Creation Worldview Ministries: The fraud of Rhodesian Man Page 1 of 2

The fraud of Rhodesian Man

Some of the most often asked questions at any of our presentations are the questions
about Cavemen. Were there cavemen? How long ago did they live? What were they like?

First of all, what does the word caveman mean? It means a man who lives in a cave; a
man -- not a pre-human. For example, King David lived in the Cave of Adullam (I
Samuel 22:1, II Samuel 23:13 and I Chronicles 11:15). Doesn't that make King David a
caveman?

Further, I thought that it would be instructive to look at just one of the great frauds of
the past which promoted the concept of human evolution from pre-human primates
which lived in caves. As this example clearly shows, those who believe in human
evolution do so because they want it to be true and will do anything to make it seem
true even when it is obviously not. This kind of distortion and wizardry still accompanies
the discovery of fossil bone fragments, whether human or ape, today.

The case in question occurred in the late 1920s. The organization involved was none
other than the very prestigious British Museum of Natural History. This attempted fraud
was carried out in a very similar way to the earlier Piltdown fraud in which the same
museum was a party.

Our example concerns the discovery of the bones of Rhodesian Man. These bones were
found in 1921, in a limestone cave in what was then British Rhodesia in southern Africa.
The find consisted of the bones of three or four family members; a man, a woman and
one or two children. The bones were dug out by a mining company and not by an
experienced scientist, so much of the circumstances of their death and life-style are
unknown. Only the skull of the man survived.

The skull shares many features with other fossil skulls that have been classified as
Homoerectus (upright man), a contrived species of man. This designation is now being
hotly debated. The facial bones of Rhodesian Man are the same as for any normal
human being. These bones do not show any ape-like features, such as a protruding
muzzle.

A report in New Scientist dated January 16, 1993, entitled On the Origin of Races
stated: They are now proposing nothing less than the complete abolition of
Homoerectus, on the grounds that the species is insufficiently distinct from
Homosapiens. All fossil remains of Homoerectus and archaic Homosapiens (including
Neanderthals) should be reclassified into a single species, Homosapiens, which is to be
subdivided only into races. With this recommendation in place Rhodesian Man simply
equals Us.

What is of special interest, however, is what became of the bones of Rhodesian Man
once they reached the British Museum of Natural History. The first staff member to
examine the bones was Sir Arthur Smith-Woodward, who had previously achieved
worldwide acclaim as a co-discoverer of what has since became known as one of the
most blatant scientific frauds of modern times, Piltdown Man. The facial bones compelled
Sir Arthur to confess their very human characteristics in his own paper written in 1921
for Nature. He still alleged certain ape-like qualities and no underling was going to
challenge his authority while he remained in office. Sir Arthur retired in 1928, and
events took a darker turn.

Before he retired, Sir Arthur placed W. P. Pycraft, one of the Museums ornithologists (a
bird specialist) and Assistant-Keeper of the Museums Department of Zoology, in charge
of the reconstruction of Rhodesian Mans bones.

To what purpose would a bird specialist be assigned to reconstruct human remains?

What specialized knowledge would a bird specialist have concerning the finer points of
human anatomy? There were many distinguished experts on human anatomy available

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at the Museum at that time.

Consider - Both Piltdown Man and Neanderthal Man had at that time been accepted as
evolutionary predecessors of the human race. Today, we know that the first was a fraud
and the latter completely human. Yet the decision was made by someone high up in the
Museum to launch another ape-man on to the public at large. The uncertainty of the
scheme, however, was not lost on its perpetrators, and so a bird specialist was called
upon to put his name to the documents.

Pycraft wrote his paper in 1928, entitled Rhodesian Man and Associated Remains.
Among the collaborators listed were Grafton Elliot Smith, a human anatomist who was
heavily implicated in the Piltdown Man fake; and A. T. Hopwood who would later be
implicated in still another fraud concerning human evolution. These men chose to give
the Rhodesian Man bones the name Cyphanthropus rhodesiensis (the Stooping-Man of
Rhodesia). Mans genus is Homo. How can man exist outside of his own genus, let alone
his own species? Inquiring minds want to know!

Better yet, this stooping man was to be distinguished from all other stooping men
(whose remains still await discovery) by the descriptive tag of Rhodesian. Stranger still
was the way in which stooping man became stooping. The pelvis was fragmented and
incomplete when found. Rather than have an expert in human anatomy reconstruct the
hip, a bird specialist reconstructed it with an entirely false orientation. This then gave
the poor man a rather ridiculous posture, that of having the knees bowed outwards,
while the feet (which were not available) were turned inwards.

Later, Professor Le Gros Clark would remark upon the reconstruction proposed by
Pycraft and his collaborators: The result of the misorientation is not only grotesque, but,
to the eye of the mammalian anatomist, impossible. Clark published his opinion in 1928,
in the journal Man. To his credit, his timely intervention prevented the world from seeing
yet another bogus ancestor of the human race appear in textbooks.

Clarks paper went on to say about Pycrafts work: Remarkably misinterpreted ... not
convincing ... grotesque ... quite incorrect ... hardly justifiable ... Mr. Pycraft imagines ...
curious errors ... impossible to believe ... In short, a scathing criticism, quite in contrast
to the normally very reserved and cautious approach of one scientist disagreeing with
another scientist. It is noteworthy as well that Clark was not a creationist but an
adamant Darwinian evolutionist. He did have the integrity to know a fraud when he saw
it and labeled it as such.

One may only pray for such scientific integrity in the rest of the evolutionary believing
community!

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http://www.creationworldview.org/articles_view.asp?id=46 6/11/2008