Weidenreich reproduces the famous series of four skeletons (Fig. 15) from Huxley's original work, in which we see an orangutan walking behind a chimpanzee, walking behind a gorilla, walking behind a man. The "message" is clear. However, Weidenreich points out that the first three figures have been "doctored," the apes being depicted in an abnormally erect position. On the other hand, the man has been depicted with a slight stoop. As Weidenreich put it, (18) "In other words, the individual skeletal elements in Huxley's drawing are nearly correct in their form and proportions, but the poses Huxley has given them are artificial and not characteristic." Thus, the stooping gorilla becomes "Pithecus erectus" and the upright man becomes "Anthropus ebentus" in order to fool the public. It is rather like the pot calling the kettle black to find Weidenreich commenting thus on Huxley's diagram.
Haeckel was by no means alone in this tendency to doctor drawings to suit. He was apparently accused by his colleagues of "dishonesty" in this regard, and his words of admission are rather revealing. (19)
I should feel utterly condemned and annihilated by the admission, were it not that hundreds of the best observers and biologists lie under the same charge. The great majority of all morphological, anatomical, histological, and embryological diagrams are not true to nature but are more or less doctored, schematized, and reconstructed.
Thomas Huxley mentions embryological reconstructions. In a paper entitled, "Darwin and Embryology," Sir Gavin de Beer (20) made this statement:
Seldom has an assertion like that of Haeckel's "theory of recapitulation," facile, tidy, and plausible, widely accepted without critical examination, done so much harm to science.
De Beer then shows how determined an effort was made to demonstrate his theory by a number of workers in the field, especially Hyatt and Wurtenburger who, as he points out, published a beautiful series of fossil ammonites. These were arranged in sequences which seemed to prove the theory of recapitulation. De Beer then remarked: (21)
So seductive did this picture appear that some years were to go by before A. Pavlov in 1901 showed that, if ammonite shells are arranged in such a sequence, the stratigraphical order of the geological succession has to be reversed (his emphasis). In other words, Wurtenburger's and Hyatt's series falsified the evidence and were utterly valueless.
A similar case is reported in much more recent times by Professor G. Gaylord Simpson: (22)
In fishes, there is a recent seriation from forms with no bone to forms with extensive bone. Comparative anatomists formerly unanimously agreed that this corresponded with a historical sequence in the stated direction, but directly historical studies (by A. S. Romer) now indicate that the real time sequence was in the other direction (emphasis mine).
In short, unanimous agreement among the experts is no guarantee whatever of truth. One wonders whether, if a Christian paleontologist had conducted the historical studies which Romer did, would he even have been able to find a publisher, let alone have convinced Gaylord Simpson of the truth of the matter? Science is far from the objective exercise it would appear to be in the eyes of the general public. Reconstructions leave so much to the imagination that they invite sensationalism and this strongly appeals to the public, helping to promote sales and thus to provide a wider exposure of a man's ideas--always a rewarding experience.
We are still in the company of pots calling kettles black, for this particular form of public entertainment (or deception--Barnum equated them) is still as popular as ever. Speaking at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology in 1950, G. Gaylord Simpson made this remark: (23)
In passing, I may say that a prudent paleontologist is sometimes appalled at the extent of restoration indulged in by the anthropologists, some of whom seem quite willing to reconstruct a face from a partial cranium, or a whole skull from a piece of the lower jaw, and so on.
Of course, this temerity is inducted by the great popular interests of the subject and the fact that fragments do not impress the public.
Then, too, the worst examples are in popular publications and are not likely to mislead the professionals, but still... !
This quotation terminates precisely as Simpson terminated it. One might suppose from this that he would himself avoid at all costs the presentation of reconstructions of any kind which involved the slightest element of deceit. Yet, unfortunately, he was himself so dominated by evolutionary philosophy that he could not limit himself to the evidence but extrapolated always in such a way as to make the evidence support the view he held. In presenting experimental findings for publication in scientific journals, it is important to avoid adding to the data on the basis of pure assumption For example, in Fig. 18 are shown three curves which reveal the course of the effect of a certain drug on one particular physiological function of man. For reasons which are not important in the present context, we had this information for only that part of the experimental time interval covered by the solid line. Since we knew, obviously, that the drug effect was zero at zero hour of injection, we knew that the solid line would ultimately start from the y axis at zero minutes at the point marked with an asterisk. The temptation, of course, was to join the asterisk to the beginning of the solid line with a smooth curve, thus completing the graph. But this would have been quite improper from a scientific point of view: for there is no evidence to show what the course of the effect followed by the drug was during that interval. It would have been pure assumption. Yet Simpson's works are frequently accompanied by geological trees intended to show the relationships between animals in a series, in which the solid lines represent what is known of these relationships with reasonable certainty and then dotted lines are used to assure the viewer that ultimately all the lines stem originally from a single source, thus reinforcing the "truth" of evolution. Remember that the dotted lines are purely presumptive. Although they would possibly be correct if evolution were true, from a purely scientific point of view there is still really no justification for them since actual evidence is entirely lacking. To this extent, the unsuspecting reader is deceived.
Fig. 18. The suppressive effect of Atropine on sweating in man.
Some authors avoid putting in the dotted lines and to this extent are being more strictly scientific--or at least appear to be. They are fulfilling the letter of the law, as it were, but not really the spirit of it. For it is not at all difficult to so curve the lines towards each other without actually joining them, in such a way that the eye itself inevitably completes the process of making a "tree" out of what is otherwise merely a group of loose twigs. The "message" is the same, and it gets across to the reader. As an illustration of what I mean by this, Fig. 19 is reproduced from an excellent study of the subject by Frank Cousins (24) whose diagram was taken from de Beer's work. The absence of actual connecting links tends to be entirely overlooked.
The extent to which this kind of pastime can be carried is rather well shown in Fig. 20 taken from a paper by Kermack and Mussett entitled "The First Mammals." (25) The most casual study of this "suggested family tree of the vertebrate animals" will show that it doesn't remotely resemble a genealogical tree. Not one twig is joined to another. There are more disconnections than connections and the dotted lines which provide the only justification for titling the diagram as a tree are, of course, completely hypothetical. Yet the public becomes so accustomed to this kind of propaganda that it is no longer recognized for what it really is, but is taken as factual evidence for evolution. (26)
Fig. 20. Family tree of the vertebrates. On the left is a geological time scale. Note how the dotted lines are "bent" to conform to the theory.
One cannot help but recall the statement made by W. D. Wallis in a paper entitled (27) "Presuppositions in Anthropological Interpretations," in which he pointed out that at least two generalizations are usually implied, though never stated. The first is that more data may be inferred from older remains than would be considered sound to infer from contemporary remains. There is much less danger of being found out if one is wrong. And the second is that in dealing with prehistoric man, inferences may be made on material much less abundant than would be necessary if contemporary man were being discussed. To use his words, "The further we proceed into the gloom of the prehistoric, the clearer our vision. Hence things which could not possibly be inferred if the data were contemporary man, can, thanks to this illumination in the gathering dusk of remote ages, be inferred with confidence."
This paper has been entirely negative and it would be a pity to close it without saying something on the positive side. For there is, no doubt, much to be said in favor of attempting such reconstructions if the object is genuinely to inform rather than indoctrinate or deceive.
It has often been observed, and Wood Jones was one of those who wrote about the matter at some length, that a change took place in the method of research, and in the central theme and prime concern of the life sciences once Darwin's work had established the evolutionary approach to nature. Previously, great interest had been attached to the study of the relationship between form and function.
After Darwin, this interest declined rapidly and the consuming interest became the question of structure.
The great object was now to establish relationships between different species of animals rather than relationships between form and function within the animal. Since the governing principle here was structural similarity, the assumption being that animals which looked alike were related and that the more nearly they looked alike the more closely related they were, nothing else mattered much except to underscore these homologies. Series of homologous structures were sought with great eagerness and set forth pictorially in just the right way to strengthen the impression that each was merely a modification of the other and that all had a common genetic relationship. The argument that the Great Designer had employed a basic principle of operation, modifying it only as needs required, was forgotten entirely. For the same reason the question of function had been forgotten or overlooked. It was no longer a matter of interest.
Wood Jones pointed out that the older paleontologists scored their great triumphs of reconstruction because they understood so well the relationships which exist between any particular bone and the special purpose which it serves in the whole animal; and they understood also that not infrequently a specialized bone structure serving a specialized purpose usually meant a special kind of animal. Thus they saw living forms as beautifully effective integrated systems, and they were often able on the basis of a single bone to reconstruct the whole animal. Again and again their reconstructions were subsequently validated to an extraordinary degree when further remains were brought to light.
One of the most notable of the older naturalists was Georges Cuvier who enunciated his famous Law of Correlation which stated that if an animal develops one organ in an unmistakable manner, one can infer from it the development of its other organs. (28) Animals with horns and hoofs, for example, invariably possess teeth adapted to vegetarianism. Animals with claws and ankle bones are necessarily equipped with carnivorous teeth. Reptiles with a closed system of teeth are vegetarian, while those with interlocking systems feed on other animals.
According to Cuvier, this correlation applied in the smallest detail and it must even be theoretically possible, he claimed, to reconstruct the entire body of an animal of which only a single organ is known. Wendt said, "Cuvier really was able to reconstruct the complete specimen from a single bone, from the fragment of a jaw (for example)." (29) This ability was demonstrated to his students by Cuvier on a number of occasions when the students were invited to bring him a single bone from some animal of which they had the remainder, and he would then take and reconstruct it, after the Sherlock Holmes manner, into the complete animal.
Towards the end of his book, Wendt records how some of Cuvier's successors showed an extraordinarily "subtle detective sense" which enabled them to interpret apparently barely decipherable fragments. Weinert and Kalatsch appeared to have acquired the ability of looking at fossils through a kind of mental "X-ray apparatus." (30) It was this ability which made it possible for these masters of the art of reconstruction to describe an animal such as Phascolomys, which was living at the time though quite unknown to science, from some sub-fossil bones. (31)
Whereas, today, the majority of reconstructions which mar the work of anthropologists are built up essentially on the basis of an evolutionary philosophy, the older naturalists were not dominated by this philosophy but were guided by a clear understanding of the relationship between form and function. In so far as our museums are now furnished with reconstructions based upon this solid foundation, they are serving the cause of truth. In so far as they are furnished by reconstructions which are inspired primarily by evolutionary philosophy, they become centers of propaganda unworthy of the name of science.
Imagination is a wonderful thing--but man's imagination can, as Scripture says, quickly become "vain." This is particularly so when he deliberately rejects what God has seen fit to reveal about his origin and nature--each of which bears on the other. "Convincing" as such constructs of the imagination may be, one should not put one's trust in them where man's supposed ancestors are concerned. They may be entertaining, but they are seldom scientific, and often they are most misleading.
References:
1. Barnum, P. T., see A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Harvard, 1942, p. 236.
2. Hooten, A E., Apes, Men, and Morons, Putnam Sons, N.Y., 1937, p. 60.
3. Where Did Man Originate?" Antiquity, 1 (June, 1927):133.
4. Illustrated London News, June 24, 1922, pp. 942-943: "The earliest man traced by a tooth: an astounding discovery of human remains in Pliocene strata."
5. Coon, C. S., The Story of Man, Knopf, N.Y., 1962, p. 40. Also A. J. E. Cave 15th International Congress of Zoology, London, reported in Discovery, Nov. 1958, p. 469.
6. Monte Circeo: reported in Science, 90 (1939) supplement, p. 13.
7. Newman, M. T., Globe and Mail, Toronto, April 4, 1951.
8. Wallis, Wilson, "The Structure of Pre-Historic Man," in The Making of Modern Man, Modern Library Series, 1931, p. 75.
9. Stewart, T. D. in Amer. Jour. Physical Anthropol., 6 (1948): 321 f.
10. Absolon, Karl, Illustrated London News, London, Oct. 2, 1937.
11. Jones, F. Wood, Man's Place Among the Mammals, Arnold, London, 19 29, pp. 362-365.
12. Howells, William, Mankind So Far, Doubleday Doran, N.Y., 1945, p. 138.
13. Lever, Jan, Creation and Evolution, Grand Rapids Internat. Pub., 1958, pp. 158, 159.
14. Weidenreich, Franz von, "The Human Brain in the Light of Phylogenetic Development," Sci. Monthly, Aug., 1948, p. 103.
15. Boas, Franz, The Mind of Primitive Man, 2nd ea., N.Y., 1939, pp. 16, 17.
16. Simpson, G G., in Science, 110 (1949): 455.
17. Cousins, Frank W., Fossil Man: A Reappraisal of the Evidence, Evolution Protest Movement, England, 1966, p. 46.
18. On Huxley's diagram, see F. Weidenreich, Apes, Giants, and Man, Univ. Chicago Press, 1948, p. 6.
19. Haeckel's reply as given in Dawn, Sept., 1931, p. 267.
20. de Beer, Sir Gavin, "Darwin and Embryology," in A Century of Darwin, ed. by S. A. Barnett, Heinemann, London, 1958, p. 159.
21. Ibid., p. 160.
22. Simpson, G. Gaylord, "Historical Biology Bearing on Human Origins," Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 15 (1950): 56.
23. Ibid., p. 57.
24. Cousins, Frank W., ref. 17, p. 21.
25. Kermack, K. A. and Frances Mussett, "The First Mammals," Discovery, April, 1959, p. 145.
26. It is most encouraging to note that the Geological Society of London has recently published a symposium entitled, "The Fossil Record" (Burlington House, London, 1967, xii and 828 pp.), which contains papers by 126 authorities, occupying a total of some 800 pages, with innumerable charts and graphs. The encouraging thing is that approximately 90% of these elaborate charts and graphs indicate only the overlap in time of the various animal forms which have characterized the successive geological ages, and do not connect them by hypothetical lines, such as are common to almost all other textbooks. This notable volume demonstrates clearly that such information can be displayed usefully without making evolutionary assumptions. This I would consider to be objective reporting of the data at its best.
27. Wallis, Wilson, "Presupposition in Anthropological Interpretations," Amer. Anthropol., 50, July-Sept. (1948): 560.
28. Cuvier, Georges: see Herbert Wendt, I Looked for Adam, Weidenfeld, Nicolson, London, 1955, p. 152.
29. Wendt, Herbert, ref. 28, p. 162.
30. Ibid., p. 421.
31. Jones, F. Wood, Trends of Life, Arnold, London, 1953, p. 87.
Corrections, July 7, 1997.
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