Rosio Pavoris

I really wonder who Jack Chick’s target audience is. I find it hard to believe anyone could be so deeply ignorant of human nature and science they could find any of them at all credible. In fact, I’ve yet to meet any non-Americans who don’t think they’re parodies.
Outside of the US, depending on which people you hang out with, their tract on Dungeons & Dragons (Dark Dungeons) is probably the most famous one, but another one fundies are fond of throwing around is Big Daddy?, which (near as I can tell) they think is about evolution.

Needless to say, it’s full of straw men, non-sequiturs, and just made-up bullshit. The “six basic concepts of evolution”? The nonsense about circular dating methods? The idiocy about polystrate trees? Haeckel?

Judging by how long these claims have been discredited, you might guess this tract to be somewhere between 70 and 150 years old. You’d be wrong.
The first version of the tract appeared in 1972. The current version (which is also the one on the Chick website) was written in 1992 (by our good friend Kent Hovind).
Since even AiG refuses to endorse Hovind anymore, you might think it’s time to just let this tract fade into obscurity, but apparently a lot of creationists disagree. It’s still being pushed as fact, so I think it merits a brief response.

I’m just going to address the bit that seems to be subject of copy pasta most often: the faux “human evolution” chart.

(For the other claims, and a whole lot more, I refer you to TalkOrigins’ Index.)

I’m not sure why they’re presented as if they represent a direct lineage, as nobody has ever claimed they do.
Anyway, one by one.

LUCY
Nearly all experts agree Lucy was just a three foot tall chimpanzee.

That’s a very idiosyncratic definition of the word “expert”. Lucy is an Australopithecus afarensis, and as such does have a rather chimpanzee-like skull (with the exception of the teeth and jaw, both of which are much more human-like), but as is evident from this reconstruction, for instance, she’s far from being a chimpanzee. A. afarensis is bipedal, for fuck’s sake.
Evidently Hovind has never seen an actual chimpanzee.

(This is one of the few things he changed from the 1972 edition, by the way. Before this, it read “most experts now agree that Lucy was only an unusual chimpanzee not a missing link”. Still bullshit, of course.)

HEIDELBERG MAN
Built from a jaw bone that was conceded by many to be quite human.

Evidently “many” again does not include actual biologists. The Heidelberg Man is in the genus Homo (Homo heidelbergensis, creatively enough), so maybe that’s whence the confusion stems.
The first H. heidelbergensis fossil found (in 1907) was just a mandible, but a fair number of complete skeletons have been found since. Claiming it was “built from a jaw bone” was already retarded in 1972. The fact that it survived the 1992 rewrite speaks volumes about creationists’ interest in accuracy and truth.

NEBRASKA MAN
Scientifically built up from one tooth, later found to be the tooth of an extinct pig.

I like the use of the word “scientifically” there. I’m surprised they didn’t put scare quotes around it.
It’s true that Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, which the media of the time dubbed “Nebraska Man”, was described by Osborn on the basis of a single tooth found in Nebraska, which later turned out to belong to an extinct species of peccary (not pig, but close enough). However, Osborn’s hypothetical ape species was never believed to be an ancestor of modern humans, and it never gained traction with the scientific community at large.

When his mistake was discovered three years later, Osborn withdrew his classification and the whole thing was basically forgotten by everyone except dishonest creationists who keep repeating the story even though it doesn’t even support their own pet hypothesis.

If anything, this is an example of how science works to expurgate bogus claims.

PILTDOWN MAN
The jawbone turned out to belong to a modern ape.

Indeed it did. The jawbone belonged to an orang-utan, the teeth to a chimpanzee, and the skull was a modern human’s. The Piltdown Man is an example of a deliberate archaeological hoax, and a long-lived one at that.
However, guess who discredited it in the end? If you guessed creationists, I suggest you take another guess.

The Piltdown Man was discredited in the early 1950s. It’s telling that it’s still being repeated as evidence against human evolution.

PEKING MAN
Supposedly 500,000 years old, but all evidence has disappeared.

More like 250,000-400,000 years old, actually, and the claim that “all evidence has disappeared” is a plain lie.
The first remains were discovered in the 1920s, and those were lost during WW2, that’s true (though casts and descriptions remain), but the excavations resumed after the war, and in 1966 (six years before the first version of this tract, you’ll note), more fragments were found.

NEANDERTHALL MAN
At the Int’l. Congress of Zoology (1958) Dr. A. J. E. Cave said that his examination showed that this famous skeleton found in France over 50 years ago is that of an old man who suffered from arthritis.

What’s your point? What Cave meant is very much not that this is just a modern human who was mistaken for a “pre-human” because of his age and arthritis; he just pointed out that this particular Neanderthal was old when he died, and suffered from arthritis. Modern humans are hardly the only species to suffer from arthritis (even dinosaurs did), or to grow old.

Also, note the implication that there is only one Neanderthal skeleton. In fact, over five hundred have been found (many of them long before this tract was written), including many without arthritis, and they’re very obviously not modern humans.
The first skulls were found in 1829, and the type specimen was found in 1856, not “50 years ago”. I’m not sure which one Cave was talking about (or, for that matter, who Cave is).

NEW GUINEA MAN
Dates way back to 1970. This species has been found in the region just north of Australia.

That’s nice.
Did they just include this one to see if people were still paying attention? It’s hardly damning.

But even though it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the argument, they still manage to fuck this one up.
To the best of my (and, apparently, the internet’s) knowledge, only one human fossil has ever been found in New Guinea, and that was in the 1940s. It was also only about 5,000 years old and an example of Homo sapiens sapiens. That is, a modern human. It’s completely irrelevant to the discussion.

CRO-MAGNON MAN
One of the earliest and best established fossils is at least equal in physique and brain capacity to modern man… so what’s the difference?

Oh man, Jack Chick is asking the tough questions! Cro-Magnon, which no scientist has ever claimed is not Homo sapiens sapiens, is in fact quite like modern man, therefore God!

(Also note the implication that evolution is a trend towards improvement (”at least equal”). Yet another hint at the depths of creationist ignorance.)

MODERN MAN
This genius thinks we came from a monkey.

APES AND MONKEYS ARE THE SAME THING RITE?
The condescending Bible quote at the end is particularly ironic.

It’s interesting how about four thousand hominid fossils had been found as of 1976, and Chick only managed to find issue with a handful of them, and still managed to get all of them wrong (and had to pull one out of his ass).
It’s even more interesting how idiots all across America buy his bullshit.

No wonder the US is a laughing stock.