I hope to be able to announce the latest iteration of the Eastern Woodlands Household Archaeology Data Project (EWHADP) database soon.  The last database release (containing information on over 2100 structures) was all the way back in March of 2014.  Gah!

​The project got off to a quick start in February of 2014, but stalled when I had to direct my energies elsewhere later that year. I spent the 2014-2015 academic year teaching a 4-4 at Grand Valley State University, and it was difficult to find time to do anything with the EWHADP other than teach look at the box of files and participate in a trial linking of the EWHADP database with DINAA.  GVSU undergraduate Emily Gilhooly did make some progress on the database, continuing the process of consulting the original records in order to re-code some fields and add new data to others.  

With donated cash in hand from a successful GoFundMe campaign, I was able to hire University of South Carolina doctoral student Laura Clifford to work on the project this semester.  Laura's first job is to finish the checking and re-coding of all the records currently in the database. She's working on that now.  When that task is complete, we'll make the new database available and she'll move on to the next job: adding new records.  That will involve tracking down leads from publications we've already seen as well as finding new sources of data in print publications and online. Eventually  I hope to give Laura the the keys to the EWHADP website so that she can write the "What's New" blurbs as she adds new structures, update the maps, and keep the online bibliography up to date. 

I would like to keep this project going next semester, but I'm not going to ask for more money until I have some results from this semester to demonstrate success.  

I would like to again thank those made a cash contribution to help get the EWHADP out of mothballs and running again: David Cusack, Ken Kosidlo, Josh Wells, and a donor who wishes to remain anonymous. In addition to my sincere gratitude, I have (as promised) a limited edition bumper sticker for each of you. And I owe you beers.

The anti-vaccine movement has a new ally: Nephilim enthusiasts!

If you're aware of the strange mix of Christianity and the occult that I call the Nephilim Whirlpool, you probably won't be that surprised by what you read in this bizarre post by Registered Nurse and self-described sinner and speaker of truth Donna Wasson. Writing on the website NewsWithViews.com ("Where reality shatters illusions"), Wasson rehashes a fairly typical recounting of the Nephilim as evil angel-human hybrids before launching into her description of the current science-government-Nephilim conspiracy to disrupt God's creation though government-administered vaccines:

"These Nephilim spirits are still giving advanced technological information to receptive scientists who are steeped in the occult, which includes the manipulation of DNA and the mixing of species. The end game? To once again contaminate human DNA with satanic/demon DNA as in the days of Noah, just like Jesus warned would happen in these last days. . . .
      . . . I believe the mark [of the beast] will be administered in a vaccine serum containing a nanotechnology sized chip with biological material infused in it. Think about it! Why are world governments suddenly hell-bent on forcing vaccinations on citizens? It's always been a choice before, but it's becoming mandatory in some areas.
    . . . I believe the mark of the beast will contain recombinant Nephilim/"alien" DNA, housed in some type of virus in/on the chip. . . .    
     . . . The point is, they will be infected with demonic DNA which will spread and mutate their own genetic code, turning them into something OTHER than 100% human. They will become a hybrid—a Nephilim of sorts, and thus ineligible for forgiveness.
     Remember: ONLY human beings can be saved by the blood of Jesus. The fallen Watcher angels and their progeny cannot be saved and are forever damned in the Lake of Fire. THIS is why you absolutely cannot take the mark of the beast for any reason!"

So there you have it:  if you value your path to salvation, avoid those government vaccines at all costs.  It's not just that they're potentially unsafe, but they could actually be concocted by scientists in league with the forces of Satan bent on disrupting God's plan for the world.

 That's according to a licensed medical professional in the state of Georgia, anyway.  Though Wasson acknowledges that she can't prove it, she insists that what she proposes is " not science fiction or mere whimsical thinking. It is 100% possible for events to play out exactly as I've described."

There's a clear difference between the giants of the occultist, Nephilim-centric Christianity of people like Wasson, L.A. Marzulli, and Steve Quayle and the "bigger, smarter, stronger" giants of Young Earth Creationists like Kent Hovind and Joe Taylor. Given the depth of the paranoia that's visible among Nephilim enthusiasts, it did not surprise me to find the purported connection between Nephilim and vaccines in other places (e.g., this page from 2011 and this one from 2014).  It's Wasson's status as a medical professional that I find particularly jarring in this case.  Her views make Ben Carson's milquetoast response to a question about the connection between the MMR vaccine and autism during the last GOP debate look rabidly pro-science in comparison.  Even America's first Nephilim enthusiast, Cotton Mather, was pro-vaccine.

There is plenty more to say here, but for now I'll just have to end with this:

FACEPALM!

The plausibility of my hypothesis that presidential candidate Ben Carson believes in giants was bolstered by a CNN story this morning that identified Carson as a Seventh-day Adventist.  As I mentioned briefly in this post from February, the idea that the human career has been marked by "degeneration" from the bigger, better, smarter original state of creation can be found in the 19th century writings of Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. 

White's visionary experiences began after the so-called "Great Disappointment" of 1844, when the return of Jesus Christ predicted by William Miller failed to materialize. White's prophetic visions, published in numerous books and articles, formed the basis for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church that was formally established in 1863.

White's extensive writings are available online here. I spent just a few minutes searching on terms such as "stature" and "degeneration" and wanted to share some of the passages that popped up:

1858: "I was informed that the inhabitants of earth had been degenerating, losing their strength and comeliness. Satan has the power of disease and death, and in every age the curse has been more visible, and the power of Satan more plainly seen. . .  I was informed that those who lived in the days of Noah and Abraham were more like the angels in form, in comeliness and strength. But every generation has been growing weaker, and more subject to disease, and their lives of shorter duration. Satan has been learning how to annoy men, and to enfeeble the race." (Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 1, 69.2)

1864: "After the earth was created, and the beasts upon it, the Father and Son carried out their purpose, which was designed before the fall of Satan, to make man in their own image. They had wrought together in the creation of the earth and every living thing upon it. And now God says to his Son, “Let us make man in our image.” As Adam came forth from the hand of his Creator, he was of noble height, and of beautiful symmetry. He was more than twice as tall as men now living upon the earth, and was well proportioned. His features were perfect and beautiful. His complexion was neither white, nor sallow, but ruddy, glowing with the rich tint of health. Eve was not quite as tall as Adam. Her head reached a little above his shoulders. She, too, was noble—perfect in symmetry, and very beautiful." (Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 33.2)

1864: "Those who lived before the flood, come forth with their giant-like stature, more than twice as tall as men now living upon the earth, and well proportioned. The generations after the flood were less in stature. There was a continual decrease through successive generations, down to the last that lived upon the earth." (Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 83.2)

1864: "The race of men then living [before the Flood] were of very great stature, and possessed wonderful strength. The trees were vastly larger, and far surpassing in beauty and perfect proportions anything mortals can now look upon. The wood of these trees was of fine grain and hard substance—in this respect more like stone. It required much more time and labor, even of that powerful race, to prepare the timber for building, than it requires in this degenerate age to prepare trees that are now growing upon the earth, even with the present weaker strength men now possess. These trees were of great durability, and would know nothing of decay for very many years." (Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 61.2)

1864: "Adam and Eve in Eden were noble in stature, and perfect in symmetry and beauty. They were sinless, and in perfect health. What a contrast to the human race now! Beauty is gone. Perfect health is not known. Every where we look we see disease, deformity and imbecility. I inquired the cause of this wonderful degeneracy, and was pointed back to Eden. The beautiful Eve was beguiled by the serpent to eat of the fruit of the only tree of which God had forbidden them to eat, or even touch it lest they die." (Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 4a, 120.10.

1864: "In strength of intellect, men who now live can bear no comparison to the ancients. There has been more ancient arts lost that the present generation now possess. For skill and art those living in this degenerate age will not compare with the knowledge possessed by strong men who lived near one thousand years." (Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 4a 155.40)

1870: "Adam, who stands among the risen throng, is of lofty height and majestic form, in stature but little below the Son of God. He presents a marked contrast to the people of later generations; in this one respect is shown the great degeneracy of the race." (The Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 4, 463.2)

1884: "In that vast throng are multitudes of the long-lived race that existed before the flood; men of lofty stature and giant intellect, who, yielding to the control of fallen angels, devoted all their skill and knowledge to the exaltation of themselves; men whose wonderful works of art led the world to idolize their genius, but whose cruelty and evil inventions, defiling the earth and defacing the image of God, caused him to blot them from the face of his creation." (Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 4, 478.1)

1884: "Men sometimes flatter themselves that in this enlightened age they are superior in knowledge and talents to those who lived before the flood; but those who think this do not rightly estimate the physical and mental strength of that long-lived race. Growth was slow and firm. Men did not, as at the present time, flash into maturity early, use up their vital forces, and only live out half their days. Their minds were of a high order, and were strong and clear. Had these men, with their rare powers to conceive and execute, devoted themselves to the service of God, they would have made their Creator’s name a praise in the earth, and would have answered the purpose for which he gave them being. But they failed to do this. Man corrupted his way on the earth. There were many giants, men of great stature and strength, renowned for wisdom, skillful in devising the most cunning and wonderful work; but in proportion to their skill and mental ability was their great guilt because of unbridled iniquity. They were apostates from God, and were cruel and oppressive to those who were not able to resist them." (The Signs of the Times, November 27, 1884, paragraph 5)

1890: "Thus were revealed to Adam important events in the history of mankind, from the time when the divine sentence was pronounced in Eden, to the Flood, and onward to the first advent of the Son of God. He was shown that while the sacrifice of Christ would be of sufficient value to save the whole world, many would choose a life of sin rather than of repentance and obedience. Crime would increase through successive generations, and the curse of sin would rest more and more heavily upon the human race, upon the beasts, and upon the earth. The days of man would be shortened by his own course of sin; he would deteriorate in physical stature and endurance and in moral and intellectual power, until the world would be filled with misery of every type. Through the indulgence of appetite and passion men would become incapable of appreciating the great truths of the plan of redemption." (Patriarchs and Prophets 67.3)

The tenets of what I have called the "doctrine of degeneracy" are apparent in this small sampling of Ellen White's writings.  It would be an interesting project to delve into the enormous amount of material that she produced and do an analysis of the content and influence of her work in the context of rapidly-changing late nineteenth century thought about the natural and human past.  The period during which White was writing (1845 to 1917) also saw the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), the aggressive Euroamerican colonization and exploration of the American west, the American Civil War, the rise and fall of reports of "giant skeletons" in American newspapers, and the emergence of numerous new religious sects in America. I do not know if anyone has attempted any kind of systematic analysis of White's writings, but they surely look promising.

Although the "degeneracy doctrine" of the Seventh-day Adventist Church appears to have come straight from Ellen White, I'm sure she didn't create it from thin air.  The general idea that modern life on earth has "degenerated" from a previous state can be found in many places (such as Greek mythology).   I wrote a short piece about an 1831 letter attributing a decrease in the size of animals (and people) over time to changes in air pressure, for example.  

How prevalent and important is the "degeneracy doctrine" today?  I've previously written about glimpses of the idea revealed in interviews with Joe Taylor and Kent Hovind, and, most recently, presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson. Carson tipped his "degeneracy doctrine" hand in this 2011 presentation when he said this (starting about 28:35):

"Do you know, your brain -- and this is a conservative estimate -- could take in one new fact every second for over three million years before you'd begin to challenge its capacity?  . . . And that's our brains in their degenerated state.  Can you imagine what they were like before?" 

It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway:  all the direct evidence of which I am aware contradicts the idea that humans have become smaller, weaker, and stupider over time.  Ellen White believed in giants in the late 1800s, at a time when our ideas about the human past were rapidly changing.  Although we know a lot more about the human past today than we did when Ellen White was writing, the creationist belief in giants has persisted (along with its ideological underpinnings).  Ellen White's writings are interesting to me from a historical perspective, but Ben Carson's thoughts on the matter are important because of where we are in this country in terms of the rejection of science. 

Does Ben Carson believe in giants?  I still hope someday someone asks him the question.  I Tweeted Jake Tapper (CNN) before the last debate and Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) yesterday morning. The issues of how our would-be leaders regard scientific information, education, and research and the articulation of science and faith is relevant.

Someone please, please ask Ben Carson if he believes in giants.

My essay in Reviews in Anthropology that I wrote about here is behind a Taylor & Francis paywall.  I just found out this morning, however, that I get 50 free "eprints" that I can distribute however I like.  Given that the essay isn't supposed to be a secret, I thought the simplest thing to do would be to make those copies available to whoever wants them:  my understanding is that the first 50 people to click this link can download my essay for free.  It's not open access, but better than nothing.

Please let me know if you try it and it doesn't work (or if you try it and it does work).  Happy reading!

Frank Joseph, author of The Lost Colonies of Ancient America and an affiliate of Ancient American magazine, was born as Francis Joseph Collin. Collin founded the National Socialist Party of America in 1970, an organization perhaps most famous for its involvement in a Supreme Court case over the right to march in the majority Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois (and being subsequently spoofed in The Blues Brothers movie). Collin later went to prison for having sex with minors, was released in the mid-1980s, changed his name to Frank Joseph, and began writing books about various Old World peoples visiting the Americas before Columbus.

I didn't uncover any of this information myself.  The basic outline of the Frank Collin/Joseph story can be found in many places online, including on Wikipedia, in this piece by R. D. Flavin, and in this post by Jason Colavito. 

I'm bringing it up because I think Frank Joseph's Nazi past is relevant to his writings about ancient North America.

Joseph's (2014) book The Lost Colonies of Ancient America was reviewed by Larry Zimmerman in a recent section of American Antiquity (2015, Vol. 80:615-629) devoted to addressing popular works of pseudoarchaeology.  Zimmerman writes that Joseph

"assures readers, of course, [that unlike academic archaeology] his book has no such preconceived notions and allows for available evidence to lead where it will."

Brad Lepper wrote a short piece about Zimmerman's review for yesterday's Columbus Dispatch, highlighting Josephs' mischaracterization of how archaeologists evaluate evidence as well as the racism that underlies the nineteenth century "Moundbuilder" myth that remains important to the claims of American hyperdiffusionists today.

Neither Zimmerman nor Lepper mentioned Joseph's past as one of America's leading Nazis.  It may be that the pages of American Antiquity and the Columbus Dispatch aren't really the place to bring it up, and that's fine.  But I think it's an important part of the story and I'm not under any editorial constraints, so I'm bringing it up: Joseph's Nazi past is relevant to understanding his ideas about pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts.  I'll briefly explain why.

Lepper is correct when he writes that

"Opinions, mainstream or otherwise, don’t count for much in science. Evidence is what’s important."

It is for that very reason that I'm bringing "fringe" theorists into the class I'm planning for next fall. Ideas can come from wherever they come from, but in a scientific framework it is evidence that lets us determine whether those ideas can withstand scrutiny.  Ideas can be tested and refined through evidence-based falsification, allowing us to build an understanding in which we can have some confidence.  That's how it works.

I've found that many "fringe" writers operating outside of a scientific framework (i.e., where ideas are not subject to testing) tend to use evidence differently, often marshaling only those pieces that seem to fit into the puzzle they're imagining themselves putting together.  They think they already know what the answer is and are focused on presenting the evidence that supports that answer. Contrary bits and pieces that are inconvenient to the narrative they're assembling are ignored.  This is not generally going to produce a story about the past that is credible.

Evidence matters, but so does how you use it.  When there's no mechanism for testing an idea, the origin of the idea becomes more important because it guides what evidence you choose to include.

According to Jason Colavito's post about Joseph, Joseph's defenders claim that there is no connection between the man's Nazi past and his current assertions about the roles of Old World peoples in New World prehistory.  Really?  If you understand the history of the "Moundbuilder" myth, you may legitimately ask why some "fringe" authors are so reluctant to let it go.  Systematic, evidence-based inquiry (i.e., actual archaeology) long ago proved to most people's satisfaction that the "Moundbuilder" idea was not correct, no matter what contributed to its origin or popularity.  I can tell you that those that are still holding on to fantasies about some lost white race of "Moundbuilders" aren't arriving at that point through a careful consideration of the evidence. 

I have not read any of Joseph's books.  Based on Zimmerman's review, I doubt I will find much of interest in them.  If I ever do read The Lost Colonies of Ancient America, however, I'll do it with Joseph's Nazi past in mind.  That past is relevant to understanding what "evidence" he chooses to accept and present, and what evidence he chooses to ignore. 

In cases like this, where evidence is chosen to support rather than test an idea, the source of the idea does indeed matter.   

If you woke up this morning wondering what J. Hutton Pulitzer has been up to, you're not alone:  you've got me to keep you company! 

I lost track of our friend after he kicked me out of one his Facebook groups this summer and I quit another. Previous to that, I had written about such weighty Pulitzer-related topics as the idea of Jurassic-age "Super Ancient Copper Culture" in Michigan, an interview where Pulitzer marveled at the SECRET ARCHIVES hidden in plain sight in the Allen County Public Library, Pulitzer's use of lots of exclamation points to "prove" that Minoans discovered Tennessee, and his use of allegedly fake copper artifacts to "educate" his fans.

My essay about complex systems science and four-field anthropology was published online in Reviews in Anthropology yesterday.  I can't make the whole essay available because of a copyright agreement, but here is the abstract:

"Four-field anthropology has always struggled with the problem of how to holistically study human cultural systems that are the products of environment, process, and history. Complexity science offers a set of tools calibrated to the analysis of complex systems like those of human societies, and has the potential to allow us to scientifically understand how history and process affect the physical, cultural, and linguistic components that are entangled in the whole of human societies. Application of complexity science to anthropological problems thus far has favored engagement on a conceptual level rather than one that harnesses the full power of the approach."

As I've discussed before (e.g., in this post about the "divorce" metaphor), I'm a believer in four-field anthropology. I think the four fields are together for good reasons, and I think they should stay together.  In this essay, I argue that complexity science provides a set of tools that are well-suited to addressing and perhaps resolving the tensions within anthropology that are caused by the apparent difficulty of understanding both the general (process) and the particular (history).  In complexity science, we've got a set of methods and theory that actually matches the nature of the phenomena in which we are interested.  In my opinion, we are a long way from really capitalizing on the potential of complexity science to address anthropological issues. 

I review three books in the essay:

• Caldararo, Niccolo Leo 2014. The Anthropology of Complex Economic Systems: Inequality, Stability, and Cycles of Crisis. Lanham: Lexington Books.

• Gehlsen, Duane 2009. Social Complexity and the Origins of Agriculture: The Complex-Systems Theory of Culture. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag.

• Mosko, Mark S., and Frederick H. Damon, eds. 2005. On the Order of Chaos: Social Anthropology and the Science of Chaos. New York: Berghahn Books.

I often feel like I should duck and cover when I publish something new.  In most cases, however, the low volume of the reaction has turned out to be much more challenging than the tone of the reaction. I'm sure the thought "is anybody reading this?" is a feeling with which many academics will identify.  As always, I hope this gets read and I hope it is part of a useful discussion. I'm more than happy to discuss the essay here if anyone has questions, comments, etc.

Update (9/22/2015):  I found out that limited copies of this essay are available for free download (see this post).

A story about an upcoming film titled The Solutrean popped up in my news feed this morning. According to the piece, the film will be

"a visually striking epic-adventure . . .  It has to do with a hunting expedition gone awry and a young survivor’s quest to brave the inhospitable and dangerous conditions to find his way back."

My first reaction was to wonder if the young hero's adventures will have him visiting the Americas. Will we see North Atlantic currents carry him away along the pack ice? Will the "inhospitable and dangerous conditions" be provided courtesy of Native Americans? In other words, will the film engage with the central idea of the Solutrean Hypothesis?

My second reaction was to wonder if the Solutreans in film will be depicted as very light skinned, even though recent genetic evidence suggests their skin tone was darker than modern Europeans?

Connected to those was my third reaction: a conflicted mix of excitement and dread.  I think a lot of professional archaeologists will agree with me when I say there really aren't that many good movies that deal with our subject matter.  Movies can have a powerful effect in shaping the public's perception about both what archaeologists do and what the human past was like.  We love to watch movies that put flesh on the bones of things we think about every day, but we're often disappointed in what we see. 

I hope The Solutrean makes some good choices.  No word on when it's slated for release. Casting has begun and the film will be shot in Iceland and Canada.

Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon and Republican presidential candidate, believes in giants.

That's my hypothesis, anyway, and I think it's a pretty strong one.  I'll explain how I developed it in a moment.  First, I'd like to explain (to Carson and anyone else who might not get it) what science is and how it works.  It became apparent to me while watching Carson speak that he either really doesn't get it or he really does but just doesn't want you to get it.  It's hard to imagine as president a neurosurgeon that doesn't understand what science is, but we twice elected a Yale graduate who couldn't pronounce "nuclear" correctly, so anything's possible. If you already know how science works (and why archaeology and paleoanthropology are sciences), skip down a few paragraphs.

Science is the systematic study of the natural world.  That's a broad definition.  It has to be, because exactly how you do science depends on what you're studying.  You can't really study distant stars, for example, in exactly the same way you study cancer cells.  You can't study radioactive isotopes in the same way you study human geopolitics.

But different things can all be systematically studied in ways that harness the power of scientific inquiry to build on itself.  Astronomers, biologists, chemists, and political scientists can all do the same thing at a general level: use evidence to evaluate competing ideas about the world and make a determination of which of those ideas is more plausible, more credible, and more likely to be true.  In a classic scientific framework, this is done by formulating hypotheses and testing them to see if they can be falsified.  The winnowing out of incorrect ideas is what allows science to be cumulative.

Archaeology, paleoanthropology, geology, and paleontology are sciences that deal with trying to understand what happened in the past.  These are challenging fields of study because of our inability to directly observe the phenomena we're ultimately interested in.  As George W. Bush famously said: "I think we can all agree the past is over." You can't turn back the clock, alter a variable, and re-run the system to see what the outcome is. That's very different than what happens routinely in sciences like physics and chemistry where you can use controlled experiments to evaluate your understanding of cause and effect, your explanation of a phenomenon, or your ideas about the nature of the relationships among variables.

The fundamental inability to observe what we're studying makes archaeology, by necessity, a theoretical science.  No, "theoretical" is not a bad word.  No, it doesn't mean that archaeology is "just a guess" or that archaeologists have no way of knowing if they're right or wrong.  It means that archaeologists develop theory (ideas about why things are the way they are) and models (descriptions of how variables fit together). From that theoretical framework, we derive expectations that we can compare to archaeological data (which generally consists of material remains of human cultural behavior).  If our archaeological data contradict our theoretically-derived expectations, then something about our theoretical framework is wrong (assuming the data are correct).  Then it's back to the drawing board to adjust the theoretical framework to account for the data. Then we can derive new expectations and attempt to test them. Once we're in that inductive-deductive loop of falsification, we're doing science.  Outside of that loop, we're not. Ideas that are impossible to falsify just aren't that useful.  A crazy, unfalsifiable idea could actually be true, of course, but we can't ever know because there's no way to test it.  We have to have some way to know if we're right or wrong about something.

On it's good days, paleoanthropology -- the study of the human past through fossils -- is also a theoretical science. Paleoanthropology is tightly entwined with the theory of evolution by natural selection, which provides it with a theoretical description of the processes and mechanisms of evolutionary change.  Fossils and other sources of data (including archaeological data and, increasingly, genetic data derived from fossils) provide the direct evidence that can be compared to our ideas about the past.  Paleoanthropology is just as much a science as astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics. 

Which brings us to Ben Carson, finally, and my hypothesis that he believes in giants.

This morning I watched Carson discuss his views on creation and evolution in this 2011 presentation.  It's no secret that Carson is a creationist.  His trademark soft-spoken, humorous approach to connecting with audiences is on full display as he spends 45 minutes glibly reciting Creationism 101's greatest hits to the friendly crowd, weaving in anecdotes designed to convey how great of a surgeon he is and how dumb all the "evolutionists" are. Most of his points regurgitate the same silly nonsense we've heard before: "life is too complicated to have been an accident;" "where are the transitional fossils?;" "how did the eye evolve?;" "a global Flood explains the Earth's geology;" etc. It's painfully apparent that he either misunderstands or is willing to misrepresent evolution, evolutionary theory, and fossil evidence (in fact he actually says that Darwinian evolution comes from the Devil).  Twice he poses the profound question (and I'm paraphrasing here): "If evolution is so efficient, how come we don't just split apart like amoebas to reproduce?" 

Dr. Carson, you have clearly demonstrated that someone in the creation-evolution debate is dumb, but I'm guessing we'll have to agree to disagree about who exactly that is.

Except for his explicit statement (around 19:40) that he doesn't believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, much of what Carson said reminded me a lot of the talking points I had recently heard in an interview of Young Earth Creationist and convicted criminal Ken Hovind. Particularly striking was that Carson, like Hovind, used the word "degenerated" when talking about the human present as compared to the human past (starting about 28:35):

"Do you know, your brain -- and this is a conservative estimate -- could take in one new fact every second for over three million years before you'd begin to challenge its capacity?  . . . And that's our brains in their degenerated state.  Can you imagine what they were like before?"

As I discussed in my post about Hovind, the "degeneration doctrine" is the idea that the clock has been running down since creation, resulting in humans and animals that are smaller, simpler, and farther from how they were created (i.e., as perfect).  Compare Carson's statement to Hovind's:

"But he was probably off the charts IQ compared to us today. So Man started off smart, and we're getting smaller, dumber, and weaker as time goes by, I believe."

The degeneracy doctrine is an extra-biblical idea (where does it say in the Bible that Adam was really tall?  Or really smart? Or had better DNA?) that is connected to creationist belief in giants.  Based on a complete misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what the theory of evolution actually is, creationists like Hovind suppose that demonstrating the existence of giants would simultaneously prove biblical creation to be true and the theory of evolution to be false.  That's why they're so interested in finding giant human bones: they really want to show them to the world as evidence. But so far they have been able to produce none (the lack of actual bones led Joe Taylor to produce and sell a sculpture of a 47" femur). The complete lack of positive evidence is a real bummer for giant enthusiasts of all stripes.

I think Carson believes in giants because he subscribes to the degeneracy doctrine.  His use of the term "degenerated" is, I think, evidence that the idea of "devolution" is submerged somewhere in this thinking. If so, it is logical to presume that he believes human used to be taller in the early years following creation.  I would also guess that Carson's biblical literalism would lead him to interpret Genesis 6:4 ("There were giants in the earth in those days") as consistent with that.

This hypothesis is easy enough to falsify: someone just needs to ask Ben Carson if he believes in giants.  The answer will be interesting either way, won't it? 

According to recent polls, Carson and Donald Trump are leading the pack to be the current nominee. A recent tiff over who has faith and who doesn't comes as the pair begins to court Evangelical voters in Iowa, where the first primary will be held.  I think the "do you believe in giants?" question would be an excellent one to ask at the debate in California this Wednesday.  Do we want a president who believes in giants?  Or, alternatively, can we afford to have one that doesn't?   

I'm an archaeologist. I am trained to observe patterns, create a model that explains those patterns, and attempt to test that model by developing expectations that can be compared to empirical data.

Ben Carson believes in giants. That's my hypothesis. I have surmised the existence of a degeneracy doctrine that is a component of Young Earth Creationism and I have associated that doctrine with a belief in giants and a misunderstanding of evolution (and science in general).

What do you say Dr. Carson?  Do you believe in giants?

Update (9/25/2015):  A brief discussion of some writings of Ellen G. White, founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, relevant to understanding the "degeneracy doctrine" and the idea (espoused by Carson) that humans were bigger, better, stronger, and smarter in the past.

There were many other possible titles for this post.  I will spare you a list and just give you the front runner: "An Hour of My Life I'll Never Have Back."

Kent Hovind is a well-known Young Earth Creationist. In Federal prison for financial crimes since 2006 (see this article from Forbes), one of his first stops after being released this July was The Rundown Live, a Milwaukee-based talk radio program that bills itself as "Covering news and conspiracy that your local news won’t."
Hovind was interviewed by self-proclaimed "researcher of giant human skeletons" Kristan Harris. The interview is here.

A conspiracy-minded giant enthusiast interviewing a Young Earth Creationist?  I thought I was in for a treat. Oh well - you can't win 'em all.

Hovind regurgitates all the usual assertions of Young Earth Creationsm: the Earth was created in six days about 6000 years ago; dinosaurs were really giant lizards that were documented historically as "dragons"; the fossil "record" doesn't really tell us anything about the past; no-one has ever seen macro-evolution in action so it couldn't possibly have happened; all radiometric dating methods are nonsense; paleontologists and other evolutionary scientists are all stupid; etc. Hovind's assertions are pretty old hat these days, and many of his favorite arguments have been publicly rejected by other creationists.

Yawn. So much for my Friday night. My wife was out of town and I was on my own during the sliver of time between getting the kids to bed and being asleep myself.  When I was in a similar situation a few weeks ago, I spent that precious "me" time watching Zombeavers, a 2014 film about how "A fun weekend turns into madness and horror for a bunch of groupies looking for fun in a beaver infested swamp." It would probably be unfair to directly compare the plausibility of Hovind's tale with what unfolds before our eyes in Zombeavers, so I won't do it.  I wouldn't want to be unfair.

Anyway, the one useful thing I heard in the interview was a succinct statement of the "doctrine of degeneracy" that I've seen associated with Young Earth Creationism in several other places.  As I have discussed previously,  this view asserts that:

• God’s original creation was perfect;
• As time has passed since creation, that original perfection has naturally degenerated;
• The world we see today, and the creatures in it, are less than perfect as a result of a long process of “devolution.”

Giant enthusiasts who are also Young Earth Creationists (such as Joe Taylor  of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum and Chris Lesley of the Greater Ancestors World Museum) link together the existence of large extinct animals (that we can understand via the fossil record), the long human lifespans reported in the Old Testament, and the biblical mentions of “giants” as in Genesis 6:4.  In this case, bigger is better: humans and that existed closer to the time of creation were larger in size and closer to perfection than the humans of today.  The running down of the clock since creation has resulted in humans and animals that are smaller, simpler, and farther from perfection.

Hovind sums up that view nicely at about 38:50 minutes into the interview:

"You see the Bible says Man was made in God's image.  Adam could name all the animals and walk, talk, and get married on the first day. He was fully formed, a fully loaded computer. He spoke every language in the world (well there was only one). But he was probably off the charts IQ compared to us today. So Man started off smart, and we're getting smaller, dumber, and weaker as time goes by, I believe. And I think the evolution theory teaches exactly the opposite: we started off like a chimpanzee and we're getting bigger, better, and smarter. There's absolutely no evidence for that at all."

In order to allow that baloney to stick to the wall, you have to flatten time and reject all evidence and methods that point to our planet being much, much older than 6000 years and you have to equate the giants of the Bible with the "good" side of God's creation rather than corrupt beings set upon preventing humanity from reaching salvation.  (The Bible doesn't say anything directly about Adam's stature - you've got to go elsewhere for that). Thus the giants of Young Earth Creationists are categorically different from the sinister homosexual demon-giants of Steve Quayle and the alien-seeded giants of Ancient Astronaut theorists (Hovind categorically dismisses the possibility of extraterrestrial intervention in the human past at about 40:10 in the interview). 

In terms of Friday night entertainment value, the win goes to my time spent watching a guy pretend a zombie beaver chewed off his foot.  The so-called Nephilim Mounds Conference is going on right now in Ohio -- maybe something interesting will come out of that, but I'm not holding my breath.  What giant enthusiasts really need to do (besides take me up on my offer to participate in my class) is to organize a conference where they debate the logic, evidence, and implications of the very, very different views of "giants" that exist.  I would pay to see advocates of the various interpretations of giants attempt to triangulate the Young Earth Creationist, Nephilim Whirlpool, and Ancient Alien views of what "giants" actually were and are. They appear to me to be largely mutually exclusive, and I'm not sure how they could be reconciled.  I don't think that there will ever be such a Giants Summit, however, because I think there is little appetite among giant enthusiasts to subject their ideas to scrutiny.

I'm probably better off hoping for a Zombeavers 2. I'm pretty sure at least some of the beavers escaped at the end.  They were pretty hard to "kill," of course, since they were zombies. Fingers crossed there's a sequel in the works in case I ever have another evening to waste.