“MIOCENE MAN”

adapted from articles by

W.R. Cooper

Malcom Bowden

Used with the kind permission of the Creation Science Movement, 50 Brecon Avenue, Cosham, Portsmouth, England, P06 2AW.

The theory of organic evolution owes its acceptance largely to two phenomena: first, man's inherent desire to escape from any notion of his special creation by an omnipotent God -along with all it implies -and second, the deliberate concealment by leading evolutionists of evidence that could seriously undermine acceptance of the theory of evolution if it became widely known. Nearly everywhere it is taught and held to be a scientific fact that man evolved from the apes during the last million years or so. Various charts and diagrams purport to demonstrate the stages of such evolution. What is omitted, however, is a significant body of evidence from the fossil record indicating - if we accept conventional geological time span - that man was around “millions of years” before his supposed evolutionary ancestors. The secreting of evidence hardly accords with the scientific integrity and objectivity claimed to underpin evolutionism; rather, it seems dishonest.

One instance of omission concerns a human skeleton that to this day lies in the basement of the British Museum of Natural History. The skeleton is that of a 5 ft. 2 in. woman. Her skeleton (see front panel) was dug out of the Lower Miocene deposits of Grande Terre, part of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Although the skull, feet, and right arm were destroyed or lost during the field extraction, most of the specimen still remains embedded in a two-ton block of limestone. The limestone matrix, harder than statuary marble, enveloped the bones while it was in a fluid state. Burial was sudden and catastrophic, as evidenced by both the articulation of the skeleton and the high organic content of the rock in the immediate vicinity of the bones. The organic content indicates the body had not decayed to any great degree prior to burial, making the bones virtually the same age as the rock. According to the conventional geological time scale, the Lower Miocene epoch dates from 25 million years ago, making this human skeleton some 24 million years older than the ape-like creatures alleged to be mankind's evolutionary ancestors.

The British Museum has been in possession of this specimen for no less than 170 years. It was presented to them by the Admiralty in 1812. Early in the nineteenth century, it was displayed to the public as a curiosity, being the only example of a fossil man embedded in a limestone mass. But when Darwinism gained a foothold in academic circles, the specimen was quietly removed from public display. I am given to understand, in fact, that I was the first member of the public to set eyes on it since the early 1930s. (The last geological survey of Guadeloupe mentioning the presence of human remains in limestone deposits is that of Spencer, in 1901.)

Although these human remains of the Lower Miocene confound human evolution theory, they offer support to the creation position. For instance, the creation model predicts that, regardless of their antiquity, human remains will always appear to be fully human; similarly, the remains of apes always show themselves to be fully ape. And indeed, the Miocene skeleton looks to be fully human, just as the creationist would predict.

Another of the creation model's predictions states that human remains and artifacts might well be found in pre-Quaternary deposits, and that such finds will be non-intrusive; that is, not inserted into preexisting rock. (The Quaternary period, by the way, is the time when humans are said to have first appeared.) In other words, at least some human remains will seem to be older than mankind's alleged evolutionary ancestors. And, in fact, an unspecified number of pre-Quaternary human skeletons were found on the island of Guadeloupe, although there seems to be only one surviving specimen.

The creation model also implies that the geological column should yield evidence of catastrophic burial characterized by a sudden and massive deposition of sediments. This flatly contradicts evolution theory, which says that such deposits were laid down gradually over millions of years. According to creationists, sedimentary rocks should exhibit evidence of the catastrophic effects of a global flood, like the one described in the book of Genesis. Not surprisingly, our “Miocene Man” was buried suddenly and catastrophically, before the deposits hardened into rock. If the burial had been gradual, the skeleton would not have remained articulated, nor would the rock contain organic traces around the bones.

Scavenging and decay would have taken their toll. The extensive damage to the skeleton is consistent with what a tidal does to hapless people caught in its grip. Death could not have come from something like a rock fall because most of the skeletal damage consisted of various kinds of severe dislocations. The right side of the rib cage now lies above the left humerus (upper arm bone), and the sternum (breastbone) lies within the rock, underneath the ribs. Likewise, the spinal column was dislocated from the pelvis, causing the sacrum (the back of the pelvis) to descend into the rock at a forty-five-degree angle. In this area too, the left ilium (hipbone) had been wrenched away from the pelvis, causing it to lie flat within the rock instead of projecting upwards. The left tibia (shinbone) was dislocated at the knee, the bone having been rotated some ninety degrees to the right. There is also a post-mortem fracture in the left radius (a forearm bone). It is important to note that all of these dislocations occurred before the rock solidified and before the body decayed.

The evidence of catastrophic burial, the sudden formation of a portion of the geological column, and the non-intrusive presence of human remains in rocks formed prior to man's supposedly evolution are all observations predicted by the creation model of natural history. It is little wonder this fossil human specimen is no longer discussed in textbooks espousing an evolutionary viewpoint or displayed to the public. Without a doubt, it would engender questions that Neo-Darwinists would rather not have to answer!

By Bill Cooper

MORE ON “MIOCENE MAN”

The remainder of this article is based on responses by Bill Cooper and Malcolm Bowden to critical reviews offered by Dr. Stringer of the anthropological department of the British Natural History Museum, David Tyler, a council member of the Biblical Creation Society, and Kurt Wise, a postgraduate geologist of Harvard University.

A Trail of Confusion

Kurt Wise wishes to show that the rock in which the skeleton lies was formed within the last four or five centuries. He claims that the skeleton is modern and has no bearing on the creation-evolution debate. He believes that the skeleton's limestone matrix is merely part of an Indian burial ground that has somehow hardened into a solid limestone mass, although he does not say how this came about.

Wise's claims are based on the suppositions of several geological reports that come nowhere near to adequately accounting for the fossil. For example, Edgar Clerc, an archaeologist and evolutionist, excavated a comparatively recent graveyard near the site where the original skeleton was discovered. Although Clerc claimed in the introduction to his report that the fossil belongs to the same burial ground as the one he excavated, it is obvious there is no real connection whatsoever between the two. Every one of the skeletons and artifacts that Clerc found was lying in soft, albeit “compact,” sand. But the Miocene fossil human was (and still is) embedded in an extremely hard, intact limestone matrix. The fossil was also discovered below high tide, whereas Clerc's burial ground is clearly a little way inland and about two metres above sea level (see figure 1). It does not help that Clerc, like everyone else who has reported on this fossil, failed to draw a map demonstrating the alleged connection between the fossil site and the burial ground.

Wise also draws upon the observations of Duchassaing (1847 and 1855), and medical practitioner who lived near to where the fossilized human was found. In his report, Duchassaing claimed that because he had found a piece of worked flint in a “higher and [therefore] more recent” place than where the fossil lay, and since the pre-Colombian Indians of Guadeloupe did not use flint, the fossil must postdate the discovery of America. This is the same reason that Wise gives for his own dating of the fossil to within the last few centuries. However in his second report, Duchassaing, changes his mind and says the presence of a piece of blue glass compels a pre-Colombian date for the fossil. Duchassaing credits the Indians with the technical ability to manufacture coloured glass, but does not think them capable of fashioning flint tools! Clerc says that flint was used by the pre-Colombian Indians in the area; Wise believes that it was not. Those contending for recent date for the Miocene Man skeleton paint a very confusing picture.

Another geologist, Spencer (1901), surveyed the island meticulously. Yet, he gave no report of his own on the strata that entombed the fossil human. Spencer's failure to report on the fossil site is deeply suspicious. Are we to believe this highly qualified geologist travelled all the way to Guadeloupe (no easy journey in those days), conducted a painstaking survey of the entire island, and neglected to report on what was surely its most interesting feature? I submit that he did examine it, but was baffled by the implications of what he found. As an evolutionist, he thought it best to ignore the site because the evidence it contained contradicted the theory of evolution. Spencer simply blamed Duchassaing for any anomalous dating. And in order to hold on to Lyell's principles of slow and uniform deposition of sediments when accounting for the islands strata, Spencer had to postulate the mind-boggling scenario of the entire island having been uplifted to some 3,00 feet, and then submerged 200 feet or more below sea-level!

In 1956, Butterlin and Hoffstetter published two more surveys of Guadeloupe. Interestingly, although they have no hesitation in assigning all of the island's madreporic limestones (the same type as that in which the skeleton was found) to the Miocene and the even older Oligocene epochs, neither of them mention human fossils! Both men were certainly aware of the discovery of “Miocene Man,” for they cited the papers of Duchassaing and Spencer, each of whom referred to it. The omission by Butterlin and Hoffstetter is curious, but of course they shared Spencer's problem of explaining the presence of human remains in Miocene and Oligocene rock. Therefore, Butterlin and Hoffstetter are of little help in settling the debate on this matter. Not surprisingly, they too were extremely reluctant to deal with the evidence.

By Bill Cooper

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS

The main claim of Cooper's critics is that the matrix in which the skeletons were found is a recently formed “beach rock,” a sand that has become cemented by chemicals precipitated from water. At geological survey by Saint-Michel in 1961, which Dr. Stringer quotes, described the material as “calcareous sand occasionally consolidated.” The material was said to be of the Recent epoch, in the Upper Quaternary period. Yet the skeletons were encased in rock harder than the marble used in making statues! Saint-Michel goes on to describe the scene as one of flat slabs of rock lying on the foreshore in a jumbled mass. This sounds more like a description of the slabs in which the skeletons were found than it does of occasionally consolidated sand.

Saint-Michel also took note of Miocene strata several miles inland. His description of this “inland” strata as slabs of strongly consolidated sand lying in a chaotic jumble far better fits the picture of the foreshore rock, in which the fossils were found than does his own description of the “foreshore” rock, referred to as slabs of occasionally consolidated sand. Curiously, he added that “inland” rocks of “strongly consolidated sand” can be seen on the beaches today. Did Saint-Michel mix up his descriptions of shoreline strata and inland rock?

The critics are faced with having to explain how human skeletons could have been so radically rearranged while remaining intact, and then be encased in very hard limestone below the high-water level. Any suggestion that they were recent burials is difficult to maintain, because the beach faces the full force of gales and hurricanes, events which are common to the region. If a body was buried, either by human agency or by natural forces in the aftermath of a shipwreck, it would soon be exposed by the elements. With the flesh quickly rotting, it would not be long before the bones would separate and disperse. Furthermore, because the bones of “Miocene Man” were badly smashed and dislocated, and because “Miocene Man” and other human fossils were found below the high-water mark, the fossil site is unlikely to have been a cemetery. Indeed, Cooper has shown that the “graveyard” described by Clerc was separated from the fossil site by a raised reef and is not the same as the beach site, where the fossilized skeletons were found.

The only satisfactory explanation is that the bodies were bent and broken as they tumbled in water thick with suspended material and dissolved chemicals, encasing them when it crystallized into a hard limestone. This limestone is too similar to the “inland” Miocene rock to be summarily dismissed as a “calcareous sand occasionally consolidated.”

The weight of the evidence supports the contention that these skeletons came to rest in strata labeled as “Miocene” by uniformitarion geologists. This would place the existence of human beings at such an early date as to totally undermine the whole ape-to-man ancestry constructed by evolutionary anthropologists. One can, therefore, understand their reluctance to admit the truth.

There is, no evidence contradicting the contention that this rock, and the skeletons entombed in it, was rapidly deposited at the time of the Flood, an event which also left us a fossil record of countless life forms in addition to that of “Miocene Man.”

by Malcom Bowden