Refuting Creationism - Stone Tool Sophistication and Multiple Hominin Species in East Asia - 150,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Stone tool manufacture in China

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Discovery challenges long-held beliefs on early human technology in East Asia - Griffith News

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with palaeoanthropologist Michael Petraglia of Griffith University, have just published an open-access paper in Nature Communications presenting evidence of advanced stone-tool technology dating to between 160,000 and 72,000 years ago in China.

This represents a significant shift in our understanding of the development and diversity of stone-tool technologies in East Asia. For many years it was assumed that stone technology in China lacked complexity and sophistication because bamboo provided a more versatile alternative — the so-called “Bamboo Hypothesis”. Archaeologists now have compelling reasons to revise that view.

If there is one thing calculated to excite creationists, it is the fact that scientists frequently change their minds when the evidence changes — an essential feature of the scientific method. In the simplistic binary worldview common to creationism, however, science is either right or wrong. Any revision of conclusions is therefore taken as proof that science is “wrong”, and that creationism wins by default, without needing to provide any supporting evidence of its own.

From this it follows, in the creationist imagination, that if scientists were wrong about stone-tool technology in China, they must also be wrong about human evolution and the age of the Earth. Consequently, the very evidence that caused scientists to revise their views — sophisticated tools securely dated to 160,000–72,000 years ago — must itself also be wrong. Few creationists seem to notice the paradox of arguing that science must be wrong because evidence corrected it, while simultaneously insisting that the correcting evidence is also wrong. Within the confines of the creationist rabbit hole, believing six impossible things before breakfast merely requires practice.

Nevertheless, the evidence from Xigou, in the Danjiangkou Reservoir region of central China, shows that stone-tool manufacture was not only an advanced skill but may also have been practised by more than one species of hominin. By this time, humans had already diversified into several relatively large-brained species, well before modern Homo sapiens had migrated into Eurasia in significant numbers.

The tools themselves show clear evidence of hafting — the fitting of handles to stone implements — representing the earliest known composite tools in East Asia. This implies an ability to plan ahead and to understand how tool performance could be enhanced, combined with a high level of technical skill and craftsmanship.

Refuting Creationism - Evidence From Ancient China Buries the Bible Creation and Genocidal Flood Myths

Excavation at Baligang in 2004, showing house, storage and burial pits.

Chi, Zhang & Hung, Hsiao-Chun (2013)
© Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2013

Weisskopf, A., et al; (2015) (CC BY 4.0)

Ancient DNA reveals the population interactions and a Neolithic patrilineal community in Northern Yangtze Region | Nature Communications

The bad news for creationists continues unabated - because science continues unabated to reveal the truth.

Creationists like to insist that the Bible’s tales of creation and Noah’s flood are real history, not myth. But once again, science has delivered a devastating blow to that fantasy. A new open access paper in Nature Communications reports the DNA of 58 individuals from the Baligang archaeological site in central China, spanning from the Middle Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age (6,500 BP - 2,500 BP). Far from supporting the idea of a world repopulated just a few thousand years ago by Noah’s family, the evidence shows continuous human settlement, migration, and cultural development stretching back thousands of years before, during and after the supposed date of the Biblical flood - about 4,000 years BP.

The genetics reveal a population that was anything but “reset.” Northern and southern East Asian groups repeatedly mixed at Baligang, leaving detectable signatures of long-term population movement and exchange. Around 4,200 years ago, southern ancestry became especially prominent, signalling migration into the region. Burial evidence adds further depth: the males were closely related along the paternal line, while the females carried diverse maternal lineages—clear evidence of patrilineal clans drawing in women from outside communities. This is a picture of a complex, interconnected society developing steadily over time.