The Mysterious Origins of Man

This program was broadcast by NBC on Saturday, June 8, 1996 at 7PM Central Daylight Time. It was hosted by Charlton Heston and its general thesis was that the scientific community was suppressing archeological evidence not conforming to the general Darwinian philosophy subscribed to by the majority. As background, it should be noted that Mr. Heston is of a conservative orientation and has frequently called in to and commented on current issues on the Rush Limbaugh radio program. So, reflecting on his likely agenda, we can say that he is probably unhappy with the feminist, multiculturalist, humanist orientation of twentieth century America and wishes to strengthen the conservative Republican impulse, evident in the last election. In particular, since Darwin's view of the origin of man reduces or eliminates the need for the Judeo/Christian God as an explanatory principle, and since this means believers can dismiss the rules of life associated with Judeo/Christianity, especially those that restrain the feminine half of society, we can surmise that the goal of this program is to raise doubt about the ideas associated with Darwin.
The program discussed in detail, three speculations and their associated evidence. The first was an instance of humanoid and dinosaur footprints oriented in such a way as to suggest that they were made at the same time. The humanoid footprint was reported to be 16 inches long, so that we would have to call it humanoid rather than human, but was, other than that, very similar to a modern footprint. Extensive tests were done to attempt to eliminate the possibility that the footprints were fake and the result was that they appear to be genuine. There is also little doubt that they were made at approximately the same time. The unspoken subtext here is that if humans coexisted with dinosaurs, one of the main complaints about the apparent conflict between Genesis and Darwin is ameliorated, if not eliminated. This complaint is that the Genesis story describes creation as occurring in six days, while archeology has seemed, until now to have demonstrated that the time between the arrivals on earth of dinosaurs and humans was decidedly longer than a few days.
The second speculation was concerned with the remains of an ancient city in the Andes. The problem with this city is a difference of opinion about its age. From the construction, most scientists assume it is Mayan in origin, though they can't explain in any detail how the very large stones were transported to the site and fitted together and stapled with metal brackets, in the same way that explanations for other sites in the world utilizing large stones and dating from prehistory cannot be explained in any convincing way, such as Stonehenge and The Sphinx. The other side of the argument is that since the doorway brackets the sun at its apparent dawn appearance point on the horizon at mid-summer, and since the corners would appear, approximately to coincide with the rising point at the summer and winter solstices, it is reasonable to conclude that, in the past the corners would have exactly coincided with those points and that therefore, if we calculate when in time the sun, due to movement in orientation of the earth relative to the ecliptic, would have exactly coincided with the corners, we will know how old the structure is. That calculation produces an age of about 25,000 years, which predates Mayan civilization and therefore suggests an older, lost, and intelligent race of humans.
Another case independently pointing to an older civilization was mentioned along with the contention by the discovering scientist that her evidence had been suppressed and she, barred from continuing in her profession.
In the next segment, an interesting theory regarding the Atlantis myth was presented. In this discussion, a theory suggesting that ice build up at the poles might periodically shift the surface of the earth, since it rides on a liquid interior, was discussed. If that were the case it could be that Antarctica moved from a temperate location to its present location and that, perhaps Atlantis is buried under two miles of ice. This is a romantically attractive theory, but the only supporting evidence seemed to be a map of obscure origin that represented accurately the coastline of Antarctica long before it was known to modern man. The evidence for this notion, would seem to be too weak to reach any conclusion.
Some other mysteries of lesser strength were supplied, for example the discovery of metal balls with grooves on them that can't be demonstrated to be producable by any known natural event. The key word here is "known", however.
I would say that the Andean remains are interesting but inconclusive, and that, therefore the footprints are the only sufficiently compelling case. However, I think that it has been well known, at least since the time of Melville's book, Moby Dick, that whales are mammals that have migrated to the ocean from a previous dry land existence and that the skeletal structure suggests that their land living form was radically different and that one could therefore speculate that they are the descendants of humanoids, perhaps humanoids lacking in the objective capabilities of modern humans, but that, from the size of their brains, we could even speculate that their ancestors were intelligent, as we understand the term.
The upshot of my reaction to this program therefore is, I don't deny that intelligent species might predate humans on the earth, but I don't see how this contradicts the ideas presented by Darwin, and that I continue very doubtful about literal interpretations of the Bible, while at the same time maintaining the absolute accuracy of the obvious symbolic interpretation of the Bible.

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