State of Protest

Upon reading the news that A. Afarensis Lucy was “on tour” with her world premier in Houston, I eagerly awaited the exhibit’s opening. On a beautiful September morning, Mom (me), Dad, and the kids climbed into the car to see this famous 3.2 million-year-old fossil. We prepared our children with the expectation that Mom and Dad would be “taking a very long time” reviewing the entire exhibit. And we did. The exhibit is incredible.

Dirk Van Tuerenhout, Ph.D., Curator of Anthropology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science is the man behind this news-breaking exhibit. I had the opportunity to interview him, with questions related to Lucy, evolution, and human ancestry.

Dirk, the foremost question on my mind is in regard to the Australopithecus Afarensis “Lucy” exhibit at our local museum in Houston. I have had the unique opportunity to see this fossil. Lucy is the grand finale to the Ethiopia exhibit on display until April 2008 at the museum. I remain impressed by the entire exhibit, and plan on visiting a few more times before April arrives.
If I remember correctly, a section of the Lucy exhibit contains fossils of early hominids, including homo sapiens. There are also educational time-lines present in the exhibit, assisting the visitor in gaining perspective of how very removed we are from 3.2 million years ago. These help trace what we currently know about human evolution.

Have you received criticism from proponents of “Intelligent Design” or those that reject evolution? If so, do the critics engage you in dialogue?

I have received reactions from people who are proponents of Creationism and ID. They come in many formats, ranging from comments left in our guest books, as well as emails sent to the museum. I engage these individuals in a dialogue when possible – none of those who leave comments in our guest books leave a phone number or email. Occasionally I also hear from our docents that ID proponents will come through the exhibit and challenge the docents.

Have you anecdotes of a particularly amusing or volatile conversation?

I have received emails from school groups and teachers who either have been to the exhibit or have heard of it. In the latter case, there was one email from a Christian Academy in Scottsdale, AZ. The questions they raised were: did we share with our visitors the facts that

a. One of Lucy’s knee joints was found 1.5 miles away from the rest of the skeleton and

b. Some of the remaining bones were said to have been found 50 feet down.

I replied asking where these allegations come from – this is always step one: please identify your sources. The answer was vague but informative enough: “books written by creationists.”

I checked in with the website TalkOrigins and very easily found an outline of these allegations and rebuttal materials. Specifically, it amounted to two favorite tactics used by creationist proponents: incorrect representation or conflation of the information at hand. The knee joint turned out to be another knee joint, also belonging to an A. afarensis [but not Lucy], which was found by Johanson in 1973. He never made the claim that it was Lucy’s knee joint, but creationist sources clearly did. What we have here at best is an unintentional conflation of a Lucy knee joint and another A. afarensis knee joint (a Lucy-like joint) and at worst…? The reference to “50 feet down” does not mean that they were digging 50 feet down, although it does imply it, but rather that the archaeologists went up and down the slope over a distance of 50 feet.

I sent this information to the teacher and she was very appreciative of the fact I had sent her an answer. Typically, she indicated, people do not bother (read: the scientific community. I am sure that any creationist source would be bending over backwards to answer promptly and exhaustively). She went on to say that she had printed out the document I had sent and that she would spend a class period on the topic. That is all I can ask for: please take the scientific data and share it with your students.

What are your favorite strategies when having these discussions?

I make it a point to always answer any questions. This needs to be done, because otherwise we run the risk of being accused of not having an answer or being unwilling to respond. I also make sure to stay away from engaging in a discussion regarding religious topics – many emails are replete with Bible quotations – preferring instead to zero in on specific scientific statements. Any statements in this regard tend to suffer from conflation or misquotation and are much easier to refute, point by point. I tend to get answers back that abound with more Bible quotes and very little science. Usually I will reply one or two more times. Then I end the conversation with a polite thanks to the other person.

As I viewed and participated in the exhibit, I wondered: “this history - all that science has shown us of these fossils - is this enough to turn the minds of those that reject evolutionary theory?”

I don’t think that one can change the mind of those who favor creationism. That is not my goal either. What I do want to achieve is to reply to every single email and allegation that comes my way. We cannot afford to not do this, or else we go the way of the dodo in the court of public opinion.

Next week, I will post the remainder of the interview, which will focus on human ancestry.

-Mutha