Debating Creationists: Peking Man on CARM
- 1. Pekin Man, June 20,
1998
Helen Fryman, a creationist who posts on the CARM bulletin
board, wrote defending her claim that the Peking Man skulls were those of monkeys, and that
many early scientists had claimed this. (The evidence consisted of a quote
from a scientist which said nothing of the sort, and some unsubstantiated
claims copied from creationist literature.)
- 2. Re: Pekin Man,
June 21, 1998
My response to Helen's post, which gave quotes showing that Marcellin
Boule, the scientist who supposedly claimed Peking Man was a monkey,
actually considered it intermediate between apes and humans.
- 3. Re: Pekin Man, June 21,
1998
A response from Helen, which ignored the discrepancy between what Boule
actually said and she had said he said, repeated her earlier claims
(copying from a different creationist book), and raised the issue of the
"10 missing skeletons".
- 4. Pekin Man (response to
Helen), June 22, 1998
Another response addressing Helen's continuing errors, and her ignoring of
the discrepancies between her claims and the evidence.
- 5. Pekin Man, June 24,
1998
Helen forwarded the thread so far to creationist author Malcolm Bowden (her
primary source of information), then posted this response from him. Bowden
backed away from some of Helen's claims, saying that although early
scientists thought Peking Man was intermediate between apes and human,
"THEY HAD TO ADMIT THAT THEY LOOKED VERY MUCH LIKE MONKEYS". This claim
is: a) incorrect, and b) backing away from what Bowden said in his book
Ape-Men: Fact or Fallacy? (from where Helen had found the
claim about Peking Man being monkeys). Bowden explained away the
Boule discrepancy by claiming that I had quoted from later books by Boule
and Vallois, instead of from Boule's 1937 article. This is incorrect; I
quoted from the original source exactly as I said I had.
- 6. Pekin Man (response to
Bowden), June 26, 1998
My response to Bowden's message.
- 7. Note as to Pekin man,
June 27, 1998
Bowden, via Helen, bowed out of the debate for the time being, promising to
post a reply on a new creationist web site which would be up in some
months. The reply never appeared.
Compare Peking Man with a monkey
The Missing Ten Skeletons
The 'Monkey Quote' of Marcellin Boule
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http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/hfmb.html, 01/31/2000
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