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
You and shubi and some other extremist evos have the nasty habit of assuming that someone who does not see the evidence the same way you do MUST BE LYING.
So scientists never have any other agenda than discovering the truth?
Without "scientists", where would "science" be?
Your lame arguments are becoming tiring.
Yes they do. It is a serious character flaw.
> extremist evos
Translation: anyone who recognizes that evolution happens.
How can anything be believed coming from these "scientist" where truth and facts do not matter but ingraining a lie to prove God wrong does. This field has become a sad joke.
Without "scientists", where would "science" be?
What exactly is the whole theory of humanity in Europe?
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.
...
Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together.
...
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
...
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.
OK, he got the dates wrong. But do the bone fragments still belong to Neanderthal? Including the ones from 5,500 B.C., 1,300 B.C. and 1750 A.D.?
If so we have a HUGH and SERIES discovery of monumental proportions.
Everything I can find says that Neanderthal became extinct around 30,000 years ago. Does this article say that they survived till as recently as 1750? Even redating their extinction to 5,500 B.C. (7,500 years ago) would be a discovery worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Or is it simply as badly written as most other MSM tripe about science?
Enquiring minds want to know. And they'll probably believe whatever drivel Dan Blather and Peter Jennings shove down their throats.
We thought your posts defined the term pretty well.
> just one more in a very long list of frauds in the anthropology field
A shorter list than that of religious frauds, to be sure.
> their fanaticism to prove God wrong
Ah. I *love* that! I'm sure there were those who thought Galileo, Kepler, Newton, et al. were out to "prove God wrong" too.
Hey, you got the last word. Congratulations.
Oh, jeez, now it's me.
Well, that just reeks, don' it?
See you down the road.
Maybe this prof can team up with Ward Churchill and make a double header.
You might want to study most of these early scientist and what motivated them. I think you might be in for a huge supprise, they were not out to prove God wrong.
> they were not out to prove God wrong
And *AMAZINGLY* neither are the vast majority of modern scientists. That anti-God conspiracy only exists in the fevered imaginations of those whose weak faith causes them to seek out opportunities to act the victim.
Yes there have been many religious frauds but the difference, the Christian world does not back them (once the Bible was in the language of the people) they demand proof.
At this point I am not sure that the list is that much longer for the religious frauds having spent time studying the Anthropology frauds. Both are an interesting study though, for the honest.
> Yes there have been many religious frauds but the difference, the Christian world does not back them
Uh-huh. One word: Televangelists.
No, they were not until recently say the past century, getting worse as the century and indoctrination went on. The "fevered imaginations" do not have to have those imaginations taxed very hard when they come across fraud after fraud all in one field. Weakness of faith has nothing to do with it, just common sense. I do not need to be Christian to want a science field to work in provable facts.
If you think that they are seeking out opportunities to act the victim would be misreading the situation (quite obvious), I would say they are seeking to know the truth not fall for lies....but then this is the one "scientific" field that has seen the need to present so many lies where as the other fields work in facts.
When this field begins to work in provable facts not crack science and frauds, then it might be given the respect of the other scientific fields. Until then it deserves all the skepticism years of history and false claims and practical jokes have given it. So far this field of "science" has needed more faith to believe in it than Scientology.
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