Personal Bias Drives Science

Whenever people are involved in making decisions and interpreting data, there is always the problem of personal viewpoints to consider. This is especially true when looking at the results of archaeological and anthropological findings, since both are based more on personal interpretation than any truly scientific (factual) basis. The archaeologist, as an example, has a pattern of diffusion within which his work is viewed—a pattern of development from stone age to pre-pottery, to pottery, in determining the cultural stages regarding the ancient development of an area.

From chipping stone to hollowing out a gourd for drinking to making ceramic pottery—these are the stages of archaeology
    Mesoamericanists rarely mention South America, even though the sites in South America are older and superior in workmanship design, and function than those of Mesoamerica. In addition, anthropologists in the South Pacific (Austeralia, New Zealand) and in Hawaii, champion the movement of man across the Pacific from west to east, and the expansion of Polynesia as far east as Easter Island without any acceptance of an east to west movement, despite the work of Thor Heyerdahl and the known currents that move in the opposite direction.
In addition, archaeology has several stages--simply put and speaking generally, they are found in the following categories:
• Paleolithic (old stone [age])—2.6 million to 12,000 years ago; when they claim humans developed from Homo bibilis to homo sapiens; used wood, bone and the most primitive (knapped) stone tools; people lived primarily in eastern Africa, grouped in bands, developed religious ritual, buried their dead, began works of art; began moving into southern Europe and Asia, China, Indonesia and the Mediterranean (this period covered nine distinct classification of Paleolithic geoclimati episodes)

• Mesolithic (middle stone [age]), sometimes called Epipaleolithic—10,000 to 5,000 B.C. (and as much as 20,000 B.C.), which is claimed to be the end of the Paleolithic and the start of the Neolithic; age of purely hunting and gathering; initial stage of domestication of wild plants and animals; lived in villages and huts, and beginning of walled cities; chipped stone tools (microliths), moving toward polished stone tools, including burins and end-scrapers; rise of agriculture and the introduction of farming and herding of animals), lived in timber long houses.
• Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B—8300 to 6000 B.C.; absence of pottery vessels; domestication of wheat and barley, domestication of sheep, goats, cattle and pigs; emergence of settlements; beginning of walls and structures.
• Pottery Neolithic—5500 to 3800 B.C.; invention of the kiln and movement from gourds to pottery; development of wood-carving, basketry, weaving etc.; spread of food-producing communities in large numbers; the rise of urban civilization, the emergence of towns and large settlements with satellite villages; beginning of wealth and power centers.
• Bronze Age (Early, Intermediate, Late)—3300 to 1300 B.C. Primary form of metalworking. Smelting copper and alloying with tin; first writing (cuneiform and hieroglyphs).
• Iron Age (Early, Middle and Late)—1300 B.C. to 700 A.D. Earliest texts in manuscript form; Sanskrit and Chinese literature flourished, along with the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible. Forging began in metalworking.

In addition, archaeologists depend heavily on radiocarbon dating to aid them in determining dates; however, radiocarbon dating, better known as carbon-14 dating, is itself a questionable science, though highly accepted, dating method. It is not that the system is based on faulty premises for the concept of the carbon leakage to date once living organisms is sound; however the problem lies in its calibration, i.e., the way the data provided is interpreted. Take its beginning, when its developer, physicist Willard Libby, found from his own experiments that the Earth was less than 20,000 years old; however, decided that every one knew the Earth was billions of years old, and adjusted his findings accordingly, thus providing readings of millions of years instead of hundreds, making all subsequent measurements determined on the wrong age basis.
    Add this to the preconceived ideas, beliefs, and standards of the archaeologist and anthropologist, we find today an exaggerated understanding of the Earth’s age, and all things upon and within it. We also find that science has preset concepts as to how man developed, where he originated, and over what routes he migrated. We also have prejudicial attitudes about 1) religion, 2) God’s role in our lives and development, and 3) the abilities or lack thereof regarding accomplishments of early cultures. Thus, while the one, based upon error and bias notions, and the other rejected out of prejudicial attitudes, we find ourselves in a world of inaccurate and bias views of the past and how man came to be and how he arrived at the places in which we find him anciently.

In this regard, no one in the professional fields determining these beliefs accepts that ancient man was capable of sailing across vast oceans in the types of canoes attributed to them, nor that they were capable of building ships that only appeared thousands of years later. As a result, science claims that man’s migrant route came over non-existent land bridges, along routes that make little, if any, sense, and spread over thousands of miles of land instead of settling where they were. As an example, what would cause a people to travel northward from their warm clime into the cold country of the north, leaving the warmer climes of their homelands, to pass over a so-called Siberian land bridge in the age of glaciers that covered the northern continents, somehow finding an ice-free corridor, and then coming into warmer lands, such as what is now Canada, the United States, Mexico, etc., yet continue to travel clear to the southern regions of South America?
    However, science clings to this ridiculous idea since it is the only way they can justify a movement from the Old World to the New World. In the same token, since they cannot accept the movement of people by sea across the wide expanse of oceans until at least around 1000 A.D., they claim man moved from Indonesia eastward (against all known winds and currents), sailing from island to island on short trips eastward and eventually, spreading all across the Pacific Ocean—eventually reaching and settling the Americas, specifically South America.

Massive settlements and huge cities span hundreds of acres and many square miles that rival the best construction found in the Old World and built in B.C. times, are scattered all over western South America
    How else could they account for the development of civilizations in South America that built such awe-inspiring cities and empires as the Spanish eventually found there in the 16^th century? The fact that all known criteria to determine settlement shows a movement across the Pacific in the opposite direction, anthropologists and archaeologists bend over backward to develop an opposite movement than the known facts indicate.
    In addition, those Polynesian archaeologists and anthropologists (New Zealand to Easter Island to Hawaii) are bias toward movement from west to east across the Pacific and settlement of South America, since it is their ancestors they are describing and attributing far greater achievements to them than they actually achieved (see the last post).
    So widespread is this belief of west to east movement that cultural anthropologist Richard Scaglion of the University of Pittsburg claims in the face of incontrivertable evidence to the contrary, “But most researchers see few signs of Amerindian excursions into the Pacific.” That is, those of South America moving westward into the Pacific. Instead he argues that “Polynesians may have arrived at the southern coast of South America and sailed north using the prevailing current to the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil, the only sheltered port in South America north of the rocky southern coast of Chile. The Canara people once lived from this area of the coast into the Andes highlands, making the sweet potato accessible to coastal visitors. And here the current veers sharply west. Computer simulations show that the most successful return (westward) from the coast would be from Guayaquil to the Polynesians.” Scaglion then adds, “making this area a possible focus of trans-Pacific contact.”
    Isn’t it interesting that the most likely point of movement is from the advanced civilizations along the west coast of South America, using the currents that flow directly down to Polynesia. But to reach South America, Polynesians would have to drop far south into the West Wind Drift currents of the Southern Ocean to reach the Humboldt (Peruvian) Current to sail up the coast of South America as Scaglion claims.

Using Scaglion’s own map, consider movement from (Yellow Arrow) South America (Bay of Guayaquil) westward, which currents take a ship out and down into Polynesia, as opposed to leaving western Polynesia (White Arrow) and dropping far south to the (Green Arrow) Southern Ocean, to then cross thousands miles to South America and the Humboldt (Peruvian) Current to travel northward. Which seems the more likely for a people to do?
    Would people most likely travel in “exceedingly large” ships built by Hagoth, sailing from the Bay of Guayaquil westward into the Pacific (Alma 63:5,8) to the Marquesa Islands of Polynesia, which is about 4000 miles of open ocean. Or is it more likely that people sailed from Tonga southward in outrigger canoes beyond New Zealand to the Southern Ocean, then eastward with the only eastward moving current in the South Pacific to South America across 7100 miles of open ocean, then upward along the coast to the Bay of Guayaquil for a total of 10,673 miles overall. Which seems the most likely that would have been attempted by an early culture?
    When one’s mind is made up before one starts, they are not likely to come up with an accurate answer. Nor are they likely to see the truth lurking somewhere behind their pre-conceived ideas.