I just went to the site with the Creationist explantion of the vestigial tail. That cartoon thing; saw it for the first time.
The bit that really got me was where the young creationist shows the class the chart of hominids standing progressively more upright.
A couple of things: 'Peking Man' refers to the Asian homo erectus skeletons they found in China. That "all the evidence has disappeared" isn't true; there's plenty and it's all been dated pretty accurately and not just in Asia. They were surviving there at the same time as Neanderthals ruled the roost in Europe and homo sapiens was thinking about leaving Africa.
Piltdown Man was proved a fake years ago and appears in no academic journal about archeology or genetics I've ever read.
That the skeleton found in the Neander valley, the first Neanderthal skeleton, is an old man with arthiritis... oh lord. There are plenty of neanderthal bones. They can measure the genetic distance between homo sapiens and neanderthalus <a href="http://www.neanderthal-modern.com"; target="_blank">with DNA extracted from Neanderthal bones.</a>.
Cro-magnon man was anatomically modern. If there were differences they were probably linguistic and intellectual rather than anatomical.
"Modern Man: this genius thinks we came from a monkey."
No, he doesn't; he claims that we descended from a common ancestor, and there's a boatload of inarguable genetic and archeological evidence that tells us he's right.
In short, the 'science' in this cartoon is nonsense.
Comments
The bit that really got me was where the young creationist shows the class the chart of hominids standing progressively more upright.
A couple of things: 'Peking Man' refers to the Asian homo erectus skeletons they found in China. That "all the evidence has disappeared" isn't true; there's plenty and it's all been dated pretty accurately and not just in Asia. They were surviving there at the same time as Neanderthals ruled the roost in Europe and homo sapiens was thinking about leaving Africa.
<a href="http://www.archaeology.org/0001/newsbriefs/china.html"; target="_blank">They even made tools.</a>
Piltdown Man was proved a fake years ago and appears in no academic journal about archeology or genetics I've ever read.
That the skeleton found in the Neander valley, the first Neanderthal skeleton, is an old man with arthiritis... oh lord. There are plenty of neanderthal bones. They can measure the genetic distance between homo sapiens and neanderthalus <a href="http://www.neanderthal-modern.com"; target="_blank">with DNA extracted from Neanderthal bones.</a>.
Cro-magnon man was anatomically modern. If there were differences they were probably linguistic and intellectual rather than anatomical.
"Modern Man: this genius thinks we came from a monkey."
No, he doesn't; he claims that we descended from a common ancestor, and there's a boatload of inarguable genetic and archeological evidence that tells us he's right.
In short, the 'science' in this cartoon is nonsense.
[ 08-18-2002: Message edited by: Hassan i-Sabbah ]</p>