290 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



on Croll's theory that glaciation is caused by variations in the 

 eccentricity of the earth's orbit about the sun, which would 

 bring about protracted winters in the hemisphere having 

 winter, when the earth was farthest from the sun (with conse- 

 quent accumulation of ice) , gives 30,000 years ago as the date 

 of the first appearance of man on earth. Father Hugues 

 Obermaier, it may be noted, like Abbe Henri Breuil, is one 

 of the foremost authorities on the subject of prehistoric Man. 

 Both are Catholic priests. 



All such computations of the age of man are, of course, un- 

 certain and theoretical. Evolutionists calculate it in hundreds 

 of thousands, and even millions, of years. After giving such 

 a table of recklessly tremendous figures, Osbom has the hypo- 

 critical meticulosity to add that, for the sake of precision (save 

 the mark!) the nineteen hundred and some odd years of the 

 Christian era should be added to his figures. But, 

 even according to the most conservative scientific esti- 

 mates, as we have seen, man is said to have been in 

 existence for 30,000 years, and the prevalence of right- 

 handedness among men is as old as the human race. One 

 would expect, then, to find modern man equipped with a 

 gigantic right arm and a dwarfed left arm. In other words, 

 man should exhibit a condition comparable to that of a 

 lobster, which has one large and one small chela. Yet, in 

 spite of the fact that the comparative inaction of the human 

 left hand is supposed to have endured throughout a period of, 

 at least, 30,000 years, this state of affairs has not resulted 

 in the faintest trace of atrophy or retrogression. Bones, mus- 

 cles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, blood vessels, and all parts 

 are of equal size in both arms and both hands. Excessive 

 exercise may overdevelop the musculature of the right arm, 

 but this is an individual and acquired adaptation, which is 

 never transmitted to the offspring, e.g. the child of a black- 

 smith does not inherit the muscular hypertrophy of his father. 

 Disuse, therefore, has not the efficacy which Lamarck and 

 Darwin ascribed to it. 



