It is of no doubt that progress is an innate human nature and what is no longer baffling is the innate desire in we, higher species, to push our limit of knowledge further, expanding our horizon and all with the aim to understand. And even in the field of knowledge we find competitions, and as a neccesity, just as competition was neccesary to advance an economy of a society, competition was also neccesary in advancing our knowledge of our universe and most importantly, our origins.
At least this was what James Usher, the archbishop of Amargh, who was widely respected and revered not only for his prominence but also for his stupendous scholarship, had in mind when he temerariously drafted the Annales Veteris et Novi Tentamenti, an audacious article of faith which asserted that God had created the universe in 4004 B.C.
The Bishop at at time was considered an epitome of incredible knowledge and there was no anticipation that such an assertion for the date of creation would be challenged, especially when it was asserted by such a prominent scholar.
But the opposition disciples seldomly took a nap.
Years after the bishop's death,Isaac de La Peyrere, after examining some stones chipped in a very quaint fashion released a book where he claimed that the stones were chipped by creatures who lived sometimes before the existence of Adam, possibly human beings. Isaac de La Peyrere had made a fatal mistake though : the year 1655 A.D. was not a good year to make such blasphemous observations and his sacrilegious monograph was incinerated, publicly.
The centuries that proceeded left the Christians with little or no rest; questions had begun to arise like Lillies in the blossoming spring and the austere guardians of the church could not stop impertinent questions like how big was the ark? How many animals went up the plank? How many came out? Did they all survive the flood?
Within the fifteenth century, troubles had begun to stirred in the dust clouds; Colombus voyages and explorers were starting to sight new creatures, strange birds and beasts. But the theologians hardly gave up, not while the very verity of their supreme God was in question. They explained that the unknown creatures had come into existence after the flood, domestic animals had crossbreeded and evolved, just as a leopard with a camel gave the girrafe and a bulldog and American terrier gave the Pit bull.
For a moment we might be inclined to consider the theologians argument: new species emerge not only from crossbreeding but also from difference in their surroundings. The European blackbird exhibited a different trait in both color and size when its is in America and when in India, the European wildcat develops into a panther. But isn't this what evolutionist advocate, that adaptative behavior can alter genetic makeup? Nevertheless no doubts were assauged by this explanations as more odious questions bloomed.
The French as usual, had something to say on the matter. French diplomat by the name Benoit de Maillet wrote that germs of the first living organisms had descended from outer space.
Nothing could have been more preposterous, that man had originated from mere germs, yet recently we have evidence that this is quite plausible.
Anyways, according to Maillet, these germs had inevitably dropped into the ocean because there was no land a long time ago and they began to evolve. Therefore, from such premise, he concluded that Man's progenitors were aquatic creatures who spent most of their life beneath the water and had fins instead of feet and scales instead of skin.
Sound like mermaids doesn't it? Let's not imagine.
Rumors has it that about a hundred of such creatures have been sighted and some were even caught and delivered to the king of Portugal, who wanting to preserve the beings of curiosity, had ordered that they were allowed to spend three hours a day-secured by a long line. But it is said that these water creatures submerged and never came up again to the surface.
Maillet, it would seem, had not seemed satisfied. According to Connell's The White Lantern, Maillet had reflected upon the metamorphosis of fish into birds:
...There can be no doubt that fish, in the course of hunting or being hunted, we're thrown up on the shore. There they could find food, but we're unable to return to the water. Subsequently, their fins were enlarged by the action of water, the radial structure supporting the fins turned to quills, the dried scales became feathers, the skin assumed a coating of down, the belly-fins changed into feet, the entire body was reshaped, the neck and beak became prolonged, and at last the fish was transformed into a bird. Yet the new configuration corresponded in a general way to the old. The latter will always remain readily recognizable.
Reading the words of Benoit de Maillet, it is difficult to imagine what he was trying to explain. yet, one can imagine, if only one was as bold in imaginations as he was.
These intellectual journeys of his were documented in the anagram Telliamed ou Entretien d'un Philosphe Indien avec un Missionnaire Francais where he endeavored to protect his identity by projecting his theory to an Indian philosopher who revealed it to a French missionary and the missionary, sagaciously separating himself from the Philosopher's strange ideas said to the Indian philosopher, "I confess to you, that not withstanding the small Foundation I find in your system, I am charmed to hear you speak... "
Soon the manuscript was in circulation and the impressive naturalist George Louis Leclerc, the Conte de Buffon, was most likely impressed by the startling essay.
Buffon too, had not been left out in the great debate. The earth, he postulated, was thrown from the sun and congealed until it had attained a temperature suitable for organic life. He attempted to deduce the age of the earth simply by heating some iron spheres ,observe how long they would cool and extrapolate the age of the earth by correlating the earth's dimensions into the experiment. Buffon afterwards announced that the earth was 74,832 years old and had sustained life for about 40,000 years and would experience a temperature decline and after another 93,000 years, the planet would be covered in hard, unbreakable and uninhabitable ice.
And what would seem almost as Darwin himself was speaking, Buffon had proclaimed:
" it may be assumed that all animals arose from a single form of life which in the course of time had produced the others by processes of perfection and degeneration."
Nonetheless, one truth is noted in all he had said on the matter: life on our planet had gradually developed.
But Buffon was ambivalent and on one hand had also venerated the church, perhaps out of advisable discretion or perhaps, out of devotion. He is rumored to have written at some point:
"no, it is certain-certain by revelation-that all animals have shared equally the grace of creation, each has emerged from the hands of the creator as it appears to us today.
And as if after that, all attack was laid headlong at the church and all its biblical dogma. Jean-Baptiste Pierre de Monet, the Chevalier de Lamarck, had written that species of organisms could not be differentiated from each other absolutely, and species pass into one another, proceeding from simple organisms to complex man.
Immanuel Kant wrote on the matter as well:
"it is possible for a chimpanzee or an orangutan, by perfecting it's organs, to change at some future date into a human being. Radical alterations in natural conditions may force the ape to walk upright, accustom its hands to the use of tools and learn to talk."
As if it was not enough, then came along James Hutton, a Scottish farmer and geologist, philosopher, jurist, chemist,Quaker,inventor and physicist. According to Loren Eiseley, only one portrait of this man survives, revealing a long, dolor and sad face and eyes so deep as if they looked so far that mortals do not interest them. Hutton perceived the world to be in a brook that gently transported sediments to the sea, therefore all our earthly wonders such as the rivers, plans, valleys, mountains and oceans must have been the result of slower topographical changes.
He wrote:
"we find no vestige of a beginning, and no prospect of an end."
He was rumored to have been charged by the academy with atheism and he became quite ill as a result of shock and never recovered.
The attack was on full force. Sir Charles Lyell had demonstrated in his volumes Principles of Geology how any catastrophic flooding in the past had resulted from the melting of glaciers and not from a stupendous rain.
The believers were troubled by the volumes of Sir Charles and the foundations of the church had begun to shake from its underneath. The Bible after all was precise: forty days and forty nights. Rain poured incessantly. The waters were fifteen cubits high and there was also, the ineffable word of God.
But the evidence. Where was the evidence?
In 1726, Dr. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer had unearthed a fossil, a skeleton near the village of Oeningenand according to the doctor's calculations, the fossil's owner had submerged into the deeps in 2306 B.C.
In a letter to the British naturalist and physician, Sir Hans Sloane, he wrote:
"you would like to know, my learned friend, that we have uncovered some relics of the race of man drowned in the Flood... What we have here is no vision of the mere imagination, but the well-preserved bones, and much in number, of a human skull, quite clearly distinguishable..."
He then proceeded to write a phenomenal phamplet titled A Most Rare Memorial of That Accursed Generation of Men of the First World, the Skeleton of a Man Drowned in the Flood telling everyone that alongside the word of God, we have other notable evidence of a deluge such as plants, insects and even fishes. And the Oeningen Man had survived by what he termed fortunate since most of the human corpse during the flood floated on the surface of the water and soon decayed.
Dr. Johann even went further to illustrate his remarkable discovery:
"a careful executed woodcut now offered for the consideration of the learned and inquiring world... It does not merely present certain features in which a vivid imagination could detect something approximating to the human shape. On the contrary, it corresponded completely with all the parts and proportions of a human skeleton. Even the bones embedded in the stone, and some of the softer components too, are identifiable as genuine... "
The believers were back with a counter attack. They had evidence and God's word.
By the nineteenth century, additional evidence turned up. The Dean of Westminster and author of the book Reliquiae Diluvianae, William Buckland, reported a peculiar burial in Southern Wales- a female skeleton called the Red Lady simply because her bones were stained with red ocher. Buckland did not hesitate to comment on the findings:
" by affording the strongest evidence of a universal deluge, leads us to the hope that it will no longer be asserted as it has been by high authorities, that geology supplies no proofs of an event in the reality of which the truth of the Mosaic records is so materially involved."
And so, the believers had the stage but for a little while the heretics renegades did not wait long before sinking the Ark again and this time, for good.
Scheuchzer's rare discovery of a fossilized skeleton, when closely examined was nothing more than what was left of a giant salamander.
Buckland's Red Lady on the other hand was veritable human but it was male instead of female and there was nothing about the discolored peices of bones that indicated a death by drowning. All that could be scientifically deduce from the scraps was that the bones, which was discovered alongside the paleolithic tools were much older than the date the Archbishop, James Ussher had established for creation of the world.
So then, the tug continued and there seemed to be balance on either side of the opposing groups. The heretics on one hand had veritable evidences and the faithful had God's word. Then, when it seemed as if there would be an impasse, a much recent discovery turned up, one that would shake the world of discovery as we know it? What was this discovery? And why would it possibly be the most important in the world of man as we know it?
All these questions will be answered in my next article, The Origins II - A Forgotten Past. Stay tuned for more.
References
Howell, F. Clark. Early Man. 1973.
Heizer, Robert F. Man's Discovery of His Past. 1969
White, Peter. The past is Human. 1976.
Evan. S. Connell the White Lantern