It happened around the quaint town of Piltdown, England. Working secretly on their patient a long process was taking place. It took a while to find all of the necessary parts. A human skull and the jawbone of an orangutan and later the tooth of a chimp; all to be merged into one being. Some sawing, filing, taps of a hammer...it was almost ready now, but it needed to look old. A little acid, a little paint, the stroke of a brush and finally he was ready: A creature more bizarre than Dr. Frankenstein's monster was born--Behold--The Piltdown man!
Frenzied darwinian's finally had the elusive evidence they were looking for. The news was also good for the little town of Piltdown had gained worldwide acclaim as Piltdown had been unearthed from a gravel pit there.
Piltdown's (also known as Eoanthropus dawsoni) career grew when he became a cast member at the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925.
From there he became a textbook icon. Students worldwide were fascinated for decades with stories of how their early ancestor, Piltdown man ate, socialized, mated and died. Pictures of him appeared in print, and life size replicas were fashioned complete with hair, lips and eyes and put on display in museums.
Alas, his career abruptly ended barely fifty years later, reluctantly in 1955 Piltdown man was found to be a fraud, a total hoax. Creationists who had long since been relegated to the back of their classes as comprising the so-called 'flat earth society’ didn’t have much of a respite as a host of other imaginative and artistic representations of man were waiting in the wings.
You know, there is a resemblance between Piltdown and this writer, or is there? Naw! Anyway I want to wish you all Aloha from the Island of Oahu! I wonder if Piltdown ever got sunburned...oh well that's for a different blog.
Here's a shot I took as Pearl Harbor came into view (back on the 8th of this month) in a crack in the clouds.This is looking directly at Ford Island. You may be able to click on this picture and see the little white dot at lower center extreme right is the Arizona memorial. Just behind it is the Battleship Missouri, these cap both ends of WW 2.
I wonder if this view is something like the Japanese pilots had?
Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I'll be taking the mother of my kids to New Hope, Diamond Head and say hi to my friend and brother in Christ, Pastor Fernando.
3 comments:
Piltdown and Nebraska man were fakes.
Yes they were fakes. You must have read one of my previous blogs. And don't forget Neandertal -and ironically so it goes with many of the artistic drawings, depictions and descriptions within the branches of the evolutionary tree. One example: suspicion about discoveries such as the infamous Lucy, which miraculously (or in your vernacular the word might be conveniently) came at a time that the grant money was exhausted. In fact the name "Lucy" came as a result of a celebration that took place following the driveby discovery of an elbow sticking out of the dirt. A little Champagne, some singing of the Beatles song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" combined with the assured renewal of the grant money...such a deal--and today we all know this little chimp as Lucy.
So the next time you go to a natural history museum and see prehistoric man in his natural surroundings, well, it's more imagination than fact. Ask some questions you scientist.
I don't acknowledge Neanderthal was a fake. The variations in the chest skeleton, smaller brain, and thicker bone structure makes it a different species. I'm not sure you have any basis for thinking lucy is going to be surrounded by fake surroundings or the timing of her finding makes any difference to the age of an ancient hominid.
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