The mummy
He was found [in 1932 by 2 gold prospectors] sitting cross-legged on a ledge in a small cave in a granite mountain [60 miles southwest of Casper, Wyoming] His hands were folded in his lap, in the timeless attitude of a Buddha. He appeared to be middle-aged. His skin was brown and wrinkled, his nose flat, the forehead low, the mouth broad and thin-lipped. And he was 14 inches tall (1) (pictures below)
The legend
Adding to the Pedro Mountain Mummy enigma is the fact that he is proportioned much more like an adult than an infant. [If] Pedro was an adult at the time of his death [it could] mean he was one of the "little people" -- a mythical tribe of savage pygmies who haunted Wyoming's mountains, according to Arapaho and Shoshone tales... the mummy vanished in 1950(2)
Bibleland vs Darwin
On February 2005 Bibleland's owner offered $10,000 for the mummy (2) Why ? Read their homepage:
At Bibleland Studios, we believe the truth of man's origins can be found written in the book of Genesis.. We believe that 6,000 years ago we were created by God..
The Little People
From Bibleland's page about the mummy you see the Indian legends about "little people" who were 17 inches tall when fully grown.
In Shoshone Indian lore there is a recurring theme about tiny people called "Nimerigar". Interestingly, in Shoshone tradition, the "Nimerigar" killed their own people with a blow to the head when they became too old or ill to be useful.
Could it be that Pedro was once a "Nimerigar" chief, given that his mummified remains were found in a sealed cave? (3)
The attack on Darwin
The mummy would be a "fossil proof" of that legend.. A fossil that, according to Bibleland, didn't fit in Darwin's Evolution "Theory"
 |
[In 1950] Anthropologist Henry Shapiro [At NY City's American Museum of Natural History] examined the artifact [for a week]. X-rays revealed a fully formed human like skeleton. With a damaged spine, broken collarbone and fractured skull which accounted for Pedro's grimace. Shapiro felt uncomfortable with his conclusions. If he sided with some who believed Pedro was a 60-year-old full grown male then he'd have the job of placing him in an evolutionary family tree that has little room for such a creature. In the end Dr. Shapiro concluded Pedro was an infant born with a disease that made him look older than he was..
Every Anthropologist, including Henry Shapiro and George Gill of the University of Wyoming, stated the Mountain Mummy is a grossly malformed infant or fetus suffering from anencephaly, a severe condition where most of the cranium and brain have failed to develop.
However, many who do not have a PhD, like Dixon Goodman, believe he is a fully formed 60-65 year old adult. (3) |
The lies - lie #1: an infant w/ pubic hair ?
Bibleland asks But why for one second would we consider their testimony over qualified, educated doctors? [Why indeed ?] and then comes with a lie to make it's tale more convincing: It says the mummy had pubic hair, which it did not (5)
Consider this revelation: Both Basher and Goodman independently reported to me one important piece of information that all the medical reports conveniently leave out: Pedro the Mountain Mummy has pubic hair. (3)
The lies - lie #2: Small humans don't belong in Darwin's evolution tree
But forget the pubic hair in an infant conundrum for a moment: it turns out that it is much ado about nothing anyway. Remember Bibleland's insinuation that Dr. Shapiro's identification of the mummy as an infant was to avoid the job of placing him in an evolutionary family tree that has little room for such a creature ? Well wrong again, as a matter of fact researchers HAVE discovered small humanoids and HAVE placed them under the "evolutionary family tree" with little fuss. Bert Roberts an anthropologist at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia is the co-author of a study about the find of 3ft tall hominids published in the journal "Nature." on 2004:
... anthropologists [found] the skeletal remains of a hobbit-sized, 30-year-old adult female.. Subsequent finds of other similarly sized, 3-foot-tall humans with brains the size of grapefruits in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores suggest these 18,000-year-old specimens weren't a quirk of an ancient hominin, but part of an entire species of miniature people whose existence overlapped with that of modern Homo sapiens.
"We now have the remains of at least seven hobbit-sized individuals at the cave site.. (4) |
 |
Hoaxland Forum to the rescue
As with any urban legend (or rural legend in this case) or chain mail, the truth seeker needs to do a browsing of the many hoax busting sites in the net. My favorites are Snopes and the Hoax Forum at the museum of hoaxes, where users debate the current hoaxes. This is what a user on the forum says about this attempt to use a questionable "fossil" to discredit Darwin:
Classic hoax stuff. This might not work overseas but as Americans are not taught the complete body of knowledge on Evolution, they receive the very little they know about it through cultural outlets. Because of this, it's very very easy to lead people astray by convincing them there is no fossil record (there is)or that the word 'theory' means it is not fact (theory, in science, means 'observed fact'. See Theory of Electricity, Theory of AIDS, etc.).Then, you add in the mummy and voila! Perfect hoax material! Keep in mind that Bibleland has no more info sources on this than you have. (they also suggest you NOT contact the examining University).(5)
Hobbits in US ?
The fossilized lies that Bibleland missed
But why chase after wild mummy's
tail, err... hair if they could have gone with other fossilized "proof" that Darwin was wrong ? Using fossilized remains of animals or humans assembled together to resemble mythical creatures as a hoax, a joke or to persuade religious believers is not a new game nor it is exclusive of Christianity. Here are just two recent examples of the endless creativity of the believers, pranksters and mad scientists on the fossil arena:
A baby dragon, or a bad joke?
Yesterday the baby dragon, in a sealed 30in jar, was in the office of Allistair Mitchell, who runs a marketing company in Oxford... Mr Mitchell speculates that German scientists may have attempted to use the dragon to hoax their English counterparts in the 1890s, when rivalry between the countries was intense.
 |
Lizardman skeleton
The original site says this is a Miracles Of Almighty Allah (7). Check it out for some humorous take on religion, but be advised it takes a loong time to load -- law
This picture below was taken this morning near the
Safaniya beach in the eastern province. Aramco
security & industrial security force are debating
as to whether to issue a warring close the beach or do nothing and assist in man power control
investigation resulted that there are more than
3500 for this kind of human-animal in the tanajib
area. It is 25 years since last time it was seen in the tanajib area."
 |
