Debating Creationists: Peking Man on CARM

  • 1. Pekin Man, June 20, 1998
    Helen Fryman, a creationist who posts on the CARM bulletin board, wrote defending her claim that the Peking Man skulls were those of monkeys, and that many early scientists had claimed this. (The evidence consisted of a quote from a scientist which said nothing of the sort, and some unsubstantiated claims copied from creationist literature.)

  • 2. Re: Pekin Man, June 21, 1998
    My response to Helen's post, which gave quotes showing that Marcellin Boule, the scientist who supposedly claimed Peking Man was a monkey, actually considered it intermediate between apes and humans.

  • 3. Re: Pekin Man, June 21, 1998
    A response from Helen, which ignored the discrepancy between what Boule actually said and she had said he said, repeated her earlier claims (copying from a different creationist book), and raised the issue of the "10 missing skeletons".

  • 4. Pekin Man (response to Helen), June 22, 1998
    Another response addressing Helen's continuing errors, and her ignoring of the discrepancies between her claims and the evidence.

  • 5. Pekin Man, June 24, 1998
    Helen forwarded the thread so far to creationist author Malcolm Bowden (her primary source of information), then posted this response from him. Bowden backed away from some of Helen's claims, saying that although early scientists thought Peking Man was intermediate between apes and human, "THEY HAD TO ADMIT THAT THEY LOOKED VERY MUCH LIKE MONKEYS". This claim is: a) incorrect, and b) backing away from what Bowden said in his book Ape-Men: Fact or Fallacy? (from where Helen had found the claim about Peking Man being monkeys). Bowden explained away the Boule discrepancy by claiming that I had quoted from later books by Boule and Vallois, instead of from Boule's 1937 article. This is incorrect; I quoted from the original source exactly as I said I had.

  • 6. Pekin Man (response to Bowden), June 26, 1998
    My response to Bowden's message.

  • 7. Note as to Pekin man, June 27, 1998
    Bowden, via Helen, bowed out of the debate for the time being, promising to post a reply on a new creationist web site which would be up in some months. The reply never appeared.

Compare Peking Man with a monkey

The Missing Ten Skeletons

The 'Monkey Quote' of Marcellin Boule

This page is part of the Fossil Hominids FAQ at the talk.origins Archive.

Home Page | Species | Fossils | Creationism | Reading | References
Illustrations | What's New | Feedback | Search | Links | Fiction

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/hfmb.html, 01/31/2000
Copyright © Jim Foley || Email me