Another shoe that doesn’t fit

In my last post, I wrote about the curious tactic of evolutionists assigning modern human footprints to supposed human ancestors.  The old saying is, "If the shoe fits, wear it!" Sometimes, though, human footprints are found in rocks that just don't quite fit with evolutionary understanding. In the cases I cited before, human footprints were forced to fit the shoes of Homo erectus and Australopithecus afarensis. I had another example that I could have used in that post but I had already written long enough and I felt it might be too long if I included another example.  Yet this example is so much more outrageous, I couldn’t just let it go without talking about it.  I'm going to do that now. Prepare to be amused.

Back in 2005, in a NBC News article, British scientists claimed to have discovered 40,000 year old human footprints in Mexico.  This was a problem with popular theories at the time that said humans arrived in the Americas only about 13,500 years ago.  Of course, since every evolutionist views evidence with the lens of “millions of years,” a 30,000 year error certainly isn’t enough to cause any of them to question the theory itself.

The footprints had been made by someone walking in volcanic ash.  When water levels rose, the ash hardened like concrete and preserved the trail.  There were some 269 footprints total, made by humans and animals.  But the real controversy started when someone had the bright idea to date the volcanic ash.  From a Live Science article, we read this:

Using palaeomagnetic analysis—a technique that looks at the Earth's magnetic field during past geologic time—and a radioactive dating technique called argon-argon, the team concludes the ash is actually 1.3 million years old. [italics in original]

Uh oh!  Evolutionists could deal with a 30,000 mistake in their deep-time story telling.  Now we’re talking about 1.3 million years!  Like Desi Arnaz used to say to Lucille Ball, “You got some ‘splainin to do.”  

In this post, I’ve included 2 photos from the two articles.  The Live Science article has a photo that resembles a footprint left in sand.  Visible are the heel, toes, and arch of the foot.  I’m not sure how long the stick is, that was placed next to the print for scale but I’m going to assume the print is the same size of a typical human’s foot.  It looks just like any footprint you might find on a sandy beach or a muddy field.

The NBC photo has someone with a bare foot standing next to one of the fossil prints.  You can see for yourself that the footprint is about the same size as the model, with the heel and toes clearly visible.  But you don’t have to believe me - look at the photos for yourself.  Am I lying?  Am I exaggerating the resemblance of the fossil prints to human feet?  I think not.

The problems this finding causes for evolution are myriad.  Nevermind the 40,000 years ago estimate anymore because you can’t have people who lived 40,000 ago leave footprints in rocks that are 1.3 million years old.  I see two ways to resolve this:

1. People were walking around in Central America 1.3 million years ago.  Now, this isn’t really an option because modern humans weren’t even supposed to exist that long ago.  It would have had to have been some human ancestor - but even these were still supposed to be in Africa.  There’s really no way to make human (or even hominid ancestor) prints in 1.3 million year old rock fit the evolutionary model.

2. The dating method is wrong and the rocks aren’t really 1.3 million years old.  This is the option I would go with, seeing that I’m a young earth creationist.  I believe the rocks can’t be more than ~6,000 years old.  But evolutionists can’t really agree to this option either.  They are vested in their dating methods and you can’t really disregard this finding without calling their other dates into question.

What a pickle for evolutionists.  What could they possibly do to resolve this?  Do you remember when I said you’d be amused?  Well get ready because here it comes.  I’m being serious.  You’re not going to believe it.  Are you ready?  OK, here goes:

These are really cow prints!!

I told you that you wouldn’t believe it.  Let me quote from the Live Science article:

After visiting the site, Renne believes the markings are not really human footprints at all, but rather impressions left by machines or animals that have passed through the quarry in recent times. ¶"You have to remember this is a public area," Renne said in a telephone interview. "Vehicles drive across it, you can see tire tracks on the surface. There are cows and other animals grazing nearby." [bold added]

I kid you not, folks, I cannot make this stuff up. This is what passes for “science” when it comes to building evolutionary theories.  Sometimes, evolutionists brag, claiming that their theory is supported by several different scientific disciplines. In this case, though, the dates they assign to the evolution of modern humans, the dates they assign to human ancestors, the “Out of Africa” dates, the dates assigned to the Ice Ages, the methods they use to assign dates to rocks, just don’t quite jibe, do they?  In fact, they don’t agree at all.  

Are evolutionists never embarrassed to have to resort to explanations like this? I thought it was funny when they claimed human footprints were left by Australopithicenes.  To say that human footprints were made by cows… well that’s downright hysterical!

The evolutionary shoe doesn’t fit

The old saying goes, “If the shoe fits, wear it!”  In some cases, though, people are determined to squeeze their feet into shoes that just don’t fit.  In the original story by Brothers Grimm, one of Cinderella’s step sisters cut off her toes to try to fit her foot into the glass slipper.  The other sister cut off her heel.  Yikes!!  Yet as extreme as that sounds, evolutionary scientists seem to go to similar lengths to force human footprints into evolutionary shoes.

Some years back, The Guardian reported, “Earliest human footprints found in Kenya.”  I’ve included a photo of the subject print below.  The prints are surprisingly like modern humans’ with a large toe parallel to the other toes and an upright stride matching someone who would have been about 5’ 9”.  An archeologist on site describes them this way:

It was kind of creepy excavating these things to see all of a sudden [a footprint] that looks so dramatically like something that you yourself could have made 20 minutes earlier in some kind of wet sediment just next to the site…. These could quite easily have been made on the beach today.

A Reuters story covering the same find said this about the footprints:

The size, spacing and depth of the footprint impressions allowed the scientists to estimate weight, stride and gait, which all were found to be within the range of modern humans. [bold added]

However, in spite of their very human-like characteristics, the prints are in sediment believed by evolutionists to be ~1.5 million years old.  Uh oh!  Modern humans are only supposed to have evolved only about 200,000 years ago, but here are human footprints in rocks that are supposed to be 1.5 million years old. Do you see the problem?

Richard Dawkins once spoke a great lie saying, “Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.”  Well, Mr. Dawkins, here you go.  Here are footprints of a species supposedly 200,000 years old found in rocks supposedly 1,500,000 years old.  Consider your theory disproved!  Alas, no.  It doesn’t work like that.  They’re going to force these feet into evolutionary shoes!

The Reuters’ story reports that the footprints were assigned to Homo erectus (subspecies, Home ergaster) which they believed could be in that area about that time.  It’s kind of weird, though, that they would have evidence of a creature with the height, weight, stride, and footprint within the range of modern humans but refuse to consider if it’s a modern human.

This phenomenon of assigning human footprints to non-human (at least non-Homo sapien) species isn’t unique to the Kenya find.  An even more famous example would be the Laetoli Footprints. In Tanzania, a trail of human-like footprints were found in volcanic ash they claim was 3.7 million years old.  Like the Kenya footprints, the prints in Laetoli match human patterns very closely.  Here’s a description from the Wiki article:

Analysis of the Laetoli footprints indicated the characteristics of obligate bipedalism: pronounced heel strike from deep impressions, lateral transmission of force from the heel to the base of the lateral metatarsal, a well-developed medial longitudinal arch, adducted big toe, and a deep impression for the big toe commensurate with toe-off….  The feet do not have the mobile big toe of apes; instead, they have an arch typical of modern humans. The hominins seem to have moved in a leisurely stroll.

In other words, these are prints very similar to a person walking heel-to-toe, where his heel strikes first, he transfers his weight forward, then pushes off on his big toe.  That’s how I walk.  That’s how everyone walks.  The only thing that makes these prints interesting is they’re found in rocks that are supposed to be millions of years older than modern humans.

Since there aren’t supposed to be modern humans walking around 4 million years ago, the Laetoli prints have been tentatively assigned to Australopithecus afarensis - as in the famous “Lucy” skeleton on display in nearly every museum around the world.  

This brings me to another point.  The Wiki article discussing Laetoli mentions that other prints found in the area show the presence of other animals like hyenas, baboons, boars, giraffes, and rhinos.  I’m not a hunter, but in Kentucky, I see footprints from a lot of different critters: racoons, deer, rabbits, etc.  It’s very easy to identify an animal from its tracks.  Are you ready for this - how do they know these other prints belonged to giraffes or rhinos?  Think about it:

They find giraffe tracks and assign them to giraffes.

They find boar tracks and assign them to boars.

They find hyena prints and assign them to hyenas.

They find human prints and assign them to Australopithicenes?

So again, as the old saying goes, “If the shoe fits, wear it!”  When I see a human footprint, I know it was made by a human.  Just like I know deer tracks were made by a deer.  Duh!  That doesn’t work for evolution, though.  A 4 million year old human footprint can’t be a modern human.  A 1.5 million year old human footprint can’t be a modern human.  Just like Cinderella’s wicked step-sisters, they’ll do anything to fit human footprints into the shoes of our supposed non-human ancestors.  It’s too bad for them that the shoe doesn’t fit!

Why the Bible trumps archaeology

Some years back, I read the book, The Stones Cry Out, by Randall Price.  I recently came across some notes I’d made about the book and, even though the book may be a bit dated now (it was originally published in 1997), some of the points it makes are timeless.

All in all, archaeology has been friendly to the Bible. Several archaeological finds have marvelously confirmed facts previously only known from Scripture. Even so, some difficulties remain. Critics will sometimes claim certain details in Scripture have not been verified by archaeologists. Indeed, some current evidence seems to contradict Scripture. Can the spade of modern archaeologists overturn the authority of the Bible? Heaven forbid! Early in the book, Dr. Randall Price outlined why he believes the Bible trumps archaeology.

 

1) “Only a fraction of what is made or written survives”: We have found a lot of things which had been written down by the ancients but the overwhelming majority of what they wrote simply no longer exists. At the time “The Stones Cry Out” was published, no sizable archive has been discovered in the Land of Israel. What certainty do we have that what survives is representative of the whole body of what was written?

 

2) “Only a fraction of the available archaeological sites have been surveyed”: In Israel and the Near East, there are thousands of unexcavated tels. Sites that are surveyed cannot keep pace with the many more that are being discovered. Many of these sites will never be properly explored because of political disputes and lack of resources. Many are also being destroyed by population growth and construction.

 

3) “Only a fraction of the surveyed sites have been excavated”: In Israel, military spending takes priority over archaeological excavation. Most work in this area is done by volunteers or by archaeologists who make their real living as professors. These people must raise money for their expeditions from private resources and can only work a few weeks out of the year. Because of all these factors, only 2% of surveyed sites in Israel have been excavated.

 

4) “Only a fraction of an excavation site is actually examined”: Due to limited time and resources, archaeologists tend to invest the majority of their time in sites they suspect have the best chance of yielding a sensational find. A big find helps in future fund-raising. Strategic sites, such as Tel Hazor, have been repeatedly excavated yet there is so much ground that Tel Hazor still remains the largest unexcavated tel in Israel.

 

5) “Only a fraction of what is excavated is eventually reported and published”: There was a forty year delay between the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the release of just their photographs. It is a simple fact of archaeological research. There are tens of thousands of cuneiform texts in museum storage rooms all over the world and there is simply not enough time, expertise, and resources to review it all.

Dr. Price concluded his points with these insightful words:

“In the final analysis, it must be remembered that the Bible itself is our finest example of an archaeological document. While we have only a limited number of archaeological artifacts from the biblical period, the Bible represents the most complete literary record we possess of ancient times. Surviving in one form or another since its first books were penned by Moses some 3400 years ago, it remains the most accurate and trustworthy account of antiquity in the archaeological record. For this reason it is improper to elevate other archaeological inscriptions above the Biblical text in order to challenge the latter's integrity.”

 

What more can I say?  Dr. Price has nailed it.  The lack of discoveries confirming some of the events attested in the Bible is not a sufficient argument to challenge its veracity.  As the old saying goes, an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  To the contrary, the Bible itself is the best record we have of the history of God’s people!