Posted on 02/21/2005 9:44:35 AM PST by FNU LNU
History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud
Flamboyant anthropologist falsified dating of key discoveries
Luke Harding in Berlin Saturday February 19, 2005 The Guardian
It appeared to be one of archaeology's most sensational finds. The skull fragment discovered in a peat bog near Hamburg was more than 36,000 years old - and was the vital missing link between modern humans and Neanderthals.
This, at least, is what Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten - a distinguished, cigar-smoking German anthropologist - told his scientific colleagues, to global acclaim, after being invited to date the extremely rare skull.
However, the professor's 30-year-old academic career has now ended in disgrace after the revelation that he systematically falsified the dates on this and numerous other "stone age" relics.
Yesterday his university in Frankfurt announced the professor had been forced to retire because of numerous "falsehoods and manipulations". According to experts, his deceptions may mean an entire tranche of the history of man's development will have to be rewritten.
"Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago," said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. "Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish."
The scandal only came to light when Prof Protsch was caught trying to sell his department's entire chimpanzee skull collection to the United States. An inquiry later established that he had also passed off fake fossils as real ones and had plagiarised other scientists' work.
His discovery appeared to show that Neanderthals had spread much further north than was previously known. But his university inquiry was told that a crucial Hamburg skull fragment, which was believed to have come from the world's oldest German, a Neanderthal known as Hahnhöfersand Man, was actually a mere 7,500 years old, according to Oxford University's radiocarbon dating unit. The unit established that other skulls had been wrongly dated too.
Another of the professor's sensational finds, "Binshof-Speyer" woman, lived in 1,300 BC and not 21,300 years ago, as he had claimed, while "Paderborn-Sande man" (dated at 27,400 BC) only died a couple of hundred years ago, in 1750.
"It's deeply embarrassing. Of course the university feels very bad about this," Professor Ulrich Brandt, who led the investigation into Prof Protsch's activities, said yesterday. "Prof Protsch refused to meet us. But we had 10 sittings with 12 witnesses.
"Their stories about him were increasingly bizarre. After a while it was hard to take it seriously. You had to laugh. It was just unbelievable. At the end of the day what he did was incredible."
During their investigation, the university discovered that Prof Protsch, 65, a flamboyant figure with a fondness for gold watches, Porsches and Cuban cigars, was unable to work his own carbon-dating machine. Instead, after returning from Germany to America, where he did his doctorate, and taking up a professorship, he had simply made things up. In one case he had claimed that a 50 million-year-old "half-ape" called Adapis had been found in Switzerland, an archaeological sensation. In reality, the ape had been dug up in France, where several other examples had already been found.
Prof Terberger said that he grew suspicious about the professor's work in 2001 after sending off the skull fragment to Oxford for tests.
Further tests revealed that all of the skulls dated by Prof Protsch were in reality far younger than he had claimed, prompting Prof Terberger and a British colleague, Martin Street, to write a scientific paper last year.
At the same time, German police began investigating the professor for fraud, following allegations that he had tried to sell the university's 278 chimpanzee skulls for $70,000 to a US dealer.
Why, though, had he done it?
"If you find a skull that's more than 30,000 years old it's a sensation. If you find three of them people notice you. It's good for your career," Prof Terberger said. "At the end of the day it was about ambition."
Other details of the professor's life also appeared to crumble under scrutiny. Before he disappeared from the university's campus last year, Prof Protsch told his students he had examined Hitler's and Eva Braun's bones.
He also boasted of having flats in New York, Florida and California, where, he claimed, he hung out with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steffi Graf. Even the professor's aristocratic title, "von Zieten", appears to be bogus.
Far from being the descendant of a dashing general in the hussars, the professor was the son of a Nazi MP, Wilhelm Protsch, Der Spiegel magazine revealed last October.
The university is investigating how thousands of documents lodged in the anthropology department relating to the Nazis' gruesome scientific experiments in the 1930s were mysteriously shredded, allegedly under the professor's instructions. They also discovered that some of the 12,000 skeletons stored in the department's "bone cellar" were missing their heads, apparently sold to friends of the professor in the US and sympathetic dentists. Yesterday the university admitted that it should have discovered the professor's fabrications far earlier. But it pointed out that, like all public servants in Germany, the high-profile anthropologist was virtually impossible to sack, and had also proved difficult to pin down.
"He was perfect at being evasive," Prof Brandt said yesterday. "He would switch from saying 'it isn't really clear' to giving diffuse statements. "I'm not a psychologist so I can't say why he did it. But my guess is that when he came back from the States 30 years ago he realised he wasn't up to the job of being a professor. So he started inventing things. It rapidly became a habit.'
Yesterday the professor, who lives in Mainz with his wife Angelina, didn't respond to emails from the Guardian asking him to comment on the affair. But in earlier remarks to Der Spiegel he insisted that he was the victim of an "intrigue".
"All the disputed fossils are my personal property," he told the magazine.
Missing links and planted stone age finds
Piltdown Man
The most infamous of all scientific frauds was unearthed in 1912 in a Sussex gravel pit. With its huge human-like braincase and ape-like jaw, the Piltdown Man "fossil" was named Eoanthropus dawsoni after Charles Dawson, the solicitor and amateur archaeologist who discovered it. For 40 years Piltdown Man was heralded as the missing link between humans and their primate ancestors. But in 1953 scientists concluded it was a forgery. Radiocarbon dating showed the human skull was just 600 years old, while the jawbone was that of an orang-utan. The entire package of fossil fragments found at Piltdown - which included a prehistoric cricket bat - had been planted.
The devil's archaeologist
Japanese archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura was so prolific at uncovering prehistoric artefacts he earned the nickname "God's hands". At site after site, Fujimura discovered stoneware and relics that pushed back the limits of Japan's known history. The researcher and his stone age finds drew international attention and rewrote text books. In November 2000 the spell was broken when a newspaper printed pictures of Fujimura digging holes and burying objects that he later dug up and announced as major finds. "I was tempted by the devil. I don't know how I can apologise for what I did," he said.
Piltdown Turkey
The supposed fossil of Archaeoraptor, which was to become known as the "Piltdown turkey", came to light in 1999 when National Geographic magazine published an account of its discovery. It seemed to show another missing link - this time between birds and dinosaurs. Archaeoraptor appeared to be the remains of a large feathered bird with the tail of a dinosaur. The fossil was smuggled out of China and sold to a private collector in the US for £51,000. Experts were suspicious and closer examination showed the specimen to be a "composite" - two fossils stuck together with strong glue.
David Adam
As your are positioning yourself as an anti-religious bigot, I think it's astounding that you could have such a cloud of religiosity, and blind faith with regards to your beliefs regarding 'science'.
But, have at it. I suppose if 'Christianity' were so bad, it should go the way of the Ba'al cults. It's got staying power, I'll give it that.
We'll see about the religio-evo creed. Maybe it'll last a couple of thousand years, too. I doubt it. But, it's religious fervor may just push it on, you never know.
Such as?
Good find FNU. Looks like Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens didn't mix. Teddy Kennedy must have been a one-off.
LOL!
Not sure what you mean about him using "Creationist's tactics". The YECs don't accept c14 dating and the OEC have no reason to manipulate the dates. Can you give some names to your serious accusations, or are simply using the Clintonian defense of attempting to muck up everyone else's reputation because your own man's is mucked up?
The article even paints him a Nazi sympathizer, a natural outgrowth of Darwinian thinking.
The only thing I am curios about is that the 7,500 year old skull fragment that was said to be Neanderthal. Did he fake the identity as well as the date, or where there a few hold outs as recently as 7,500 years? THAT would be a big story.
> As your are positioning yourself as an anti-religious bigot
Define "anti-religious bigot."
> I suppose if 'Christianity' were so bad,
Who said anythign about Christianity being "bad?" You seem to protest too much.
> it should go the way of the Ba'al cults. It's got staying power, I'll give it that.
As does Judaism, Hinduism, Zoroastrionism, Islam, sub-Saharan animism...
Now. Are you going to sit there and tell me that none of those have religious "lies" at their core?
> We'll see about the religio-evo creed.
There is, so far as I know, no religion based on evolution, just as there is, so far as I know, no religions based on the theories of relativity and gravity either.
> Not sure what you mean about him using "Creationist's tactics".
Lying and falsification of data.
> Can you give some names to your serious accusations
Start with Duane Gish and Michael behe and go from there.
> Nazi sympathizer, a natural outgrowth of Darwinian thinking.
Incorrect. Nazis were Creationists to the core. They bought into Theosophical babblings about mankind having been created perfect in some golden age.
What religious lies would you be talking about?
> What religious lies would you be talking about?
Put a devout Christian and a devout Muslim in the same room. One will tell you that Jesus was the divien son of God. The other will tell you that Jesus was just a guy. These two beliefs are contradictory and one (or both) *must* be wrong.
Another: A Baptist and a Mormon. One will tell you that Jesus ascended into Heaven after 3 days dead (and after having a brief chat witha few of his associates) and will not bodily return until Judgement Day. The other will tell you that after being dead three days and then chatting with associates, he then went aroudn the world and talked to mesoAmericans. Again, these two beliefs cannot both be true.
A Christian and a Hindu: One says you get one shot *only*, that's it; the other says you re-incarnate a bajillion times. One or both must be wrong.
You decline to describe your passion as 'religious fervor'?
Methinks you decline too disingenuously.
Don't mess with the U.S. He may have been caught because Americans questioned this scame.
People like Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten and Bill Clinton are giving cigar smokers a bad name.
Regarding religious "lies" - one day each of us will know the truth. And I guess we'll know the scientific truth also.
The title of this article is obviously ridiculous. Science has not built its understanding of the modern history of mankind on the work of one crackpot. Science doesn't move forward based on one or two observations. Findings must be replicated by scientists from various parts of the world using their own equipment and measurments etc. Furthermore peers review the findings with a healthy skeptical eye.
Creationists don't understand how science works, only a creationist would ever think that science would have to be changed based on identifying one guy as a fraud. That's how I know a creationist wrote this headline.
Ping
Nazism was based on the atheist philosophy of Nietzsch, and eugenics, which has philosophical Darwinism underpinnings (Some races and peoples have evolved more than others). And Hitler was an occultist.
Pleasae have some basis to argue against Christianity.
> You decline to describe your passion as 'religious fervor'?
I'm not much for lies or exaggeration.
You decline to define "anti-religious bigot?"
"One or both must be wrong."
Yep. Now, here's the science side: get a strict selectionist, a strict non-selectionist, and a heterochronist in the same room trying to decide on the truth.
According to you, they would all be true.
YEC INTREP - Anthropology - S&T
Your interest in defining this anthropologist's duplicitous actions, and motivations, as that of creationists led me to believe that you didn't put much stock in accurate definitions.
> Pleasae have some basis to argue against Christianity.
Sheesh. Who said anything about Christianity? As I said, Nazis were big into *Theosophical* Creationism. Madame Blavatsky's nonsense. Please research the topic before spouting off further.
> , which has philosophical Darwinism underpinnings
No. Eugenics is something humans have been doign for thousands of years to our farm critters, and *Americans* were doign to ourselves long before the Nazis showed up. Eugenics, boiled down, is simply selective breeding, without any particular philosophical underpinning.
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