Human Evolution Has Now Been Effectively Buried

Two new volumes in Carl Werner’s
five volume ‘Grand Experiment’ series
are disastrous for human evolution.

 

Book review by Jerry Bergman, PhD

For the past four decades, one of my interests has been critically evaluating the evidence for human evolution from non-human ancestors. I am among the few creationists who have concentrated on this field. Over the years, I have published 27 peer-reviewed articles and two books on the subject.¹ In the past decade, however, I have found it increasingly challenging to keep pace with the controversies on human evolution. The sheer volume of new discoveries and claims demands the attention of someone working full-time to do the topic justice.

This is where Dr. Carl Werner comes in. He has dedicated the past 25 years to focusing largely on the fossil evidence for human evolution. When I compare his work with mine, it is clear that I have covered only a small fraction of this area compared to what he has achieved. Accompanied by his wife, an accomplished photographer, Carl has photographed hundreds of ape-men fossils and even filmed the dig sites where they were discovered. The Werners also conducted detailed interviews with 43 of the leading experts working in the field of human evolution. This was an easy part of his work because most paleontologists are happy to talk about their research. While interviewing scientists, the author never disclosed his reasons for questioning human evolution, though he appeared to be seeking evidence that would either confirm or refute the theory.

The author, Carl Werner, graduated summa cum laude from the University of Missouri with distinction in biology. He then received his doctoral degree in medicine at age 23 and practiced family medicine in St. Louis until he retired to work full-time researching the claims of human evolution.

How He Became Interested in Human Evolution

In his sophomore year of college, Werner, then an evolutionist, was challenged by a fellow classmate to prove evolution. Disturbed by his classmate’s criticisms of Darwinism, Werner began his quest for an answer. Motivated by his rigorous scientific training and innate curiosity, Dr. Werner dove into every evolutionary claim he could find—exploring evidence from paleontology, geology, biology, and even biochemistry.  From 1997 to the present—nearly three decades—Dr. Werner has traveled more than 300,000 miles to museums and dig sites worldwide, photographing thousands of original fossils and, whenever possible, the rock layers where they were discovered. After 18 years of study (1979–1997), he launched a series of books to test the claims of human evolution—what he came to call his ‘Grand Experiment’ to uncover the truth.

The response of critics to his work

Surprisingly, an internet search for Werner and his project turned up nothing—an unusual situation for a creationist researcher. This lack of attention has actually worked in his favor allowing him to pursue his work with fewer obstacles than most creationists face. One possible reason for this is that none of his five major books or the numerous articles about him in creation journals mention his personal religious beliefs, even though most  websites covering his work are sponsored by creationists.[1] He even avoids Biblical terms such as ’kind,’ opting instead for the more neutral term ‘type’.

This is unusual because even articles that merely hint at undermining evolution are typically challenged by Darwinists. For example, an article in the journal Science by Swedish Lund University professor Charles Kurland et al., titled “Genomics and the Irreducible Nature of Eukaryote Cells”[2] slipped past peer review but quickly drew criticism from evolutionists. In response, William Martin, a botany professor at the University of Düsseldorf, wrote this:

“most disturbing, if contemporary eukaryote cells are truly of ‘irreducible nature’ as Kurland et al.’s title declares, then no stepwise evolutionary process could have possibly brought about their origin, and processes other than evolution must be invoked. Is there a hidden message in their paper?”[3]

Even Wikipedia has ignored Werner. One reason for his absence from evolutionary literature may be the meticulous documentation behind his work—including thousands of photographs, videos, and personal interviews with leading evolutionists. His fifth volume alone spans 420 pages of dense text and includes abstracts from 2,600 references, many drawn from French, German, Spanish, and Dutch sources.

Another reason Werner’s work may be overlooked is its depth—it’s far from light reading and assumes some background in the subject. Taken as a whole, however, the five volumes present so compelling a case against evolution that, if one reads even a few pages a day, all but the most committed evolutionists are likely to be convinced.

Contents of the Latest Volumes

Of the five volumes, I will review only the newest ones, volumes 3, 4, and 5. Volume 3 addresses my primary interest: the frauds that have plagued evolution since before Darwin, as well as some of the most famous claims of so-called missing links. Drawing on his extensive travel and research, Werner meticulously documents—through photographs and expert quotations—over 150 cases of fraud or erroneous claims in the field of human evolution. Some of the better-known examples in Volume 3 include Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Lucy, the Taung Child, and the Orce Ape-Man.

Volume 4 covers the following cases, most of which are an embarrassment for evolutionists today, although some continue to be supported by various leading evolutionists. Apart from the notorious Piltdown Man hoax, over 100 other cases were also covered.

Some examples included:

• Claims that modern humans evolved from Black Africans, Native American Indians, Aboriginal Australians, Chinese, Mongolians, Papua New Guineans, Indians (from India), Inuit (Eskimos, pp. 4-12), Aboriginal Sri Lankans, South American Aboriginal Fuegians, Andaman Islanders, Polynesian Islanders, and Jews. He then covers other ape-men that were created from relatively recently buried humans. One reason this occurs is because under certain conditions, fossilization can occur in a relatively short period of time. One well-documented case in the literature was the Boskop Man from South Africa fraud.
• Ape-men created as a result of paleoanthropologists altering fossils (pp. 29).
• Werner analyzed 41 fossil specimens previously identified as separate hominid species, which later research confirmed belong to a single species, Neanderthals. (p. 43).
• Scores of other lesser-known cases of fraud or wrong identification (pp. 222-228).

Werner’s Human Evolution: The Grand Experiment documents in great detail the fact that none of the so-called ape-men fossils, including Lucy, are fossils of ape-men, but are either fully human or fossils of some extinct primate. Using photocopies from the original evolutionary literature, highlighting the past claims made and referencing the latest peer reviewed research, Dr. Werner shows that every single ape-man claim that he evaluated is without foundation. In so doing, he confirms my conclusion that human evolution will be disproved, not by creationists, but by evolutionists themselves in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

The 1,800 references comprising 433 pages (which required a separate volume, Volume 5) and thousands of color pictures in this volume, review the claimed 200 species of ape-men that have been overturned. The interviews with leading evolutionists alone are worth the price of the book.

If Dr. Carl Werner’s bold challenges to human evolution in The Grand Experiment are flawed, one would think that evolutionary scientists would eagerly publish rebuttals in major journals. However, so far the response has been silence, which suggests that his arguments and information questioning the validity of human evolution hold significant weight.

Summary

Carl Werner’s 5-volume set The Grand Experiment is a critical resource for those interested in the question “where did man come from?” Was man created or did he evolve? It is incumbent on evolutionists to either effectively refute this 5-volume work or accept the conclusion that the case against human evolution is both strong and well-documented. As once said about these debates, either put up or shut up.

References

[1] “Living fossils: A powerful argument for creation,” Don Batten interviews Dr. Carl Werner, Creation 33(2):20, April 2011.

[2] Kurland, C.G., L.J. Collins, and D. Penny, “Genomics and the irreducible nature of eukaryote cells,” Science 312(5776):1011-1014, 19 May 2006.

[3] Martin, W., et al., “The evolution of eukaryotes,” Science 316(5824):542-543, 27 April 2007.

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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.