c. 2003 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON _ What’s a creationist doing bashing Darwin at the World Archaeological Congress?
Michael Cremo, a research associate at the Bhaktivedanta Institute for consciousness studies in California, is not picketing outside. He’s arguing that human civilization may have existed millions of years before the accepted dates, making the self-described Hindu creationist something of a unique voice in the ongoing debate between Darwinists and creationists.
Cremo, who has spent more than 20 years looking for evidence of ancient human civilizations, is now pressing the scientific community to be more tolerant of different metaphysical views.
In a radical departure from both Darwin’s theory and Christian creationism, Cremo comes at the question of evolution from the Hindu understanding of time as cyclical. It was his study of the Puranas _ sacred Sanskrit texts that speak of ancient civilizations _ that led him to search for evidence of “extreme human antiquity.”
While presenting his paper “Archaeology in the Service of Darwinism” to a group of seasoned archaeologists last week (June 26), Cremo told his rapt audience that archaeologists have overlooked a large body of evidence that contradicts Darwinian evolution. He buoyantly described a mortar and pestle that were found lodged in an fossilized riverbed dated to about 30 million years ago, noting that no fissures in the rock formation could account for their presence there.
“When operating from a different metaphysical perspective, I seem to see the evidence in a different light,” he said, adding that these discoveries are not well known today because they contradict Darwinian principles of evolution, Cremo said.
Although his 1994 book “Forbidden Archaeology” is a top seller among archaeology books on Amazon.com, Cremo hasn’t enjoyed the same warm reception from the scientific community. Now in his 50s, Cremo has spent nearly 20 years fighting “Darwinian fundamentalists” who he claims have dismissed evidence proving the existence of human beings as early as 2 billion years ago. According to most scientists, the first anatomically modern humans appeared about 100,000 years ago.
“The problem is, there’s so much evidence against it,” said Eugenie Scott, physical anthropologist and director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that defends teaching evolution in public schools. “For his view to be right would require answers that he can’t provide.”
Professor Jonathan Marks, a biological anthropologist at the University of North Carolina who reviewed Cremo’s book in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, said Cremo relies on poorly documented 19th century archaeological finds.
“What Cremo does in `Forbidden Archaeology’ is he takes all this stuff that has been confined to the rubbish pile and says, `Look at all this evidence that archaeologists have ignored,”’ Marks said. “It’s not evidence at all. He believes humans existed in the Precambrian era, but the world was a very different place then. There was no oxygen, there was no life; without multi-cellular organisms, there wouldn’t have been anything for them to eat.”
But for Cremo, the periodic disappearance of life from Earth is merely a glitch in an endless process of creation and destruction that is laid out in Hindu sacred scriptures.
One unit of Vedic time, known as the day of Brahma, lasts about 4 billion years, he explained. Each day of Brahma is divided into 14 periods called manvantaras _ after Manu, Hinduism’s Adam _ which last about 300 million years and are punctuated by a devastation, after which all life forms have to be reintroduced. The lifeless early Precambrian, in Cremo’s view, was one of those times.
“I was surprised to find there was so much evidence that is consistent with the Puranas,” he said.
For example, the current day of Brahma began 2 billion years ago, the rough date that most paleontologists give to the beginning of life on the planet, he said. Moreover, most paleontologists agree that there have been six extinction events in the history of the planet; likewise, six devastations have happened in the current day of Brahma according to Vedic time.
But where Cremo finds common ground with paleontologists, he diverges from biblical creationist theory. Young Earth Creationism, based on the Book of Genesis, dates the advent of humans to about 6,000 years ago and the origins of the Earth to 10,000 years ago.
Some prominent Christian creationists, however, approve of Cremo’s work because of his efforts to prove that humans coexisted with ancient primates rather than evolving from them.
“Christian creationists would disagree with me about the age of the Earth, but they would agree that humans were there since the beginning,” Cremo said, adding that Islamic scholars have also written him and complimented his work.
Dennis Bonnette, a professor of metaphysics at Niagara University and author of “How Humans Evolved,” a study of evolution and creationism from a Catholic perspective, said Cremo’s book has opened doors for creationists of all creeds.
“It does provide credible evidence that the standard view on human evolution may be incorrect,” Bonnette said. “Paleoanthropology may be consistent with both the Hindu Vedic and the Catholic perspective. There is plenty of room for different metaphysical perspectives.”
(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM HERE)
Although their ideas draw scorn from the scientific establishment, researchers like Cremo and Bonnette have ample company in the creationist camp. A 2001 Gallup Poll showed that 45 percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years, while only 12 percent believe human beings evolved from less advanced forms over millions of years. Thirty-seven percent said the process of evolution is guided by God.
Like many creationists, Cremo rejects the idea that human evolution resulted from a series of random accidents.
“A cyclical concept of time doesn’t rule out evolution; neither does the Bible,” Cremo said. “But Darwinist scientists believe evolution was a completely material process with no intelligence behind it.”
(END OPTIONAL TRIM HERE)
In his forthcoming book, “Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin’s Theory,” set to be released by Torchlight Press this September, Cremo describes how humans first exist with God on the level of pure consciousness before they take on material bodies.
Cremo, who practices a theistic strain of Hinduism known as Vaishnaism, began searching for evidence to corroborate the Vedic idea of ancient human civilizations in 1984. It was his spiritual teacher, the late Bhativedanta Swami, whom he met in India in the 1960s, that inspired Cremo to begin his scientific search.
“My simple goal was to show that human civilization has been around for the day of Brahma,” he said.
It may require a lot more digging and some more reliable dating methods to get scientists on board, however.
“Theories get overturned consistently in science,” Marks said. “But one of the standards we use is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
DEA END ALTER
