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Academic Prejudice and Oppression

The cover of the April 26, 1999 issue of Newsweek showed a reconstruction of the face of Spirit Caveman and asked, “Who Were the First Americans?” The subtitle describes this as “A New Scientific War Over a 10,000-Year_Old Puzzle.” The table of contents summarizes the cover story this way:

THE COVER: The story used to be tidy: the first people on this continent were Native Americans or, at the very least, their Siberian ancestors. Now new digs and old bones reveal an ancient land peopled by not only Asians but possibly Europeans, who may have come by boat. The scientific war over who got here first-and what life was like in prehistoric America. Page 50.

The article explains how the bones don’t fit with the standard evolutionary explanation (the “Clovis model”) of how humans came to North America. Furthermore, the evidence hasn’t fit the Clovis model for more than two decades, but powerful forces in the academic world have suppressed research and publication in this area. It is this academic prejudice and oppression that we want to highlight because it exists in all areas of academia, not just anthropology.

Spirit Caveman is the wrong guy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. According to the standard anthropology script, anyone living in America 9,000 years ago should resemble either today’s Native Americans or, at the very least, the Asians who were their ancestors and thus, supposedly, the original Americans. But Spirit Caveman does not follow that script--and nether do more than a dozen other skeletons of Stone Age Americans.¹ [emphasis supplied]

The article describes some of these skeletons, including Kennewick Man, who “looks almost nothing like a Native American.”² With all this evidence against the standard evolutionary explanation, why haven’t we heard about the controversy before now? According to the Newsweek authors,

The story was so tidy that any skeletons that seemed to challenge the “Clovis model” were shoved back into the closet by the mandarins of American anthropology; any stone tools that seemed older than Clovis were dismissed as misdated. Clovis had American archeology in a stranglehold; James Adovasio of Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania calls its defenders the “Clovis mafia.” ³[emphasis supplied]

For years, no authority would accept any deviation from the party line that the First Americans were the Clovis people of 11,000 years ago. But in 1977, archeologist Tom Dillehay of the University of Kentucky began excavating a site deep in the Chilean hills called Monte Verde.⁴ [Emphasis is supplied to highlight the passion of the Newsweek authors.]

The article then tells what Dillehay found there. We want to point out that 1977 is 22 years ago. It has taken 20 years to break down the academic prejudice and oppression.

For years archeologists dismissed Dillehay’s claim. At scientific conferences, he recalls, “others would be introduced as doctor this and doctor that. I was always ‘the guy who is excavating Monte Verde.’ Some people wouldn’t even shake my hand.” Even worse, the Clovis model had such a stranglehold that scientists “would dig until they hit the Clovis level and just stop.” Few looked for older bones and tools. Four or five possible pre-Clovis sites in South America were never reported because the scientists feared that doing so would wreck their reputations.⁵ [emphasis supplied]

That changed two years ago, when archeology’s pooh-bahs finally accepted that Monte Verde was indeed 12,500 years old. The floodgates opened.⁶

The article then describes some of the work that has been published in the last two years, now that it is “safe” to disagree with the Clovis model.

It is said that science is “self-correcting.” It is claimed that whenever there is an error in a scientific theory, the scientific process corrects it. But it is only self-correcting if someone like Dillehay is willing to fight, endure ridicule, and risk getting passed over for promotion for 20 years. There aren’t many scientists who will sacrifice 20 years of their careers for the truth this way.

Because the Monte Verde evidence has finally been accepted, there is a more open debate about how North America was settled. But it isn’t completely open. You can bet that no “reputable journal” will publish any study that seeks to explain how humans migrated from Babylon about 4,000 years ago, no matter how compelling the evidence. (Actually, the more compelling the evidence, the less likely it would be published. An obviously flawed study might get published for the sole purpose of opening the Babylonian dispersion theory up to ridicule.) Whatever theory replaces the Clovis model will, no doubt, be compatible with the pre-conceived notion that modern humans evolved from Homo erectus in Africa or Asia and migrated from there.

We bring this to your attention because the staunch defense of the status quo regarding the Clovis model is a well-documented, specific example of a general trend in academia. Scientists, for good reason, fear to report finds that oppose established scientific theories in general, and are especially fearful of reporting data that contradicts the theory of evolution in particular. If they do have the courage to try to report their findings, they can’t get their papers published by respected journals or present those papers at conferences.

Evolutionists, who control technical journals and scientific conferences, generally won’t let creationists publish or present their data. Then evolutionists attack creationists’ qualifications by saying that they haven’t published anything in the proper journals.

Fortunately, creationism has reached a “Monte Verde” milestone. Books such as Darwin’s Black Box and Darwin on Trial published by “reputable” publishing houses, as well as shelves full of books published by creationist organizations, have exposed the scientific bankruptcy of the theory of evolution. The Darwin Mafia can’t keep information off the Internet. The issues raised by creationists have to be addressed.

Evolutionists still have control of academia. They are still fighting hard to keep the theory of evolution alive, but it is slowly dying. Eventually they will have to reject the theory of evolution completely because science is against evolution.

Footnotes:

¹ Begley and Murr, Newsweek, April 26, 1999, “The First Americans” page 52 (Ev)
² Ibid. page 54
³ Ibid. page 53
⁴ Ibid. page 55
⁵ Ibid. page 55
⁶ Ibid. page 56

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