A New Page in the History of Evolutionist Fraud
Harun YahyaIt has emerged that an evolutionist professor of anthropology has been providing false information regarding the age of some key fossils for the last 30 years. The falsehoods of this professor, who was obliged to resign from his post in the wake of these developments, are currently described as “facts” in anthropology textbooks, and the authorities state that these need to be subjected to radical revisions.
According to the findings of the commission of inquiry, Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten of Frankfurt University systematically distorted the ages of a series of human fossils discovered in Europe, portraying these as thousands of years older than they actually were. Neither was that the sole dimension of the scandal regarding this evolutionist professor. According to a report by the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, the professor also stands accused of selling skulls that did not belong to him in order to make improper gains, and of plagiarizing studies by other scientists. In addition to this, the British daily The Guardian wrote that von Zieten manufactured fake fossils, as well as claiming that a fossil dug up in France as having been found in Switzerland. 1
The inquiry established that Professor Protsch manipulated scientific facts over the past thirty years.
The Emergence of the Scandal
Protsch’s fraudulent dating came to light when it emerged that he had attempted to sell the entire chimpanzee skull collection kept at the Frankfurt University. The university administration removed Protsch from his post last April, upon learning that he had tried to sell 278 chimpanzee skulls for $70,000 to an American dealer. Both Protsch and the university administration claim the rights to the skulls, and are currently engaged in legal proceedings.
The announcement of Protsch’s deceptions, which stunned anthropological circles, was made in an article in the 16 August, 2004, edition of Der Spiegel2. The article described how the scientist, who had headed the Frankfurt University carbon-dating unit ever since 1973, had dated hundreds of fossils and deliberately falsified the dates on a number of important discoveries.
Doubts regarding the scientist, regarded as an expert on fossil dating, began last year with the examination of prehistoric fossil remains discovered in Germany by two other archaeologists. Thomas Terberger, of the University of Greifswald, decided to subject many of these finds to modern techniques to check their authenticity. To that end, the skull fragment, discovered in Europe and claimed by Protsch to go back to the Stone Age, was sent to Oxford for tests. The results obtained by the university’s radiocarbon dating unit revealed a “dating disaster,” as scientists put it.
It appeared that a female skeleton dated at 21,300 years by Protsch was in fact only 3,300 years old. Another dating scandal concerned the fossil skull unearthed near Paderborn-Sande in Germany. The fossil, dated at 27,400 years by Protsch, was in fact that of an old man who died only 250 years ago (in 1750 AD). Furthermore, the fossilized skull fragment known as Hahnhöfersand Man was not 36,000 years old as claimed by Protsch, but only 7,500 years old.
Terberger wrote a scientific paper with a British colleague, Martin Street, of the Research Center for the Early Stone Age in Neuwied3. In this paper, the scientists wrote that the fossils were very much younger than Protsch maintained. The university commission investigating the matter published its report. As the university statement read, “Prof. Protsch has forged and manipulated scientific facts over the past 30 years.”4 According Professor Ulrich Brandt, who led the investigation, Protsch refused all requests for a meeting and avoided coming face-to-face with members of the commission.
The World of Science Deceived
The fact that the false datings by the evolutionist professor has a direct effect on certain fundamental concepts generally accepted in the field of anthropology further increases the damage inflicted by his deception on the world of science. With these unrealistic figures, Protsch caused the scientific world to be seriously misled with regard to the spread of human populations in Europe. Because of the fraud systematically perpetuated over 30 years by the evolutionist professor, unrealistic interpretations regarding the dissemination of Neanderthal Man in Europe and concerning prehistoric Germany entered anthropology books as “scientific facts.”
Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum, makes the following comment regarding the fraud being brought to light:
What was considered a major piece of evidence showing that the Neanderthals once lived in northern Europe has fallen by the wayside. We are having to rewrite prehistory. 5
Terberger describes the harm inflicted on anthropology by Protsch’s fraud in these terms:
Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago. 6
The misinterpretation regarding one of the fossils whose ages were distorted by Protsch also played a part in the fossil being used by evolutionists in their “missing link” propaganda.
A New “Evolutionist” Forgery
Among the fossils ascribed a false date by the evolutionist professor was Hahnhöfersand Man. This fossil played a key role in the debate over whether or not Neanderthal Man had mated with modern-day Homo sapiens. Neanderthal Man, distinguished from modern man solely by racial differences, disappeared some 30,000 years ago. At that time Europe belonged to them, with Homo sapiens arriving subsequently.
Did Homo sapiens engage in conflict with the Neanderthal race and eventually eliminate it, or had the two mated?
Among those seeking an answer to that question, certain researchers who subscribed to the mating theory stated that they saw anatomical traces of both in the Hahnhöfersand Man fossil and portrayed this as evidence for their thesis. According to these researchers, the fossil showed that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had bred.
However, those who pointed to the fossil as evidence were unaware that Protsch had ascribed an unrealistic age to the fossil. The false age given to Hahnhöfersand Man by Protsch was 36,000 years. Since the Neanderthals disappeared 30,000 years ago, the date given by Protsch revealed a situation entirely suited to use as evidence for the mating theory.
With this dating Protsch immediately enhanced the importance of this fossil, and claimed that it was the vital “missing link” between modern humans and Neanderthals. 7
As the debate over Neanderthals and Homo sapiens continued, this fossil gained a separate importance in the eyes of German society. That was because the fossil, discovered in northern Germany, was the oldest ever found in the region, and was given the title of the “oldest German.”
Protsch’s false date and deceptive use of the term “missing link” endowed the “oldest German” with imaginary features he did not actually possess. As a result, evolutionary propaganda became an element of the introduction of the fossil to German society. German society was indoctrinated with the idea that their ancestor was a missing link – the product of an alleged evolutionary process.
One institution that came to the fore in this description made as evolutionary propaganda was the Hamburg-based Helms-Museum. Museum officials, who held an exhibition to display the fossil to the public, prepared a poster from a totally unscientific perspective. Although the bones provided no evidence at all about such details as Hahnhöfersand Man’s lips, nose, skin color and looks, they came up with a reconstruction, giving these bones ape-like characteristics. The poster to the side was formed thus.[*]
Many visitors who flooded to the museum to see the fossil were told a story of human beings having emerged through evolution and that Hahnhöfersand Man represented a “missing link” in the so-called evolutionary history of the Germans. However, the bones the visitors were looking at were in fact evidence not for the theory of evolution, but of evolutionist fraud. The dating and interpretation based on Protsch’s false evidence led to Hahnhöfersand Man being named as a missing link, which museum authorities portrayed according to the myth of evolution in which they believed so blindly.
Yet there was a great deception going on here. The truth emerged when the final tests at Oxford revealed the fossil, to which evolutionists had ascribed an ape-man appearance, was actually only 7,500 years old. Hahnhöfersand Man was an ordinary human being who had lived only some 2,000 years before such civilizations as Sumer and Ancient Egypt, and had nothing to do with the ape-man image portrayed in the museum poster. He was very definitely not a missing link between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Protsch had deceived both his colleagues and society as a whole with that claim.
The archaeologist Thomas Terberger made this comment when the fraud was revealed:
Prof Protsch’s work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish. 8
Evolutionists “manufactured” an ape-man from a human fossil that can be said to be “brand new,” and offered this fraudulent method to society as “science.”
A Collective Evolution Deceit
In fact, the evolutionist professor’s deceptions were not unknown. The fraud was perpetrated in broad daylight. In the scandal certain general principles regarding scientific research were ignored and a blind eye was turned to fraud.
Protsch had previously demonstrated, in most blatant manner, that he lacked any scientific reliability. According to a Stern report, the German anthropologist was found guilty in 2000 of trying to obtain a second doctorate by illegal means, and was duly fined. 9
Again according to Stern, dating errors had earlier emerged in various tests performed by Oxford University in 2000, and it had long been known that the skull known as Paderborn-Sande had lived only a few hundred years ago. Indeed, the university officials had been warned by experts when the professor was first hired and told that he was not up to the job. 10
All this was known to the Frankfurt University administrators, but they did nothing about it. Only after the deceptions had appeared in the media did university’s president Rudolf Steinberg admit that the institution’s administration had ignored the professor’s misconduct for decades despite existing proof for his mistakes. 11
While Protsch systematically and methodically carried out the deception, the institution’s administration ignored the proofs of the deception and his colleagues failed to comply with a number of scientific standards.
As a general principle among scientists in a specific discipline (anthropology, for example) the precaution is taken of not leaving analyses in a specific area of that discipline (dating, for example) to one person. Scientists repeat studies carried out by one another to see if they reach the same conclusions. The more effectively this principle is translated into reality, the more reliable the analysis, and therefore the findings revealed by that discipline.
However, Protsch’s datings were unchecked for decades, evidence of his deception was ignored, and the false evolutionist claim regarding the age of Hahnhöfersand Man was described as a scientific fact to tens of thousands of people at the museum. What emerged was a “collective evolution deceit,” involving museum officials, the university administration and Protsch’s colleagues.
This collective evolution deceit based upon forgery, under Protsch’s leadership, is not a “first.” On the contrary, deception is a “living tradition” for evolutionists.
Some of the Previous Evolution Frauds
Various deceptions have been perpetrated and scandals involving evolutionists have been experienced throughout the history of the theory of evolution. Some of the main examples are:
The Piltdown Man Forgery: In 1912 Charles Dawson, an amateur paleontologist, claimed to have discovered an ape-man fossil near Piltdown in the county of Sussex, England. The fossil consisted of a skull, the jawbone of which exhibited ape-like features and the cranial fragment human ones. It was treated as proof of Darwin’s theory and exhibited in the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum) for 40 years. However, the results of a new series of tests performed on the fossil using new dating techniques in 1953 revealed that it was a forgery. The skull belonged to a human being some 500 years old, and the jawbone to a recently deceased orangutan! The bones had been carved using steel blades and assembled together. In other words, this so-called evidence had been deliberately concocted to make the public believe that the theory of evolution was true.
The Nebraska Man scandal: A “single tooth” discovered in the U.S. State of Nebraska in 1922 was used by evolutionist scientists as evidence for the claim that man had evolved from ape-like creatures. Pictorial reconstructions of the fossil, on which the “scientific” name Hesperopithecus haroldcooki was bestowed, showed the imaginary ape-man’s entire body, and even his family. The idea was to once again replace scientific proof with the boundless imaginative powers of evolutionists.
However, the truth that emerged when other parts of the skeleton were unearthed in 1927 was rather different: This tooth belonged, not to an ape or human being, but to an extinct species of wild American pig! Nebraska Man took its place as another link in the chain of evolutionist deception and scandal.
Ernst Haeckel’s counterfeit drawings: Towards the end of the 19th century, the German biologist Ernst Haeckel, a contemporary of Darwin’s, claimed that the stages undergone by living things during their embryological development repeated the alleged evolutionary history of life. According to Haeckel’s claim, as it developed in the mother’s womb the human embryo went through phases exhibiting, consecutively, fish, reptile and human features. He sought to support this claim by means of diagrams drawn by himself that he depicted as showing the development of various embryos. Yet the invalidity of that claim was apparent even in the light of the knowledge at that time. Moreover, Haeckel had deliberately distorted the drawings to make them fit in with his own claim.
Instead of unmasking this deception and burying it as a dead claim, evolutionists adopted it as if it were a scientific fact. Furthermore, they reproduced Haeckel’s forged drawings in textbooks and portrayed them as fact in their universities for more than a hundred years. Instead of revealing Haeckel’s individual forgery, evolutionists, acting out of an ideological impulse, took an unscientific approach and adopted the forgery, eventually turning it into a mass forgery.
Indeed, it was only possible to really unmask the forgery in the second half of the 1990s. Michael Richardson, an embryologist from St. George’s Hospital Medical School in London, and his colleagues re-examined and photographed embryos of the ages and species drawn by Haeckel and carried out their own comparisons. The study, published in the journal Anatomy and Embryology, revealed the details of the forgery. Not only had Haeckel added or removed organs, he had also altered the sizes of embryos in order to be able to depict species as resembling one another, sometimes showing them as ten times larger than the originals. In addition, Haeckel avoided naming the species in order be able conceal differences, as if one representative was accurate for an entire group of animals. In the words of Richardson and his team, “It looks like it’s [Haeckel’s drawings] turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in biology.” 12
Only following this development did evolutionists express the error of their systematic use of forged drawings. Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionist professor of paleontology at Harvard, wrote the following in an article in 2000:
… [W]e do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks! 13
Haeckel’s forged drawings have still not been entirely purged from textbooks, and the process is still continuing.
The Archeoraptor scandal: In an article published in 1999 in National Geographic magazine, the claim that a fossil discovered in China and given the name of Archeoraptor represented proof of the claim that birds had evolved from dinosaurs was announced to the world. Imaginative reconstructions depicted dinosaurs covered in feathers leaping into the air, allegedly at the imaginary evolutionary stage when they began growing wings and flying. However, this fossil, announced by National Geographic to such great furor, soon turned into a source of terrible humiliation for the magazine, known for its support of Darwinism. The fossil did not in fact exhibit common bird and dinosaur characteristics as National Geographic had maintained. The fossil was the product of a manifest forgery. More than one fossil had been combined in such a way as to give the impression of an intermediate form and glued together and used as evidence for evolution! Evolutionists had learned nothing from the Piltdown Man forgery, in which orangutan and human bones were assembled together and portrayed as evidence, this time regarding a forged fossil produced by combining dinosaur and bird fossils as proof of evolution.
Conclusion: The right thing to do is to admit the truth, rather than pile falsehood upon falsehood.
It is inevitable that so long as scientists persist in their endeavors to keep the theory of evolution alive new cases of evolution deceptions will occur. That is because the evidence accumulated over decades in such fields as paleontology, microbiology, molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics has definitively invalidated the theory of evolution and proved that it is nothing more than a myth. It has been revealed that it is mathematically impossible for life to evolve by chance, that there is no trace of intermediate forms in the fossil record, and that the imaginary mechanisms of Darwinism, such as natural selection and mutations, have no power to make anything evolve. (For further reading, see Harun Yahya, Darwinism Refuted.)
Modern science has proved that the design in nature is the work of Almighty and Omniscient God. In short, science has confirmed the fact that God has created all living things. Evolutionists are in an impossible situation in the face of this.
Indeed, heading the list of factors leading to evolution forgeries is the fact that scientific findings refute the theory of evolution. Since science offers no evidence in support of evolutionary theories, desperate evolutionists try to “manufacture” the evidence by unscientific means. Therefore, they seek to keep the theory of evolution, the greatest scientific deception in history, alive by means of further deceptions.
It is clear that fighting the facts, and embracing deception and other unscientific methods in doing so, is an endeavor that will bear no fruit.
[*] This poster reads “I am a Hamburger” and is totally unscientific, produced as it was from preconception and imagination. Anyone who believes in evolution can easily come up with such an imaginary ape-man by using a little imagination and some false evidence. Although Neanderthal fossils provide no evidence for the theory of evolution, they have frequently been subjected to such prejudiced measures, and there have thus been endeavors to make society believe that Neanderthals were primitive ape-men. Earnest A. Hooton of Harvard University described how these imaginary drawings lacked any scientific reliability in these terms:
“To attempt to restore the soft parts is an even more hazardous undertaking. The lips, the eyes, the ears, and the nasal tip leave no clues on the underlying bony parts. You can with equal facility model on a Neanderthaloid skull the features of a chimpanzee or the lineaments of a philosopher. These alleged restorations of ancient types of man have very little if any scientific value and are likely only to mislead the public… So put not your trust in reconstructions.” (Earnest A. Hooton, Up from the Ape, New York: McMillan, 1931, p. 332)
- Luke Harding, “History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud,” The Guardian, February 19, 2005
- Matthias Schulz, "Die Regeln Mache Ich," Der Spiegel, August 16, 2004
- “On Campus,” Science, Vol 305, Issue 5688, 1237, August 27, 2004, p. 1237
- “Professor Resigns Over Misconduct Scandal,” Deutsche Welle, February 18, 2005,
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1493421,00.html - Tony Paterson, “Neanderthal Man "never walked in northern Europe’,” www.telegraph.co.uk , August 22, 2004
- Harding, “History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud,” The Guardian
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- “Schmu bei Steinzeit-Schädeln,” Stern, www.stern.de, August 17, 2004
- “Professor Resigns Over Misconduct Scandal,” Deutsche Welle
- Ibid.
- Elizabeth Pennisi, "Haeckel"s Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered," Science, September 5, 1997
- Stephen Jay Gould, "Abscheulich! - Atrocious! - the precursor to the theory of natural selection," Natural History, March 2000, p. 45
