Darwin's Evolution of Man.
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Richard Leakey, the famous paleoanthropologist, is battling with powerful evangelical church leaders in Kenya. These fundamentalist wingnuts are pressuring Kenya's national museum to hide its world-famous collection of hominid fossils that detail the evolution of humans' early ancestors.
Leakey stated that the wingnuts' statements are "the most outrageous comments I have ever heard."
"The National Museums of Kenya should be extremely strong in presenting a very forceful case for the evolutionary theory of the origins of mankind,"continued Leakey. "The collection it holds is one of Kenya's very few global claims to fame and it must be forthright in defending its right to be at the forefront of this branch of science." Leakey was for years director of the museum and of Kenya's entire museum system.
The museum's collections include the most complete skeleton yet found of Homo erectus, the 1.7-million-year-old Turkana Boy unearthed by Leakey's team in 1984 near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
The museum also holds bones from several specimens of Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the first hominid to walk upright, four million years ago. Together the artifacts amount to the clearest record yet discovered of the origins of Homo sapiens.
Cited story.
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I'm going to Kenya on Thursday. I think I'll have to take in this exhibit while there before the chance is gone.
I bet my museum listserv will be abuzz with this news tomorrow. Did you know that there is a group in the US that calls themselves BC Tours (because they're "biblically correct") and goes to natural history museums to offer an alternative version of the exhibits? Grrr. I hope Richard Leakey wins his fight. The point of museums is to share knowlege, not to hide it.
What do they suggest that the Museum exhibit instead? Evidence for the existence of their god?
This is truly pathetisad. This ridiculous battle goes on and on and on... What are the whack-jobs so damned afraid of anyway?
Sigh...