Refuting Creationism - Leaving The Bible Out In The Cold With a 12,000 Year Ice Core Record

The 1999 expedition team collecting the ice core from Dome du Goûter on the shoulder of Mont Blanc.

LGGE/OSUG, Bruno Jourdain.

An ice sample on the melter during continuous ice core chemical analyses in the lab.

Sylvain Masclin.

Scientists Find the First Ice Core From the European Alps That Dates Back to the Last Ice Age - DRI

It never rains but it pours for creationism. Or in this case, not pouring rain but a veritable ice storm — an ice core from the oldest Alpine glacier, holding a remarkably detailed record of the past 12,000 years, stretching back to the end of the last Ice Age.

The core, 40 metres long, was extracted from Mont Blanc’s Dôme du Goûter glacier in the French Alps.

And — surprise, surprise! — there is no sign of a cataclysmic global flood. Not even the faintest trace. In this part of the French Alps at least, the worldwide genocidal flood that creationists believe their deity unleashed upon the Earth quite simply never happened. Strangely, a flood supposedly deep enough to cover all mountains (Genesis 7:19–20) failed to reach the peaks of the European Alps.

Instead, what the ice core reveals is a continuous, uninterrupted history stretching back to at least 2,000 years before ‘Creation Week’, capturing seasonal changes, shifts in climate, volcanic eruptions, and even Saharan dust storms—each leaving a tell-tale signature now entombed in successive layers of ice.

Even more awkward for creationists is the fact that this ice-core record aligns precisely with well-documented events elsewhere, allowing scientists to calibrate and extrapolate timelines deep into European prehistory with high accuracy.

Creationism Refuted - A Flint Arrowhead Embeded In A Human Rib Is Hurting Creationism

Flint arrowhead embedded in a human rib, found at the Roc de les Orenetes site (Queralbs, Ripollès).

Credit: Maria D. Guillén
/ IPHES-CERCA

Archaeological excavation work in June at the Roc de les Orenetes site (Queralbs, Ripollès).

IPHES-CERCA

Arrowhead embedded in a human rib reveals prehistoric violence in the Pyrenees over 4,000 years ago

Around the time creationists claim Earth was undergoing a global flood — a mass genocide by drowning, supposedly enacted by a deity - a belief based solely on the origin myths of a Bronze Age Middle Eastern pastoralist tribe — people in the Pyrenees were engaged in violent conflict, using bows and arrows. Unlike biblical mythology, this insight is grounded in tangible evidence: a human rib bone with a flint arrowhead still embedded in it. Remarkably, the injury had healed before the individual died, suggesting they survived the attack for some time. The rib was found in a mass grave at Roc de les Orenetes (Queralbs, Girona), alongside the remains of several others, many of whom showed signs of trauma from blunt or sharp weapons, particularly to the head and upper body.

The timing of this violence — dated to between 4,100 and 4,500 years ago — is problematic for biblical literalists. If the Genesis flood had truly occurred as described, these remains should either have been destroyed or buried beneath a thick layer of flood-deposited silt, mixed with the remains of animals and plants not native to the region. Alternatively, one must believe that just a few years after a supposed global reset that reduced humanity to eight survivors, their descendants had multiplied sufficiently to form warring groups in the mountains of what is now northern Spain.

And yet, these individuals show no sign of having heard of Noah, his family, or the god who allegedly saved them. There’s no indication of the monotheistic religion supposedly preserved aboard the ark. If the flood story were true, the moral lesson it was intended to deliver seems to have been forgotten almost immediately, everywhere except among a small group in the Canaanite hills.

This discovery joins a growing list of archaeological findings that contradict the flood narrative. Far from showing a global cataclysm, the archaeological record reveals continuous human habitation before, during, and after the time the flood is supposed to have occurred—with no signs of interruption, no replacement by a Near Eastern culture, and no characteristic flood-deposited sediment layer.

It’s almost as if the global flood never happened. Not only is there no geological or archaeological evidence supporting it, but what evidence we do have consistently contradicts it. This find from the Pyrenees is yet another example.

Refuting Creationism - The Cultural Delusion That Causes Creationism In The USA

Why many Americans still think Darwin was wrong, yet the British don’t

In an era when scientific literacy is not just desirable—but essential—the question of why large swathes of the American public still reject Darwin’s theory of evolution is both troubling and revealing. Edward White's recent article in The Conversation, "Why many Americans still think Darwin was wrong, yet the British don’t", reproduced below under a Creative Commons license, shines a stark light on this divide.

White argues that in the U.S., disbelief in Darwin often stems less from engagement with scientific evidence and more from a pre‑emptive rejection rooted in religious conviction. Here, many fundamentalists begin with a conclusion — evolution must be false because it contradicts the Bible — and then marshal arguments to fit that view. By contrast, the British tend to approach Darwin’s legacy with curiosity rather than hostility, allowing evidence and inquiry to guide their conclusions.

This isn’t just a cultural quirk. It’s a profound divergence in how societies value knowledge, method, and truth. Where curiosity and empirical rigour flourish, science thrives. Where ideological certainty undermines inquiry, progress stalls. The difference is a profound example of the harm religious fundamentalism can do and the control it can exercise over the behaviour and opinions of those affected by it. In his article, Edward White explores what drives the American creationist impulse, why the British public’s more accepting stance offers a blueprint, and why standing firm on the side of science matters now more than ever.

Refuting Creationism - What a Tiny Part Of The Universe Looked Like 150,000 Before 'Creation Week' - Hubble Space Telescope

NGC 1786

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Monelli
Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç

A cluster of stars in space. It’s bright in the centre, where the stars are densely packed together in the cluster’s core, and grows dimmer and more diffuse out to the edges, as the stars give way to the dark background of space. A few orange stars are spread across the cluster, but most are pale, bluish-white points of light. Three large stars with cross-shaped spikes around them lie between us and the cluster

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Monelli
Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç

Digging up a galactic time capsule | ESA/Hubble

The ESA/Hubble photograph of the week offers a glimpse into a vast and ancient universe—one that starkly contrasts with the primitive cosmology described in the Bible. The image captures a globular cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located some 160,000 light-years from Earth. What we’re seeing, then, is a snapshot of this cluster as it was 160,000 years ago—long before the writers of the Bible imagined their god creating a small, flat Earth with a dome over it, to which the sun, moon, and stars were affixed, somewhere in the vicinity of the Canaanite hills.

At the time, the light we’re now seeing began its journey across space, early humans in Africa were evolving the skills and traits that would eventually allow them to leave the continent and colonise new territories. According to [a recent study](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi1768), there had been earlier migration attempts northward, but these failed to establish lasting populations for reasons still debated by researchers.

What this photograph shows us—quite literally—is a universe that predates the biblical account of creation by well over 150,000 years, and a cosmos that bears no resemblance to the geocentric, dome-covered world described in Genesis. While we can’t know exactly how our early ancestors viewed the night sky, their understanding was likely not very different from that of the later Bronze Age storytellers who wrote the biblical texts. Both were constrained by limited technology, and neither had any inkling of galaxies, light-years, or cosmic timescales.

Malevolent Designer - Does The Designer Favour Zebrafish Or Just Hate Humans?

Two zebrafish genes hold the key to regenerating inner ear cells, offering hope for future human therapies.

Stowers Institute for Medical Research

Regrowing hearing cells: New… | Stowers Institute for Medical Research

It's more bad news for Intelligent Design (ID) creationists who believe their putative designer is the anthropophilic, omnibenevolent God of the Bible. Hot on the heels of the discovery that some lemurs do not suffer from the age-related degenerative conditions that cause such misery for humans, comes the news that zebrafish can regenerate lost hair cells—cells that, in humans, enable hearing but cannot be replaced once lost.

These hair cells, located in the human inner ear, detect vibrations and are crucial for hearing. They can be destroyed through prolonged exposure to loud noise, resulting in permanent deafness. However, zebrafish possess homologous cells in their lateral lines—structures that allow them to detect vibrations in water, effectively functioning as a form of hearing. Remarkably, these cells can regenerate under the control of two specific genes.

It doesn't take a genius to realise that, if we accept the intelligent design argument that a divine designer deliberately created these genes, then the same designer could have endowed its supposed special creation—humans—with this regenerative ability too. Within the ID framework, the only possible conclusion is that the designer god chose *not* to give humans this ability, and instead preferred us to go deaf.

The problem for creationists deepens when one considers that these genes exemplify what William A. Dembski of the Discovery Institute cites as evidence of intelligent design: they are complex and specified, containing the genetic information to produce a defined result. Dembski insists that such "complex specified information" can only originate from an intelligent designer.

Creationists, of course, are compelled to reject the notion that these differences are simply the result of evolutionary processes. But if they also refuse to accept that this zebrafish trait—clearly underpinned by "complex specified genetic information"—constitutes evidence of intelligent design (and therefore points to a deliberate *absence* in humans), they are also undermining Dembski's single defining argument for intelligent design.

This striking discovery was made by researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and has just been published open access in Nature Communications.

Creationism Refuted - New Understanding of Modern Human And Neanderthal Interbreeding

Princeton geneticists are rewriting the narrative of Neanderthals and other ancient humans

The picture of modern human (Homo sapiens) interactions with Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) has just become significantly richer. New evidence reveals not just a single episode of contact within the last 50,000 years, but several waves of interaction spanning much of our species’ 200,000-year history.

It was previously believed that after our last common ancestor with Neanderthals and Denisovans split into separate populations around 600,000 years ago, one lineage remained in Africa and eventually evolved into H. sapiens by about 200,000 years ago. The other migrated into Eurasia and gradually diverged into Neanderthals in the west and Denisovans in the east, with limited contact between them. According to this model, modern humans left Africa around 60,000 years ago, encountered Neanderthals in Eurasia, and interbred with them shortly afterwards—about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago.

However, a new genomic analysis provides evidence for at least three distinct episodes of interbreeding. One occurred around 200,000 to 250,000 years ago—very early in the history of H. sapiens. Another took place about 100,000 to 120,000 years ago, long before the final major migration out of Africa, and the last around 40,000 years ago, as previously believed.

These findings suggest that there may have been multiple early migrations of H. sapiens into Eurasia, followed in some cases by return migrations back into Africa, before the final, successful dispersal around 60,000 years ago.

Some of the team’s evidence comes from detecting H. sapiens DNA in the Neanderthal genome, so these ingressions could have come from earlier migrations that then failed, leaving only their DNA in the Neanderthal population.

There are still unresolve questions about which species migrated out of Africa, when, and whether some, such as H. rhodesiensis, had a wide distribution across African and Eurasia with regional variants, so it is entirely possible that the earliest interactions with Neanderthals could have been between, say H. rhodesiensis which brought Neanderthal genes back into Africa and then interbred with diverging H. sapiens.

See the right-hand panel for an explanation of this so-called 'muddle in the middle'.

The study, led by researchers at Harvard University and Princeton University under the direction of Professor Joshua Akey of Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, also supports the view that Neanderthals did not simply go extinct. Instead, their dwindling populations were gradually absorbed into expanding populations of modern humans.

Creationism Refuted - There May Have Been Two Or More Species Of the Hominin Paranthropus That Interbred

Parathropus robustus

© Roman Yevseyev.

New clues from 2 million-year-old tooth enamel tell us more about an ancient relative of humans

Where exactly the archaic hominin, Paranthropus robustus fits into the human evolutionary tree remains a subject of debate among palaeontologists. This species lived in southern Africa around 2 million years ago. They walked upright, indicating a shared ancestry with the Australopithecus and the later Homo genus. However, their comparatively small brains and massive jaws and teeth suggest a distinct evolutionary path, likely adapted for processing tough, fibrous plant material.

Determining their precise place in our evolutionary history would ideally require DNA analysis—but DNA does not survive long in the warm African climate. To overcome this limitation, a team of African and European researchers from the fields of molecular science, chemistry, and palaeoanthropology turned to a cutting-edge technique known as palaeoproteomics. By analysing proteins recovered from ancient tooth enamel, they were able to infer aspects of the underlying DNA, since the amino acid sequence in proteins is directly determined by the nucleotide sequence in DNA.

Their findings suggest that the story of early hominins is more complex than previously thought. There may have been more than one closely related species, with evidence of interbreeding or genetic divergence followed by remixing — patterns that would later come to characterise the tangled branches of the hominin family tree.

The research team included three postdoctoral scientists from the University of Copenhagen — Palesa P. Madupe, Claire Koenig, and Ioannis Patramanis — who have written about their work and its significance in the open-access magazine The Conversation.

Their findings are also published in Science.

Their article in The Conversation is reproduced here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism In Crisis - A 145-Million-Year-Old Fossil Early Mammal From Dorset, England

Imaginative reconstruction of Novaculadon mirabilis. Likely this animal would have been a little larger than a mouse.

Picture credit: Hamzah Imran.

(L-R) Dr Roy Smith and University of Portsmouth student Ben Weston by the flint bed in Durlston Bay near Swanage, which is the layer of rock which the mammal fossil came out of.

Credit: Ben Weston.

New species of tiny Cretaceous mammal discovered by University of Portsmouth student | University of Portsmouth

When someone grows up being threatened with divine punishment for merely entertaining doubts about the literal truth of the Bible, it's hardly surprising that real-world evidence struggles to break through the psychological defences they've built to protect themselves. This phenomenon is what atheist author and philosopher, Professor Peter Boghossian refers to as doxastic closure — a mental state in which contrary ideas are shut out before they can even be considered.

Former young-Earth creationist and now science advocate and geologist Glenn Morton once described it as like having a “gatekeeper demon” perched on the edge of your consciousness—filtering out any facts or logical arguments that challenge creationist beliefs, while admitting only those misrepresentations of science that appear to support them.

In this mindset, inconvenient realities — such as the discovery of a 145-million-year-old fossil of an early mammal — are unlikely to dent the conviction that the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, and that all animals were created in a single supernatural event. In this view, evolution is simply an illusion, no matter how well the evidence supports it.

Even so, for any creationist with the courage and intellectual honesty to read this far, the story of that inconvenient little fossil is well worth exploring. It was discovered by a palaeontology student from the University of Portsmouth, along the Dorset coast of England, and is the subject of a recent paper in Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association.

This find marks the first discovery of a multituberculate jaw at Swanage since Victorian times. Its distinct size and shape confirmed it as a completely new species.

Malevolent Design - What A Benevolent Designer Could Have Given Us, But Chose Not To, Apparently.

Coquerel's sifaka,Propithecus coquereli.

Ring-tailed Lemur, Lemur catta.

Study Suggests Lemurs Age Differently Than Humans | Duke Today

According to creationist superstition, humans were specially created by a perfect, anthropophilic, omnibenevolent creator god. If that were true, it would be reasonable to expect humans to be perfectly designed—free from defects or anything likely to cause long-term suffering.

However, the facts do not support this view. For example, as humans age, they increasingly suffer from a condition known as inflammaging — low-grade, chronic inflammation that contributes to a range of health problems, including heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancer, and osteoarthritis.

Properly understood, this should give creationists cause for concern. The same designer god apparently gave some other primates—most notably, certain species of lemur—the ability to avoid this consequence of ageing. In fact, these lemurs even show a reduced tendency toward inflammatory conditions as they grow older.

This raises a serious question for Intelligent Design creationists: if the same designer god was capable of creating such a mechanism for lemurs, why did it not see fit to bestow the same gift upon its supposed favourite creation—humans? Or are these inflammatory conditions intended to cause suffering and disease as we age?

The discovery that some lemurs appear to have been specially favoured by a creator god—if we accept the ID creationist premise for the sake of argument—was made by a team of researchers led by Elaine Elizabeth Gomez Guevara, a biological anthropologist in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University, Durham, USA. As a scientist and biologist, however, she attributes the differences between lemurs and humans to evolution — not to indifference or malevolence on the part of a designer god.

The team has just published their findings in the Journal of Comparative Physiology B.

Refuting Creationism - What Our Prophets Never Told Us

The Cat's Paw Nebula in all its glory, as revealed by the JWST on its third anniversary of science operations.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

This is a zoomed-in portion of the JWST's Cat's Paw image. It shows a cavity surrounded by filaments and clumps of gas and dust. The cavity has been hollowed out by a hot young star which lights its surroundings up in blue.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Celebrate the JWST's Third Anniversary With This Stunning Image - Universe Today

To celebrate its third anniversary, astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to scratch beyond the surface of the Cat’s Paw Nebula (NGC 6334), a massive, local star-forming region.

This is what they saw. Compare it to the description of the universe in the Bible - a small flat planet with a dome over it at the center, with the sun and moon attached to the dome and stars stuck to its underside, able to be shaken lose in earthquakes.

Here is what the late great Carl Sagan had to say about how religions view the universe:

Refuting Creationism - African Hunter-Gatherers obtained Coloured Stones for Tools - 30,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'.

[left caption]

[right caption]

Where did Stone Age hunter-gatherers get the raw material for their tools? | University of Tübingen

The Mgwayiza Valley in Eswatini

The Mgwayiza Valley in Eswatini

300,000 years before the Bronze Age pastoralists who later shaped the origin myths found in the Bible set their tales, South African hunter-gatherers were undertaking long journeys to a valley in what is now Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) in search of the right colour of stone for their tools. This is the conclusion of a study led by Dr Gregor D. Bader from the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. The stones they collected included red jasper, green chalcedony, and black chert. Researchers examined artefacts from four sites: Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe, and Nkambeni. Their findings have just been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

What information do you have on the geology of the Mgwayiza Valley, Eswatini? Here’s what current geological and environmental research indicates about the Mgwayiza Valley in Eswatini:

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1. Ancient Cratonic Bedrock
   
   • The valley lies within the Barberton Greenstone Belt, part of the Kaapvaal Craton - one of Earth’s oldest, stable geological units, dating back 3.6–2.5 billion years (1).
   • Bedrock comprises metamorphosed sedimentary volcanic sequences (Onverwacht, Fig Tree, Moodies series) alongside ancient granites such as the Lochiel Granite (~3 billion years old) (2).
   
   

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2. Landscape & Relief Formation
   • Differential erosion of ironstones, quartzites, soapstones, and dolerite dykes has sculpted the region’s rugged scenery, forming commanding ridges (e.g. Ngwenya, Silotfwane) and valleys like Mgwayiza (2).
   • The southern escarpment serves as a critical hydrological catchment, feeding multiple rivers (Motjane, Ngwenya, Nkomati), with ongoing open-pit mining risks to water quality and downstream systems (3).
   
   

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3. Green Chert Resources & Mining
   • Green chert, a cryptocrystalline quartz variant, is abundant and actively mined at the head of the valley. Michael Lee Enterprises holds a controversial mining licence, while environmental assessments have downplayed both ecological and geological significance (4).
   • Local EIA objections critique inadequate geological data—reports lack independent surveys verifying chert deposit size and longevity, with some geologists suggesting only a 7‑year mine life instead of the claimed 173 years (5).
   
   

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4. Archaeological & Scientific Value
   • Geological uniqueness goes hand‑in‑hand with archaeological significance—evidence of Middle and Later Stone Age human activity exists, underscoring the valley’s cultural and lithic importance (6).
   • Scientists view the region as ideal for examining early Earth crust, sedimentary processes, and early life—factors that make its preservation scientifically vital (7).
   
   

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5. Conservation & Risk Analysis
   • As part of the Malolotja Nature Reserve (incl. Mgwayiza Range), this area is a global biodiversity hotspot. It supports rainforest gorges, abundant endemic flora and fauna, and serves as an ecological transition zone (3).
   • Critics argue mining may degrade unique microhabitats, disrupt water systems, and potentially degrade the site’s eligibility for UNESCO World Heritage listing (4).
   
   

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Summary

Mgwayiza Valley showcases a rare combination of ancient Archean geological formations, specific mined resources (green chert), and rich ecological and archaeological overlays. This makes it both scientifically precious and environmentally sensitive. While mining continues, environmental and geological assessments are contested, with concerns over incomplete data and potential irreversible damage.

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The research is also summarised in an official press release from the University of Tübingen.

Where did Stone Age hunter-gatherers get the raw material for their tools?

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International research team from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Nature Research Society finds early humans in southern Africa traveled long distances to get the right stone color

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A new study has shown that as early as the Stone Age, people in Africa traveled long distances to procure colorful stone, forming the raw material for the manufacture of tools. The study was led by Dr. Gregor D. Bader from the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. The researchers investigated worked stone tools from sites up to 40,000 years old and natural rock deposits in what is now the Kingdom of Eswatini on the borders of South Africa and Mozambique, formerly Swaziland. They found that thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherers traveled between 30 and a hundred kilometers to collect certain rock materials with striking colors, such as red jasper, green chalcedony and black chert. The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

In order to reconstruct the movements and migrations of early humans, it helps to look at entire landscapes, so the international research team included several sites with tools and potential sources of raw materials in its study. "Eswatini, with the collections of the National Museum in Lobamba, provided good conditions for this. Artifacts from numerous archaeological sites are kept there," Gregor Bader says. In their study, the researchers examined stone artifacts from the four sites of Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe and Nkambeni.

By working closely with Dr. Brandi MacDonald from the research reactor in Missouri, USA, Bader's team used neutron activation analysis to determine the origin of the stones. In this process, the stone samples are irradiated with neutrons, resulting in an interaction between the atomic nuclei in the sample and the neutrons. In this process, the resulting products and the radiation released reveal the quantitative composition of the stone sample, the elements it contains and their isotopes, which are similar atoms of different masses. The specific pattern – in research this is also referred to as a geochemical fingerprint – is characteristic of stone materials of different types and their respective places of origin. “Although the method is destructive, only tiny sample quantities are required and the results are excellent,” Bader explains. “By comparing the analysis patterns of the stone used and the rocks found in the region, we can pinpoint the origin of the raw stone.”

Preference shifts to red jasper

Natural outcrop of red jasper in the Mgwayiza Valley, Eswatini

Man-made tools made of green chalcedony and red jasper from the sites had the same geochemical fingerprint as corresponding rock deposits in the Mgwayjza Valley, 20 to a hundred kilometers away. "We have calculated whether the stones used may have been transported via the local Komati and Mbuluzi rivers. However, this could only have happened as far as Hlalakahle, and the other three sites of Siphiso, Sibebe and Nkambeni are a long way from there. Even if we assume that the hunter-gatherers took the shortest routes, we still find considerable distances between the rock deposits and the places where the stones were used. In addition, an exchange of materials with other early human groups is conceivable," says Bader. The stones were transported over long distances. "Colorful and shiny materials seemed attractive to early humans; they often used them for their tools. We can only speculate as to whether the colors had a symbolic meaning."

What is particularly interesting is the finding that color preferences shifted over time, says Bader. While black and white chert and green chalcedony were frequently used in the Middle Stone Age in Africa 40,000 to 28,000 years ago, red jasper was particularly popular in the later Stone Age around 30,000 to 2,000 years ago. “Both colors occurred close together in the same valley and in the same river deposits, so we can assume a deliberate selection of different materials at different times,” says Bader.

Publication: Gregor D. Bader, Christian Sommer, Jörg Linstädter, Dineo P. Masia, Matthias A. Blessing, Bob Forrester, Brandi L. MacDonald: Decoding hunter-gatherer-knowledge and selective choice of lithic raw materials during the Middle and Later Stone Age in Eswatini. Journal of Archaeological Science, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106302

Highlights

• We successfully traced MSA and LSA chert stone tools to their source in Eswatini using Neutron Activation Analysis.
• Green and red chert varieties were transported by hunter gatherers between 20 and up to 100 km distance.
• We observed different preferences for raw materials during the LSA compared to the MSA.

Abstract
Reconstructing past movement and mobility patterns requires a landscape-scale approach with knowledge of potential raw material sources and, ideally, multiple archaeological sites. Building on legacy collections in the Lobamba Museum in Eswatini and the identification of primary lithic raw material outcrops through landscape survey, we can provide scenarios of raw material provisioning for hunter-gatherers in Eswatini over the past 40 000 years. We used Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) to refine the terminology as the three ‘chert’ varieties from the archaeological sites Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe and Nkambeni are more precisely described as red jasper, green chalcedony and black chert. We were able to identify the primary outcrops for both red jasper and the green chalcedony. Using a least cost path (LCP) analysis together with hydrological and geomorphometric estimates of clast transport in relevant rivers, we reconstructed potential transportation routes of raw material and infer likely provisioning scenarios. During the final Middle Stone Age (MSA), red jasper occurs rarely or is absent in archaeological assemblages, while green chalcedony and other chert variants are frequently observed. This is despite the source of red jasper occurring near the green chalcedony outcrop. During the Later Stone Age (LSA), the red jasper, and a red chert variant of unknown provenance appear more frequently, indicating different raw material provisioning choices.

1. Introduction
Reconstructing hunter-gatherer mobility is crucial to understanding human behavior, their relation and interaction with the landscape, and selective choices regarding natural resources. As stated by Close (Close, 2000, p. 50) “The act of moving is an ephemeral thing, which may or may not leave any material trace in the archaeological record. Usually, it does not“. Understanding where people obtained different types of raw materials for the production of tools or pigments, and over which distances they were transported, offers the opportunity to find these rare traces of past movements or social networks. In southern Africa, several attempts have been made using mineralogical and geochemical characterization of lithic raw materials such as silcrete (Nash et al., 2013, 2022) and earth mineral pigments (ochre) (Dayet et al., 2016; McGrath et al., 2022.1), mostly related to the Middle Stone Age (MSA ∼300 000–28 000) (e.g. Bader et al., 2022.2a, Bader et al., 2022.3b, Bader et al., 2022.4c; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000.1; Wadley, 2015). Recently, Mackay and colleagues (2021) provided a coherent macroscopic study of the Still Bay technocomplex in the Doring River catchment area, where they demonstrated that bifacial Still Bay points (∼77–70ka) from varying raw materials were regularly transported over fairly long distances between 30 and 60 km. Other than the work of Mackay et al., most studies on raw material provenance are site-specific and thus offer only a narrow window towards an understanding of human mobility, migration, and potential networks of exchange. In terms of lithic provenance studies in South Africa, there has been an almost exclusive focus on silcrete, which limits the geographic range of such studies to the Cape coastal belt where this material naturally occurs. Masia (2022.5) is an exception, offering a comprehensive analysis of different raw material varieties from Olieboomspoort Rock Shelter and Mwulu's Cave in Limpopo based on a combination of macroscopic and microscopic characterizations coupled with X-ray fluorescence, thin section petrography, and Inductive Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry.

The most common lithic raw materials used by prehistoric knappers for stone tool production during the MSA and the Later Stone Age (LSA ∼30 – 2ka) of southernmost Africa are silcrete, quartzite, quartz, dolerite, rhyolite and hornfels, depending on the region. Other materials such as opalines, chalcedony or jasper are often grouped under the umbrella terms chert or crypto-crystalline silicates, although the latter requires microscopic investigations. Those materials naturally occur in diverse waxy lustres, colors ranging from red, orange, and grey to black, yellow and green. These variations are driven by distinct formation processes, post depositional alterations and specific elemental concentrations. It is surprising, therefore, that these materials have not yet been the subject of geochemical provenance studies in southern Africa.

1.1. Eswatini study area
Archaeological research in Eswatini started in the 1950s with Johnny Masson conducting intensive surveys and some small-scale excavations at sites like Nyonyane Rock Shelter (Bader et al., 2021.1). Peter Beaumont conducted multiple excavations in the late 1960s, the most famous revealing the oldest ochre mine in the world, Lion Cavern (Boshier and Beaumont, 1972; Dart and Beaumont, 1969). All the material from his excavations is currently stored in the McGregor Museum in Kimberley (Northern Cape, South Africa), but the repatriation process has recently started. Between the late 1970s and 1989, David Price Williams undertook a large-scale archaeological investigation of Eswatini. He founded the Swaziland Archaeological Research Association (SARA) and conducted excavations at important sites such as Sibebe (Bader et al., 2022.2a; Price Williams, 1981), Siphiso (Barham, 1989a) and Nyonyane (Barham, 1989a, 1989.1b), as well as on multiple open-air sites (Price Williams et al., 1982). Since 2016, new archaeological investigations have been undertaken in the country by our joint research team consisting of Swazi, European, South African, Canadian, and American researchers, and SARA has been resurrected. The major achievements of this new episode of research have been the scientific curation of the Price Williams collection in the Eswatini National Museum (Lobamba) supported by the German Archaeological Institute, a re-investigation of the MSA assemblages from Sibebe in the highveld (Bader et al., 2022.2a), a large-scale ochre provenance study based on Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA), and the redating of Lion Cavern using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) (MacDonald et al., 2024). As a direct consequence of the curatorial work in the National Museum, we have access to the assemblages from every site excavated in the country under David Price Williams.

With permission from the Eswatini National Trust Commission (ENTC), we undertook a 10-day expedition to the Mgwayiza Valley within the Malolotja Nature Reserve at the western border of Eswatini to South Africa in 2021. Following the advice of local informants, we went there to find a green chert mine representing a potential source for macroscopically similar material found in several assemblages of the Price Williams Collection, e.g. Hlalakahle or Sibebe. We found the green chert mine on the first day of the expedition, high up at the northernmost extension of the Mgwyiza Valley (Fig. 1, Fig. 2). On the third day, we found several outcrops of a red chert variety up on the cliffs of the western mountain ridge (Fig. 3). Finally, we also surveyed the Mgwayiza stream and located secondary deposits of a black chert variety in the form of big river pebbles. Based on the geomorphology of the area, the primary outcropping of this black chert can only originate from upstream. The green and red chert varieties are macroscopically distinct, and, based on our observation of the Price Williams collection, we were convinced that these materials were used at different times by prehistoric knappers. We took multiple samples from various sections on each of the chert outcrops and recorded GPS coordinates. These archaeological investigations took place at just the right time and represented the last opportunity before permission for green chert mining was granted to a commercial mining company in 2023. Today, the green chert mine has been irretrievably destroyed.

Fig. 1. Map of Eswatini and the locations of archaeological sites and lithic sources mentioned in the text.

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Fig. 2. (a) View of the Mgwayiza valley; (b, c) Green chalcedony outcrop. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

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Fig. 3. (a) View of the Mgwayiza valley; (b) detail of red jasper outcrop with white quartz veins; (c) knapped materials. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

Bader, Gregor D.; Sommer, Christian; Linstädter, Jörg; Masia, Dineo P.; Blessing, Matthias A.; Forrester, Bob
Decoding hunter-gatherer-knowledge and selective choice of lithic raw materials during the Middle and Later Stone Age in Eswatini Journal of Archaeological Science 180 106302 (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2025.106302

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Findings like these present a serious challenge to creationist narratives, particularly the belief that humans were created in their present form only a few thousand years ago. The archaeological evidence from the Mgwayiza Valley—showing that Stone Age hunter-gatherers in southern Africa were selectively sourcing coloured stone for tool-making around 40,000 years ago—demonstrates that Homo sapiens were behaving in symbolically rich, cognitively sophisticated ways long before the biblical timeline would allow for human existence at all.

This kind of long-distance transport and selective use of materials reflects advanced planning, deep environmental knowledge, and cultural traditions. Such behaviours are the product of gradual cognitive evolution, not sudden appearance or divine design.

In addition, the ancient geology of the region—formed billions of years ago as part of the Kaapvaal Craton—further undermines any notion of a young Earth. These formations, and the archaeological layers associated with them, simply cannot be reconciled with claims of a global flood just a few thousand years ago or with any literal reading of Genesis.

As always, the evidence supports a world that is deep in time, shaped by natural processes, and inhabited by humans who have evolved, adapted, and innovated for tens of thousands of years. It is a story not of sudden creation, but of deep history—painstakingly uncovered, layer by layer.

Refuting Creationism - North America's Oldest Pterosaur - From 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

An artist’s reconstruction of the fossilized landscape, plants and animals found preserved in a remote bonebed of Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park

Illustration by Brian Engh

Reconstruction of life in Arizona, 200 million years ago.

AI generated image (ChatGPT4o)

A Bone Bed From the Dawn of the Dinosaurs Has Revealed the Oldest Known Pterosaur Found in North America

Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park is a place that many creationists might prefer to ignore—or misrepresent. It offers a vivid record of how life changed during the Triassic Period, between 252 and 201 million years ago. In other words, it documents the history of life in what is now Arizona during the vast stretch of time that predates the so-called “Creation Week,” as described in Bible-based creationist mythology.

In addition to the petrified remains of ancient conifers, the site preserves fossils of long-extinct crocodile-like reptiles and some of the earliest dinosaurs known from North America. Now, a new study of a fossil-rich bone bed from the late Triassic—around 09 million years ago—has revealed new insights into stream ecosystems of that time, including the discovery of the largest pterosaur yet found in North America.

Creationism Refuted - Tree Pollen Record - from 140,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Tree pollen reveals 150,000 years of monsoon history in Northern Australia – News

Droughts in Southeast Asia and increasingly devastating floods in Northern Australia are not random anomalies—they are predictable consequences of climate change, as revealed by a 150,000-year record of monsoon patterns preserved in tree pollen from sediment in Girraween Lagoon near Darwin. This record, meticulously analysed and correlated with evidence of past climate change and ocean currents, offers a stark warning about what lies ahead.

Not only does this research thoroughly dismantle the juvenile creationist fantasy that Earth is a mere 6,000 to 10,000 years old, it also flatly contradicts the myth of a global flood just a few thousand years ago—such a cataclysm would have obliterated the very sediment that preserved this climate history. Moreover, it challenges the simplistic notion that Earth was "finely tuned" for life, since the data show a planet subject to instability and extreme hardship, at times rendering regions locally uninhabitable due to global climatic shifts.

The study, conducted by researchers at James Cook University and Flinders University, demonstrates that shifts in Northern Australia's monsoon patterns coincide with Heinrich events—sudden surges of cold meltwater into the North Atlantic that weaken the Gulf Stream. As the Gulf Stream drives much of Western Europe’s climate by transporting warm water across the Atlantic, its disruption would have profound consequences for Europe as well.

Can you tell me more about these Heinrich events, please. Heinrich events are dramatic climatic episodes that occurred during the last glacial period, named after marine geologist Hartmut Heinrich who first identified them in the 1980s. These events represent sudden and massive discharges of icebergs into the North Atlantic Ocean, originating primarily from the Laurentide Ice Sheet in North America.

Key Features of Heinrich Events:

1. Ice-Rafted Debris (IRD):
   Heinrich events are identified by layers of sediment in North Atlantic marine cores that contain ice-rafted debris—fragments of rock and other materials carried by icebergs and dropped onto the seafloor as the ice melted.
2. Abrupt Cooling:
   The influx of cold, fresh meltwater into the North Atlantic during a Heinrich event disrupted thermohaline circulation (the so-called Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC), particularly the Gulf Stream. This led to abrupt regional cooling, especially in Europe and North America.
3. Duration and Frequency:
   These events occurred roughly every 7,000–10,000 years during the last glacial cycle (~70,000 to 10,000 years ago), though the exact timing and spacing varied. Each event may have lasted for several hundred to a few thousand years.
4. Global Impact:
   Although triggered by North Atlantic dynamics, Heinrich events had global repercussions. Evidence shows climate responses as far afield as the Indian monsoon, tropical Africa, and South America, where rainfall patterns shifted dramatically. The study you linked to adds Northern Australia to that list, showing that these events influenced monsoons far from their origin.
5. Mechanism:
   The most widely accepted model suggests that internal ice-sheet instability or subglacial processes triggered massive iceberg calving events. These icebergs melted in the North Atlantic, introducing vast amounts of fresh water and lowering ocean salinity. This in turn weakened or shut down deep-water formation, a key component of the global climate system.

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Summary:

Heinrich events are natural examples of abrupt climate change—rapid and severe disruptions to the climate system caused by shifts in ocean circulation. They provide a powerful lesson for today: large-scale climatic systems can change quickly and globally in response to disturbances, especially involving the ocean’s role in heat and moisture distribution.

The team's findings are now published in Quaternary Science Reviews, and are also explained in lay terms in a Flinders University blog post.

Tree pollen reveals 150,000 years of monsoon history in Northern Australia

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Northern Australia’s annual monsoon season brings relief to drought-stricken lands and revitalises crops and livestock for farmers. But a study of 150,000 years of climate records shows that the monsoon is likely to intensify, triggering a higher risk of flooding while worsening the impact of droughts in East Asia.

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Led by Professor Michael Bird, researchers at James Cook University and Flinders University have assessed sediments at Girraween Lagoon near Darwin, revealing a continuous record of monsoon rainfall patterns dating back beyond the last interglacial period.

This research published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews offers insight into how climate change could alter monsoon patterns across East Asia and Australia.

This is the longest terrestrial record ever produced at the southern end of the Indo-Australian monsoon system, which delivers vital rainfall to millions across the Southern Hemisphere. The record also has implications for the Northern Hemisphere where tens of millions in Asia rely on monsoons for food and their livelihoods.

Our study shows how the two monsoon systems are interrelated over thousands of years and reveals what causes them to change. Our analyses shows that that rainfall in northern Australia is closely tied to sea level changes, which shift the location of the northern coastline by up to 320 km.

These shifts strongly alter local rainfall, with wetter periods occurring when the coastline is closer to the Australian landmass and the oppose effect is prolonged drought in East Asia.

Intriguingly, the research also uncovered what we consider bursts of intense monsoon activity — some lasting less than 10,000 years. These bursts align with Heinrich events — abrupt pulses of freshwater into the North Atlantic from rapidly melting ice linked to the weakening of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean.

Professor Michael I. Bird, first author
College of Science and Engineering
James Cook University
Cairns, Queensland, Australia.

These findings carry a warning from scientists because the Gulf Stream is already weakening due to climate change, and the study suggests this could lead to increased rainfall in northern Australia while contributing to droughts in parts of East Asia.

This isn’t just ancient history. It is a window into the rainfall patterns that are emerging today. Our data suggest that the weather trends we’re witnessing like the drying in China and wetting in northern Australia could accelerate if the Gulf Stream continues to weaken, so we need to be ready for that scenario.

It’s not surprising. Decreasing rainfall in parts of the east Asian summer monsoon region has been identified in rainfall records since the 1960s, while increasing rainfall has been evident in north-western Australia since the last century, accelerating since the 1950s. Our new data suggest that further weakening of the Gulf Stream could reinforce these trends even more in the future, with consequences for both regions.

We need to put this impact into context because this region extends from China through Southeast Asia, the maritime continent, and western Indo-Pacific warm pool on the Equator, to Australia. The region is home to almost a billion people and five terrestrial Biodiversity Hotspots.

Professor Corey J. A. Bradshaw, co-author.
Global Ecology | Partuyarta Ngadluku Wardli Kuu
College of Science and Engineering
Flinders University,
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.

Publication:

Bird, Michael I.; Brand, Michael; Comley, Rainy; Hadeen, Xennephone; Jacobs, Zenobia; Rowe, Cassandra; Saltré, Frédérik; Wurster, Christopher M.; Zwart, Costijn; Bradshaw, Corey J.A.
Quaternary Science Reviews (2025) 366 109504. DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2025.109504

Highlights

• 150 kyr n-alkane δ2H and pollen record of monsoon strength from northern Australia.
• Coastline position strongly influenced local hydroclimate.
• Monsoon intensity broadly anti-phased with East Asian Summer Monsoon.
• Short (∼2–10 kyr) periods of dramatically increased monsoon intensity also occur.
• Short periods of increased monsoon intensity align with Heinrich events.

Abstract
Nearly two thirds of the world's population depend on monsoon rainfall, with monsoon failure and extreme precipitation affecting societies for millennia. Monsoon hydroclimate is predicted to change as the climate warms, albeit with uncertain regional trajectories. Multiple glacial-interglacial terrestrial records of east Asian monsoon variability exist, but there are no terrestrial records of equivalent length from the coupled Indo-Australian monsoon at its southern limit — Australia. We present a continuous 150,000-year lacustrine record of monsoon dynamics from the core monsoon region of northern Australia based on the proportion of dryland tree pollen in the total dryland pollen spectra and the hydrogen isotope composition of long chain n-alkanes. We show that rainfall at the site depends strongly on sea level, which changes proximity of the coast to the site by 320 km over the last glacial-interglacial cycle. Long-term trends in rainfall are broadly anti-phased with the east Asian monsoon modulated by coastal proximity. The record also contains multiple, short intervals (∼2 to < 10,000 years) of large changes in tree cover (from 5 to 95 % tree pollen over 3000 years in one instance). Changes in tree cover are frequently but not always, accompanied by synchronous large changes in the other hydroclimate proxies. While these wetter periods cannot be easily ascribed to orbitally induced changes in insolation or coastal proximity, they are correlated with most Heinrich events. This relationship implies that strong asymmetry in inter-hemispheric monsoon rainfall might be one outcome of the current weakening in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, through a reduction in oceanic heat transfer from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere.

1. Introduction
The dominant feature of climate across most of the tropics and subtropics is a seasonal reversal of the prevailing winds across the Equator, resulting in a wetter summer season and a drier winter in each hemisphere. At an annual scale, the ‘global monsoon’, approximated hydrologically by the zone of maximum rainfall associated with the intertropical convergence zone, oscillates between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (An et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2017). This oscillation is driven by the annual cycle of maximum insolation between each hemisphere (Deininger et al., 2020), leading to anti-phased summer rainy seasons in each (Eroglu et al., 2016; Deininger et al., 2020). Agriculture and ecosystems across the tropics and subtropics depend on monsoon rainfall (An et al., 2015), and so growing populations and climate change increase vulnerability to any change in monsoon dynamics (Zhang et al., 2018; Martinez-Villalobos and Neelin, 2023). Indeed, drought associated with monsoon failure, as well as monsoon-related flooding, have driven major demographic changes in prehistory (e.g., Cook et al., 2010) and the recent past (Li et al., 2011; Qian et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2015.1).

The monsoon system that affects the largest land area and human population is the east Asian summer monsoon north of the Equator, coupled by cross-equatorial airflow to the Indo-Australian summer monsoon south of the Equator (Li and Li, 2014) (Fig. 1). This region extends from China through Southeast Asia, the maritime continent and western Indo-Pacific warm pool on the Equator, to Australia. The region is home to almost a billion people and five terrestrial biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al., 2000).

Fig. 1. Location of Girraween Lagoon in monsoonal north Australia. Also shown are the Sunda and Sahul continental shelves, with areas landward exposed at times of lower sea level, and the major pathways for water and heat transport between the Pacific and Indian Oceans via the Indonesian throughflow. Approximate boundaries of the true and ‘pseudo’ monsoon domains and directions of wet season airflow are in yellow (Suppiah, 1992). Insert shows the approximate dominant flows of the east Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and the Indo-Australian summer monsoon (IASM). Additional locations mentioned in the text are: 1 and 2: speleothem stable isotope records from KNI-51 and Ballgown Cave, respectively (Denniston et al., 2017.1); 3: marine core geochemical record of runoff and dust flux (Zhang et al., 2020.1; Pei et al., 2021; Sarim et al., 2023.1); 4: speleothem isotope record from Flores (Scroxton et al., 2022); 5 and 6: Woods and Gregory ‘megalakes’, respectively (Bowler et al., 1998, 2001; Fitzsimmons et al., 2012.1). Base image data: Google © 2023 Maxar Technologies. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

The Indo-Australian summer monsoon represents the dominant source of rainfall in northern Australia, although atmospheric teleconnections to other sources of global interannual climate variability, particularly El Niño-Southern Oscillation, contribute to rainfall variability (Sharmila and Hendon, 2020.2; Heidemann et al., 2023.2; Gallagher et al., 2024). The Indo-Australian summer monsoon in northern Australia also exhibits its own internal dynamics, due in approximately equal measure to local oceanic (sea surface temperature, evaporation, and wind) and terrestrial (land cover, soil moisture, evaporation, and wind) influences on rainfall (Yu and Notaro, 2020.3; Sekizawa et al., 2021.1; Heidemann et al., 2023.2; Sekizawa et al., 2023.3). While the east Asian summer monsoon is dominant due to the large, high-altitude Asian landmass, the internal dynamics of the Indo-Australian summer monsoon can also drive variability in east Asian winter monsoon rainfall in southern China, suggesting close linkages (Yu and Notaro, 2020.3; Sekizawa et al., 2021.1; Heidemann et al., 2023.2; Sekizawa et al., 2023.3).

Terrestrial speleothem oxygen isotope and pollen records (e.g., Ma et al., 2023.4; Chen et al., 2023.5) spanning one or more glacial-interglacial cycles have demonstrated periods of enhanced/(reduced) east Asian summer monsoon rainfall at times of higher/(lower) Northern Hemisphere insolation and distinct, weak monsoon intervals, some of which are coincident with Heinrich events (Cheng et al., 2009, 2016.1). However, equivalent long terrestrial records from the southern end of the Indo-Australian summer monsoon in northern Australia are conspicuously absent.

Proxy records of terrestrial runoff have been derived from marine records off north-western Australia and are correlated with east Asian summer monsoon records (Pei et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2020.1; Sarim et al., 2023.1) (Fig. 1). However, those records are potentially confounded by the adjacent wide continental shelf that introduces an effect of sea-level change at orbital timescales on the delivery of runoff-derived sediment to the core locations. The locations are also likely affected by the large changes in land-sea distribution in the maritime continent that modify heat and mass transfer through the Indonesian throughflow upstream of the core sites (Lee et al., 2019). On land, a discontinuous speleothem time series of oxygen isotope has been generated covering the last 40 kyr (1 kyr = 1000 years) from northern Western Australia (Denniston et al., 2017.1), a location that is under the influence of the ‘pseudo’ monsoon (Suppiah, 1992; Gallagher et al., 2024) where airflow originates in the eastern Indian Ocean, rather than from equatorial regions to the north (Fig. 1).

In the arid interior of Australia, sediments from the former Woods and Gregory ‘megalakes’ (now small, ephemeral bodies of water) show that large perennial water bodies existed, dominantly during periods in Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 around ∼ 50 ka ago, MIS 5 around 100 ka ago, as well as earlier (Bowler et al., 1998, 2001; Veth et al., 2009.1; Fitzsimmons et al., 2012.1). These megalakes were fed by monsoon rain falling into south-draining catchments, with drainage divides at least 300 km south of the modern north Australian coast (Fig. 1). Kati Thandi-Lake Eyre in central Southern Australia receives water from the core monsoon area (and other regions), but it also contains a record of megalake periods through MIS 5 to ∼ 116 ka ago and from 65 to 45 ka ago (Cohen et al., 2022.1).

The existence of interior megalakes, orders of magnitude larger than today's, implies past periods of higher monsoon rainfall penetrating these arid interior catchments (Wyrwoll and Valdes, 2003). Debate on the drivers of megalake-filling events has centred on the relative importance of sea level, sea surface temperatures, and Northern Hemisphere ‘push’ versus Southern Hemisphere ‘pull’ of monsoonal rain into the continental interior, as well as the role of vegetation feedbacks in augmenting moisture transfer inland (Wyrwoll and Valdes, 2003; Liu et al., 2004; Miller et al., 2005; Pitman and Hesse, 2007; Marshall and Lynch, 2008; Wyrwoll et al., 2007.1, 2012.2).

Here we present multiple, absolute-dated proxy records of sedimentological, hydroclimatic, and vegetation change over the last 150 kyr from a sediment core obtained from the core monsoon region of northern Australia, the Girraween Lagoon (Fig. 1). This record enables an assessment of the timing of variation in monsoon strength in the Indo-Australian summer monsoon domain that can be compared with records of east Asian summer monsoon strength and tropical hydroclimate. Together, this enables an assessment of the drivers of variability in the Indo-Australian summer monsoon.

The detailed sedimentary record from the Girraween Lagoon in Northern Australia, which includes evidence of Heinrich events spanning the last 150,000 years, presents a serious challenge to young Earth creationist claims. These events, triggered by massive iceberg discharges into the North Atlantic and linked to widespread climatic shifts—including monsoon disruptions in Australia—can be correlated across multiple geological archives worldwide. This implies a stable, continuous, and datable sequence of climatic change that extends far beyond the 6,000 to 10,000 years typically allowed by biblical literalists.

Creationist claims of a recent, global, catastrophic flood—often tied to the story of Noah—are also incompatible with this evidence. A flood of such scale would have scoured landscapes, disrupted or homogenised sedimentary layers, and left a very different geological signal. Instead, the sediments in Girraween Lagoon preserve a finely layered and uninterrupted record of environmental conditions, including pollen and isotopic data, spanning well over 100,000 years. Such a record simply could not survive the violent upheaval proposed by a recent global deluge.

Furthermore, the evidence of repeated, severe climatic disruptions also undermines the notion that Earth was perfectly created and "finely tuned" for life. The Heinrich events were episodes of extreme instability, during which entire regions became uninhabitable or suffered ecological collapse. This shows Earth’s climate system as dynamic and often harsh—not the static, life-friendly world one might expect from an intelligent designer. In short, the geological and climatological evidence paints a picture of an ancient, evolving Earth shaped by natural processes—one that flatly contradicts creationist dogma.

Creationism Refuted - How Evolving COVID-19 Is Making Creationism Sick

Simplified SARS-CoV-2 Evolutionary Tree

AI Generated image (ChatGPT4o)

News, in The Conversation that the latest variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, XFG, could soon become the dominant variant worldwide, prompted me to ask ChatGPT to construct a family tree for the known variants of the virus, to illustrate the basic principles of evolution that creationists continue to deny.

Construct a family tree of known SARS-CoV-2 variants and explain how this illustrates evolution in progress. Explanation: Evolution in Progress

This tree diagram represents a simplified phylogenetic tree of SARS-CoV-2, showing how the virus has evolved since it first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019.

Creationism Refuted - Evolution By LOSS of Genetic Information

Pycnogonum litoral, adult male feeding on a sea anemone.

C: Georg Brenneis

[Body]

Pycnogonum litorale, adult female feeding on a sea anemone.

C: Georg Brenneis

What the sea spider genome reveals about their bizarre anatomy

Creationists frequently argue that macroevolution without divine involvement is impossible because it supposedly requires the creation of new genetic information to code for novel structures. They assert that such new genetic information cannot arise through natural processes, claiming this would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. However, try getting a creationist to explain what the Second Law of Thermodynamics actually is, how it relates to genetic information, and why it supposedly forbids gene duplication, and it quickly becomes apparent that they haven’t the faintest idea what they’re talking about.

Of course, this entire argument hinges on a distorted definition of macroevolution, namely the claim that it must involve the appearance of entirely new structures not present in ancestral forms. Like so many creationist arguments, it is built on misinformation and the misrepresentation of fundamental biological concepts. Macroevolution refers to evolutionary changes above the species level, while evolution more broadly is defined as a change in allele frequencies in a population over time.

Another familiar plank in the creationist propaganda platform is the patently absurd claim that evolution cannot occur through a loss of genetic information, on the grounds that lost genetic material is always deleterious—if not fatal—and therefore cannot be passed on to subsequent generations. This claim, too, wilfully ignores well-established mechanisms in evolutionary biology.

So, a recent paper from an international team including researchers from the University of Vienna and the University of Wisconsin–Madison (USA) should present a problem for that narrative. The study shows that the bizarre body plan of marine arthropods known as sea spiders (Pycnogonida) is the result of a lost gene.

If creationists were intellectually honest, they might take this as a cue to question why creationist ‘scientists’ (to use the term loosely) are misleading them. More likely, however, they’ll claim that it’s the mainstream biologists who are doing the lying—despite the fact that the latter group provide empirical evidence to support their conclusions.

The research is detailed in an open-access paper in BMC Biology.

Creationism Refuted - Wooden Tools - From 290,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Reconstruction of wooden tools in use

AI generated image (ChatGPT4o)

A wooden tool is excavated from the site in China.

Photo: Bo Li.

2025 | Oldest wooden artefacts ever found in East Asia reveal plant-based diet of ancient humans - University of Wollongong – UOW

The childish notion of creationism took another battering today with the announcement that an international team of researchers, including University of Wollongong archaeologist Professor Bo Li, has unearthed a set of wooden tools in south-west China dating to approximately 300,000 years ago. That places them a full 290,000 years before creationists believe the Earth was formed, situating their manufacture and use within the 99.9975% of Earth’s history that occurred before the so-called ‘Creation Week’.

This date significantly predates the appearance of anatomically modern humans outside Africa. The exact identity of the archaic hominins who made and used these tools is uncertain — possibly early Denisovans, Homo heidelbergensis, or perhaps H. erectus. What we can say with confidence is that these hominins stand in stark contradiction to the Bronze Age origin myths recorded in the Bible, which many creationists insist are literal historical accounts.

The usual creationist response to such findings is to reject them outright as fabrications, the result of flawed methodology, or deliberate deception. However, the dating of these artefacts relies on a technique refined by Professor Li called electron spin resonance (ESR), which measures the time elapsed since the artefacts were buried. (See the side panel for further details.)