Oldest Americans Refute The Bible

The Toca da Tira Peia Rockshelter during the 2008 excavations.

The news just keeps getting worse for the frauds at the Discovery Institute.

Today New Scientist brings news of what could turn out to be evidence that humans were living in Brazil 20,000 years ago, some 14,000 years before the Universe was created according to the Christian mythology the Discovery Institute is trying to get illegally insert into US public schools disguised as science.

For those who haven't yet encountered the Discovery Institute and its professional liars, it is the organisation behind the current attempt to con the American people into believing that 'Intelligent Design' is science, despite it being found not to be in the 'Dover Trial'.

The Discovery Institute is using the Wedge Strategy to try to discredit science and replace it with the primitive Bronze-Age origin myth from Genesis, prior to overthrowing the American Constitution and establishing a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. Its power ambitions are not limited to the USA. It is supporting similar subversive activities in other secular countries.

These theocracies would be almost indistinguishable from the form of government established in Afghanistan under the Taliban, complete with a Christian version of Sharia courts and a strict, literal enforcement of the biblical Laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. For more on this see Why Creationists Lie To Us.

The article by Michael Marshall in New Scientist reports on a paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science in which the authors present evidence of stone tools which were found under a rock shelter in Brazil being 20,000 years old.

Abstract.
When and how did the first human beings settle in the American continent? Numerous data, from archaeological researches as well as from palaeogenetics, anthropological and environmental studies, have led to partially contradictory interpretations in recent years, often because of the lack of a reliable chronological framework. The present study contributes to the establishment of such a framework using luminescence techniques to date a Brazilian archaeological site, the Toca da Tira Peia. It constitutes an exemplary case study: all our observations and measurements tend to prove the good integrity of the site and the anthropological nature of the artifacts and we are confident in the accuracy of the luminescence dating results. All these points underline the importance of the Toca da Tira Peia. The results bring new pieces of evidence of a human presence in the north-east of Brazil as early as 20,000 BC. The Toca da Tira Peia thus contributes to the rewriting of the history of the peopling of the American continent.

Lahaye, C., Hernandez, M., et al; Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 40, Issue 6, June 2013, Pages 2840-2847.

Of course, like all scientific claims, this one is not universally accepted. As Marshall says:

For others, it is the tools that are raising eyebrows. "Rock shelters are difficult to interpret," points out John McNabb of the University of Southampton, UK. Stones falling from above can break, making them look like human-made tools. As a result, McNabb calls the evidence "suggestive but unproven".

Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

The Wedge Document,
Discovery Institute

It has long been accepted that the earliest traces of human habitation in the Americas were of the 'Clovis People' who are known to have entered North America from Siberia about 13,000 years ago. However, evidence have been accumulating for the last 30 years that there was an earlier colonisation by at least 15,000 years ago.

This latest find should probably be regarded as tentatively adding to that evidence, pending corroboration. If true, it would show that modern humans had crossed into North America from Asia and had penetrated down the Panamanian Isthmus and deep into South America much earlier than previously thought. It has long been assumed that they came via the 'Beringia Land Bridge' during a lowering of sea levels during a glaciation period. An earlier migration is certainly not precluded by that theory.

We will also pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula.

The Wedge Document,
Discovery Institute

But of course, even if 'Clovis' turns out to have been the earliest culture to arise in the Americas, it is devastating for biblical creationism and especially for a notion of a 6,000 year-old Earth and life being reset about 4,000 years ago by a devastating global flood.

The surprising thing is that Christian fundamentalists persist in this denial of the evidence when even one of their favourite founding fathers, regarded as one of their greatest thinkers, St. Augustine of Hippo, inadvertently proved that humans could not all have descended from Noah when trying to argue that people could not live on the other side of Earth:

But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part that is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled.

It is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man. [My emphasis]

Source: De Civitate Dei, Book XVI, Chapter 9 — Whether We are to Believe in the Antipodes; Augustine of Hippo,
translated by Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D.; from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College.

To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

The Wedge Document, Governing Goals,
Discovery Institute

Well quite. It's not often that I agree with St. Augustine but one can't argue with that logic. We know there are people living on the far side of Earth and, as St. Augustine points out, they wouldn't have been able to get there in such a short time, ergo there never was a flood and Earth is much older than the Bronze-Age goat-herders thought. St. Augustine's blunder was in making a testable prediction of course - something that the more astute apologists and creationist frauds know they must avoid at all costs incase it is ever tested.

St. Augustine's prediction has been tested and the Bible was promptly falsified, as is so often the case when its claims are compared to reality.

So, all we need now is for the frauds at the Discovery Institute to accept reality and abandon their strategy of trying to fool the American people into giving them unaccountable power to abuse and with which to abuse others. Any bets on that happening any day soon?

Reference:

Christelle Lahaye, Marion Hernandez, Eric Boëda, Gisele D. Felice, Niède Guidon, Sirlei Hoeltz, Antoine Lourdeau, Marina Pagli, Anne-Marie Pessis, Michel Rasse, Sibeli Viana, Human occupation in South America by 20,000 BC: the Toca da Tira Peia site, Piauí, Brazil, Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 40, Issue 6, June 2013, Pages 2840-2847, ISSN 0305-4403, 10.1016/j.jas.2013.02.019.

( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440313000733)

Keywords: Optically stimulated luminescence dating; Toca da Tira Peia; Brazil; First peopling in America; Luminescence

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