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Beyond Stone & Bone

Native American Creationists
by Heather Pringle
August 22, 2008

Creation When a fundamentalist Christian organization, Answers in Genesis, opened a Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, in May 2007, scientists were quick to weigh in with their criticism. The Answers in Genesis organization believes, according to its website, that the Bible is “the history book of the universe,” providing “a reliable, eyewitness account of the beginning of all things.” Moreover, it claims that the Bible “can be trusted to tell the truth in all areas it touches on.”

Not surprisingly, the organization roundly rejects evolution, and its strict adherence to the Biblical creation story produced some very strange museum exhibits. One gallery, for example, placed a model of a Jurassic dinosaur, Stegosaurus,  on the deck of Noah’s Ark—much to the dismay of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). “Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level,” noted a NCSE statement. “These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis.”

The concerns over the Creation Museum may seem a little remote from archaeology, but I have become increasingly worried in recent months over the rise of a different but no less worrying brand of creationism—a strict belief in the origin stories of Native Americans.

These stories vary widely from tribe to tribe, but many describe a similar sacred narrative. A female creator falls from the sky at the beginning of time,  when water covers the earth. To create forests and meadows, animals dive to the bottom to bring back mud. When one finally succeeds, sky woman pats this muck on the back of a turtle, and creates both land and the first humans. This Turtle Island, say the storytellers, is North America.

Handed down by generations of elders, these stories are rich in metaphor and poetry. But lately I have heard educated young Native Americans take a surprisingly hard line on them, describing their elders’ stories as reliable accounts of the beginning of the world and insisting that their ancestors were “always” here in North America.

I think this is a worrying development. It rejects out of hand a mountain of archaeological, linguistic and DNA evidence showing that the first Native Americans were Asia migrants who trekked on foot across the vast grasslands of Beringia or paddled in boats along the northern Pacific rim more than 13,000 years ago. And it panders to an increasingly strident strain of anti-science in our society.

Many archaeologists have been reluctant to take Native Americans to task on this. They know all too well how aboriginal tribes suffered from the suppression of traditional spirituality by white missionaries and others in the past.  But I don’t think archaeologists can afford to turn a blind eye to this new creationist challenge. Let me tell you why.

Chris diCarlo, a sessional lecturer at Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, turned up at class one day in 2005 wearing a T-shirt saying “We are all Africans.” DiCarlo was teaching a course on critical thinking, and he planned to discuss the Out of Africa theory, which suggests that all modern humans originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago. During his lecture, diCarlo, a former visiting research scholar in Harvard’s Department of Anthropology and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, carefully presented the evidence for this theory. But an aboriginal student took offence at the material. She approached him after class, and apparently told him pointblank that “My people don’t believe what you are saying.” She also lodged a complaint with the university. As a result, diCarlo, who had previously been shortlisted for a full-time teaching position at the university, was passed over.

DiCarlo has now bounced back from all this. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, and in 2008 he won the province’s Best Lecturer Award. But the morals of the story are clear to me: archaeologists can’t afford to pay lip service to stories any more at the expense of science. And they need to better engage the public with the real evidence of archaeology.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.

14 comments for "Native American Creationists"

  • Reply posted by Michael (August 24, 2008, 11:56 pm):

    Chris diCarlo was passed over a full-time teaching position because a complaint was lodged? What kind of third-rate institution wouldn’t first suss out the merit of the complaint first?

    The “aboriginal” student can believe whatever she wants and even raise the question in class. But Chris did right by presenting and engaging the evidence when he defended his position.

    What kind of environment is this becoming where we have to be PC and can’t revel in our disagreements in public anymore?

         

  • Reply posted by Phyllis Lowry (August 28, 2008, 5:28 am):

    Apparently you are not up to date on an earlier discovery. A site called “Topper Site” along the Savannah River in Allendale County, S.C was discovered by a Dr. Albert Goodyear to contain artifacts that have been radiocarbon dated to at least 50,000 years. This is long before the ice age you reported on. According to the Science Daily the site could be even older than that. Given that homo sapiens came out of Africa around 60,000 to 80,000 years can give rise to various debates. As a native american myself I truly can appreciate this and like my elders say we have always be here.

         

  • Reply posted by Lew / Seattle, WA (September 3, 2008, 2:33 pm):

    I am disturbed, more than anything, by the fact that we seem to prefer debate and argument to discussion. I am disturbed by the great domains of art, science, and faith/philosophy each claiming exclusive understanding of the truth. We have so much to enjoy and discover through all three domains. What in the world are we fighting about when mutual respect through discussion – not debate – would enrich everyone’s understanding of the truth? If you don’t know the difference, debate is an I’m right, you’re wrong agenda. Discussion is a mutually enriching process where even subjects of great disagreement can be shared to everyone’s benefit. Why not work together to get to the truth and not one another’s throats?

         

  • Reply posted by Raymond Nardi (September 28, 2008, 12:22 pm):

    The earth revolves around the sun. fact fact fact! Science is correct on many things, no doubt about it. Here’s the irritation though. Why is it that people of faith, who have, some seem to feel, the unmitigated gall to raise questions about the idea that the Earth was formed out of a grapefruit-sized ball of matter, which in it’s turn, was formed out of nothing, and that my five times great uncle may have been a ring tailed lemur, are essentially always patted on the head and told to go back to the kid’s table and not interrupt the grownups while they’re talking? If the Bible, historically and Scientifically, is basically full of nonsense, why worry so much about people like those from Answers in Genesis?
    Also, on a slightly separate note, God never did tell Noah to take two of every CREATURE…he said two of every KIND of creature. (Well, actually, two of the unclean and seven of the clean, if you want to get technical…) Now, if for argument’s sake, you will allow that there was in fact, a Noah, a flood, and an Ark, and since Alligators and Crocodiles are, as far as I have learned, essentially Dinosaurs which have not changed in any great way since their first appearance on this planet, I would argue that there could indeed have been Dinosaurs on Noah’s ark

         

  • Reply posted by Tom (November 9, 2008, 11:22 am):

    A reply to Lew’s comment:

    I, too, am disturbed by any field of thought that claims to know the absolute truth, but that doesn’t include science which, by definition, is constantly looking for new evidence and is willing to change its mind when an old theory doesn’t stand up anymore. Only religion claims to know the absolute truth, and is unbending in that belief. Such arrogance has no place in the realm of an open-minded discipline like science.

    Regarding the peopling of the Americas, all of the confirmed evidence–and I mean all of it–points to humans migrating from Asia to North America. The few claims for humans originating in the Americas are flimsy and unsubstantiated. If some hard evidence to the contrary comes to light, then we can have a discussion, but as it stands right now, one is right and the other is dead wrong, and no amount of discussion or debate is going to change that.

    The perceived need to take absurd claims seriously might feel warm and fuzzy, but is anti-scientific and counter-productive to real research. If someone wants to seriously claim that humans originated in the Americas, let’s see him/her go out and get some real evidence before wasting the time and careers of archaeologists who do the actual hard slogging.

         

  • Reply posted by Tim (December 16, 2008, 7:36 pm):

    Did the Wilfrid Laurier hiring committee publicly announce its reasons for not hiring every one of the (surely) dozens of candidates it failed to hire, or was it only in DiCarlo’s case that this was made public? It seems rather clear who is the source of the remarkable idea that this job would have been his, but for the complaint.

    There is no shortage of academic job-seekers possessed of an apparently supernatural certainty that affirmative action, or departmental politics, or political correctness, or what have you, didn’t just play some role in the hiring, but was responsible for their personal failure to get the job. How they can know that it wouldn’t have gone to some other brave, defiant, straight, white, male teller of hard but necessary truths is never made very clear.

         

  • Reply posted by Kristy (February 6, 2009, 4:27 am):

    This is awesome !!! Good work

         

  • Reply posted by Indiana Jones (August 16, 2009, 3:31 pm):

    “Such arrogance has no place in the realm of an open-minded discipline like science.” I beg to differ.

    Didn’t the above article demonstrate how narrow-minded science can be? I’ve read other articles where (and witnessed firsthand) scientists mock anyone who belives in a different origin theory then evolution provides. I daresay it’s some scientists who are arrogant and proud.

    As an archaeology major, I’ve studied the foundations of evolution, and I must say, I’m not impressed. I think it’s time we go back and re-evaluate them. After all, isn’t that what science is about? To challenge the established wisdom?

         

  • Reply posted by Daniel Molitor (August 16, 2009, 10:04 pm):

    @ Mr. Jones:

    Please tell me you are a first year archaeology major…and that those “foundations” of evolution you studied were on some creationist website, not a real biology course.

    Modern biology is based on the principals of evolution. They have been observed, tested, retested, proven time and again. Evolution is a fact. Deal with it.

    If your “science” education hasn’t made this clear, you might want to change majors.

         

  • Reply posted by Indiana Jones (August 17, 2009, 6:47 pm):

    Daniel,
    I thank you, for you have precisely demonstrated my point.
    And yes, what I studied was in a real biology course.

         

  • Reply posted by Rick Rickerson (August 17, 2009, 9:48 pm):

    Molitor,

    the principles (not principals, please tell me you are a first year grammar major) of evolution have been observed? You mean like the couple million of years it took some wacky dinosaur family to sprout wings? I don’t really care what you believe, but one thing is crystal clear: you’ve captured the arrogance of the modern academic swimmingly. Well done!

         

  • Reply posted by Dekanogi Ulogilv (September 19, 2010, 11:53 am):

    Siyo Heather Pringle
    Respectfully, science changes it mind every year, and they can not decide if there have been INdiginous Peoples(such as my Peoples the Cherokee)for 13,000, or 40,000/50,000. But it does not matter, unless you are INdiginous to Turtle Island, as WE, are. There is NO, message here for you, the messages are for OUR children, from OUR, ancestors.
    blessings for your days.
    granny

         

  • Reply posted by Blue Wolf (September 27, 2010, 8:51 am):

    ‘When people start believing, they stop thinking.’ Words of wisdom. American Indians and Christians can ‘believe’ anything they want, but I wish they would be more mature and understand the difference between belief and scientifically accepted fact. A person can believe in what I call the ‘Santa Claus Religion’ if they want to, and fairy godmothers, and ignore reality, or they can do some hard WORK and look at facts, like artifacts.
    …The ‘Santa Claus Religion’ is being just good enough, just before Christmas, to get what you asked for in your magic letter to Santa. But being kind of bad the rest of the year. Even though there is no archaeological evidence for Santa Claus. Believing in fairy godmothers is believing in magic, but if a witch does it, it’s witchcraft. Ha ha. That’s my OPINION anyway.
    …a lot of ‘true believers’ don’t seem to understand the difference between opinion and archaeological evidence.
    …But I have a question, what if Evolution and Creation are the same thing, differenct views of the same thing? Ha ha.

         

  • Reply posted by Darryl (February 17, 2011, 11:38 am):

    The out of africa theory has been debunked, there have been many recent findings such as a tooth in the middle east which pre-dates anything found in africa. Nobody deep down believes in the out of africa theory, the only reason it is supported is becuase of modern day political correctness. Evolution is a fairytale. Polygenism is the only answer which suits the evidence.

         


About Our Blogger:

Heather Pringle is a freelance science journalist who has been writing about archaeology for more than 20 years. She is the author of Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust and The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead. For more about Heather, see our interview or visit www.lastwordonnothing.com.

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