Stone carvings adorning the temples of Angkor, reclaimed from the jungles of modern-day Cambodia, depict aspects of everyday life along with Hindu and Buddhist mythology. They are 800 years old.
One of the glyphs appears to show what even most children today would readily identify as Stegosaurus, a dinosaur that evolutionary paleontologists say became extinct millions of years ago—supposedly long before man walked on this planet.
So how to explain the stegosaur glyph? There were no paleontology textbooks 800 years ago to show the ancient carvers what a reconstructed stegosaur fossil would have looked like. Clearly, the evolutionary history is wrong. Instead, dinosaurs once lived alongside man, just as the Bible says (Genesis 1:24–28, 6:19–20, 8:15–19; Job 40:15–19), which explains how the ancient people of Angkor could know what a stegosaur looked like.
One of the glyphs appears to show what even most children today would readily identify as Stegosaurus, a dinosaur that evolutionary paleontologists say became extinct millions of years ago—supposedly long before man walked on this planet.
So how to explain the stegosaur glyph? There were no paleontology textbooks 800 years ago to show the ancient carvers what a reconstructed stegosaur fossil would have looked like. Clearly, the evolutionary history is wrong. Instead, dinosaurs once lived alongside man, just as the Bible says (Genesis 1:24–28, 6:19–20, 8:15–19; Job 40:15–19), which explains how the ancient people of Angkor could know what a stegosaur looked like.
by David Catchpoole (CMI)
7 comments:
Here's one discussion of it from a non-creationist viewpoint.
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php?p=196
Interesting article. Of course someone would go out of the way to take something that can be described by a kindergartner and completely complicate the interpretation. Highdesert, let me ask you this question. If you were walking around in that area and you saw that carving on the wall, what is the very first thing that would come to your mind when contemplating what it was? Wouldn't you just observe the obvious? And this is just one example of many. Will you explain them all away secularly or send me an article from the non creationist view to invalidate all the accounts? How do you explain Bishop Bell's Brass Behemoths?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v25/i4/bishop.asp
Here's the problem. The evidence for an old earth, and for evolution, and for the idea that all current life forms came from some original ancestral type, and the idea that all (or virtually all) dinosaurs (except for birds) were gone millions of years before humans appeared, that evidence has been overwhelmingly convincing to the scientific community. For science, the argument is essentially over.
That's not to say that new, strong, evidence wouldn't change that. But there is so much evidence that would have to be reasonably countered that the chance of that happening is very remote. So all the things you bring up from creationist sites as evidence are likely to be unconvincing. For instance the earth IS old, according to the evidence, so there can't be evidence that points to a young earth. Whatever supposed evidence they describe is likely to be incorrect or else simplified or distorted to sound good to someone not in the field but that doesn't actually show what they claim it shows. That's the bottom line. It's not that science is closed-minded, it's that the time when the two views were both reasonable to consider was in the past. The evidence made it clear which view was correct and science moved on. New evidence such as genomics has agreed with and strengthened the evolutionary theory.
The creationism supporters may say it doesn't, and they may say it in a way that sounds learned, but in fact they're wrong. Science does conflict with Genesis.
If you must believe in a literal Genesis, okay, but you are stuck with the fact that it is unsupported by science and is in conflict with the findings of science. Your only choice is to either assume that God made the world such that it appears to be old and animals appeared to have evolved, even though they were actually created recently and separately or you can accept the conflict between Genesis and science as a mystery.
Because of this, any time you post something, there's probably an evolution site that has a response to it. (And because creationists are desperate to maintain the appearance that Genesis is not undercut by science, there are many creationism sites that claim science is wrong.) That's just the way it is.
Do you take that Bishop Bell's Behemoths site seriously? Funny how they gave the lengths of the brass carving but not the width. You can't tell from that site how thick that line of carving is, but it looks pretty skinny. Too bad there was a glare in the photo of the heads so it's hard to see clearly. But medieval artists, and artists in general, sometimes do contort their animal figures in order to make them fit into limiting spaces. (The Book of Kells might have some examples in their letters and decorations.)
Artists are not all equally good at drawing their figures. And artists can make realistic animals but they can also make stylized animals. Can you seriously think that those carvings are any kind of evidence at all for dinosaurs? They're more likely to be dogs or cats playing. If there were giant dinosaurs roaming England, do you think the only evidence we'd have would be a tiny little sketch in a border on someone's monument?
Those same things are true for the Cambodian carving. It's small - only 5 1/2" across apparently. If there were stegosaurus roaming around, would the only depiction that one small craving? The only thing about that carving that makes you think 'stegosaurus' is the line of plates on the back. Otherwise, it looks more like the shape of a hippo or rhino or pig to me. (And that site I posted the link for suggested chameleons, although people in the comments had disagreements with that suggestion.)
Is it supposed to be accurate? Then it looks nothing like a stegosaurus except for the plates - and they are not accurately shaped plates. Is it supposed to be stylized? Then it could be a stylized representation of a rhino (or a lizard etc.). Is it supposed to be mythological? Then it could be any old thing the carver could think of, including the addition of features on the back. Is it supposed to be decorative? Maybe the artist liked the scallops along the edge. One way or another, it does not work as any kind of evidence.
The reason a 5-year-old American child would say 'stegosaurus' is not because any kindergartner has ever sen a stegosaurus. It's because they have seen artists' drawings and models of stegosaurus. Some have been attempts to make anatomically accurate drawings (best guess). Others are cartoon versions, like the Disney movie, or children's books. The one feature that little kids learn that distinguishes a stegosaurus from other dinosaurs or animals is the general shape of the bony plates. Because of the way cartoons are drawn, the rest of the animal's shape can be changed - for kids' cartoons, the shape might be rounded and softened - and the exact shape of the plates can be changed. The key thing is some kind of plates on the back. So when if a kid looks at that carving and says stegosaurus, it's because American kids have been taught that any kind of plates on the back of a four-legged animal is a key for stegosaurus. That's the cartoon symbol for a stegosaurus. A Cambodian kid, maybe not exposed to a hundred cartoon and toy dinosaurs but maybe seeing chameleons in the wild (I don't know about this though), might not think stegosaurus at all, but might think chameleon or might think decorated pig.
did you ever think that maybe someone recently carved it to make it look as old as the other carvings?
My friend, this can't be so because this temple is 800 years old and dinosaur bones were only discovered in the mid 1800's. Here is the rest of the temple/city
(copy and past into your url address bar)
http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks-cambodia.htm
When I first saw that picture I thought it was a stylised picture of a pangolin with its back arched, possibly climbing. They are difficult to draw, but the scales are that shape.
Its got to be a more likely explanation than dinosaurs living 800 years ago.
I scarecly see the resemblance;
http://www.modernizedcaveman.com/pics/pangolin.jpg
Just curious, why does it have to be any other thing than an actual dinosaur? Your making the assumption that evolution MUST be true and Dinosaurs have had to live 65 million years ago when modern evidence shows otherwise. There is much evidence that man lived with dinosaurs. Try to keep an open mind when doing your research and I guarantee a new world will be opened to you. Don't take my word for it, look at the evidence and then draw a reasonable and logical conclusion for yourself. Thanks for your comments.
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