Saturday, June 30, 2012

No, our business practices are based on Jesus' teachings

ASIA - Just read the headlines - ethics in American business seem to be optional. In certain Asian business contexts, they're non-existent.

Andrew*, a Crossworld worker running a business in Asia, sat in his office with Ridwan*, a young sales agent from a different company. Ridwan leaned forward and in a conspiratorial tone said, "If you want, I'll send our new clients to your company. You'll make a lot of money."

"And you'll make a commission on each one, right?" Andrew asked. Ridwan nodded, expecting Andrew to eagerly accept this standard practice and start negotiating details. Instead, Andrew said no - firmly. "Ridwan, my company is founded on principles of honesty and integrity. We're committed to dealing ethically in every detail." Ridwan's disappointment showed as he stood to leave, but then he noticed a Bible on Andrew's shelf. "Are you a Christian?"

"Yes. Our business practices are based on the teachings of Jesus. That's why I can't accept your offer."

Certain he'd never see Ridwan again, Andrew was surprised to hear from Ridwan three days later announcing he had quit his job and was opening his own company! Ridwan explained why: "During three years working as a sales manager under three different bosses, I've been lied to countless times and not one boss has ever fulfilled promises made on commissions or other business agreements." Andrew congratulated Ridwan on his new venture, and for the next few weeks, they exchanged emails about business, life and faith.

Soon Ridwan asked, "How does someone become a Christian?" Andrew explained the gospel to Ridwan in person, who immediately prayed to receive Christ as Savior.

End of story? Hardly. Now Ridwan must grow spiritually amid an antagonistic culture. His faith will be challenged. His business may suffer. His security may be threatened.

Pray for Andrew as he disciples Ridwan, and that together they will stand strong for Christ. Looking back, Andrew shares "I never imagined turning the guy down would make an impact - I'm glad God knew!"

(from the Crossworld newsletter, May 2012)

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Yes, but How did Earth get nudged into a new zip code? Planet pinball!

Big Scientific Problem: "Common theories of stellar evolution predict that the sun was only 70 percent of its current brightness when it first lit its fusion engine 4.5 billion years ago. The sun has been steadily growing brighter since then and will continue so into the future, eventually evaporating away Earth's oceans.

"Once Earth amassed an ocean 4.3 billion years ago it should have quickly frozen over and reflected so much sunlight back into space that it squelched Earth's ability to thaw out for billions of years.

"The dilemma, called the "faint young sun paradox," has been know about since the 1950s and was popularized by Carl Sagan. Geochemists and solar physicists have wrestled for answers all these years.

"Lowering Earth's reflectivity by reducing cloud cover doesn't work. Models also show that a greenhouse effect from dense carbon dioxide and methane can't warm the Earth enough either. In some simulations, methane and carbon dioxide combine to make a photochemical smog that would have chilled Earth even further.

"Now, David Minton of Purdue University has come up with a novel solution that, by his own admission, straddles science fact and fiction. Minton proposes that Earth was closer to the sun when it formed and then migrated outward to its current orbit. To keep Earth tepid under a cooler sun, our planet would have needed to have been roughly 6 million miles (9.7 million kilometers) closer to the sun than it is today.

OK, now the really hard part...

Smashup.
"But how do you nudge Earth into a new zip code? The most plausible model, out of several other unlikely mechanisms that were only present in the very young solar system, is a gravitational billiard ball game called planet-planet scattering.

"The challenge is that this effect would have had to have dragged out over one or two billion years. Even more problematic is that for this musical chairs game to work at all, one more terrestrial planet is need in the inner solar system. And, it's a big one at that, ranging between the mass of Mars and Venus.

"The unlucky "odd planet out" would have wound up falling into the sun, being ejected from the solar system, or crashing into another terrestrial planet.


Dr. David Minton.
"This isn't too far-fetched in that the solar system is fundamentally chaotic, says Minton. "Solar systems don't know if they are going to be stable for billions of years." Minton says that the best dynamical computer simulation for relocating Earth has a rogue plant that is 75 percent Earth's mass smashing into Venus -- in the ultimate planetary pinball game of "three's a crowd." This would have happened in as little as 2 or 3 billion years ago. Earth got kicked out into its present orbit as a consequence."

Marko comments:

Wow, isn't it amazing what scientists come up with these days! The only problem is, there is no experiment they can conduct to test this idea ... so this is not "Science".

When will scientists admit that there is no purely "natural" answer to the universe? All things point to a Creator, just as the Bible tells us to look for.

(excerpts from Ray Villard, Was Earth a Migratory Planet? Discovery News, April 18, 2012)

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Life Chemistry just happened? Then who was the Chemist?

The world's most brilliant scientists have never been able to produce a single RNA molecule starting with their choice of raw materials, their choice of environmental conditions. A Being more intelligent and more powerful than man is required!

(selections from Timothy R. Stout, The Testimony of the Origin of RNA, published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 17, Number 2, March/April 2012, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2012/CM17%2002%20for%20web.pdf)

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory recently posted online a collection of articles about the origin of life(Deamer and Szostak, 2012). The laboratory is one of the world's foremost private research laboratories, with 8 Nobel Prize winners associated with it over the years.

There is one article in the collection which was particularly intriguing, "Planetary Organic Chemistry and the Origins of Biomolecules" by Steven Benner et al (Benner, et al., 2010). This quote is from the abstract.
According to various models for the origin of life on Earth, biological molecules that jump-started Darwinian evolution arose via this planetary chemistry. The grandest of these models assumes that ribonucleic acid (RNA) arose prebiotically, together with components for compartments that held it and a primitive metabolism that nourished it. Unfortunately, it has been challenging to identify possible prebiotic chemistry that might have created RNA. Organic molecules, given energy, have a well-known propensity to form multiple products, sometimes referred to collectively as “tar” or “tholin.” These mixtures appear to be unsuited to support Darwinian processes, and certainly have never been observed to spontaneously yield a homochiral genetic polymer. To date, proposed solutions to this challenge either involve too much direct human intervention to satisfy many in the community, or generate molecules that are unreactive “dead ends” under standard conditions of temperature and pressure.
One might think that Dr. Benner and his colleagues had obtained their list of problems from the creation literature... To his credit, he is simply being honest about the issues and their significance. Notice, he refers to a number of problems:
  • It has been challenging to identify prebiotic chemistry that might have created RNA. They still haven't identified it.
  • Organic molecules have a "well known" tendency to form tar instead of biologically usefol molecules.
  • A homochiral genetic polymer has certainly never been observed. This is a significant admission and observation. The world's most brilliant scientists have never been able to produce a single RNA molecule starting with their choice of raw materials, their choice of environmental conditions.
  • The proposed solutions require trained scientists, using expensive laboratory equipment, implementing intricate sequences of steps, using purchased chemicals of laboratory grade purity.
"Blue compounds are dead-end compounds that accumulate in the reaction. A chemist must intervene to prevent this mixture from evolving further to give still more complexity."
It would require intervention by an intelligent being to overcome the overcome the myriad observed and documented problems which are counter to a natural origin of life. Man's inability to produce even a single, useful, genetic polymer starting from any assortment of assumed raw chemicals shows that a Being more intelligent and more powerful than man is required!
 
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Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Evolutionists Believe in Flat Earth!!

Geologists who follow mainstream evolutionary thinking use the "standard geological column" to explain the different layers of rocks that they find in southeastern Utah and other areas near the Grand Canyon. This column displays all of the different eras of time, supposedly going back millions of years. The most well known in our popular culture are the Devonian, the Triassic, and of course, the Jurassic. The oldest layers in Utah are Precambrian, which go back 500 million years and more.



Please look at the diagram for this area. It shows the rock layers in brown. We see many pancake-like sedimentary layers in sequence. The problem is that geologists do not find layers of rock that correspond to all of the different geologic periods. In the figure, you can see that noticeably missing is rock from the early Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, late Mississippian, and many other ancient eras. This is represented by the cross-hatched areas. Such charts could be drawn anywhere, and all of them have the same gaps.

Where did all the in-between rock go?

For evolutionary geologists, the fact that layers are missing is the evidence for erosion. But millions of years of erosion would produce irregular terrain, but there is none—no stream beds, valleys, or canyons.

Evolutionists assign the “time” between two layers as tens of millions of years. But road cuts, some extending many miles, reveal layers of rock that are completely flat with featureless contacts between strata. In the diagram, the horizontal distance represents about 200 kilometers, while the total thickness of the actual strata is only about 3-1/2 km.

These geologists would have us believe that completely flat time gaps showing absolutely no erosion for  millions of years span the continent. This is an amazing finding. It is a return to Flat Earth theory!!

This is actually one more piece of evidence that "millions of years" is a completely suspect idea, based on circular reasoning. A far better explanation is that these different sedimentary layers were either water-deposited or water-eroded during a very short period of time. Could this be the signature of the global Flood, as described in the book of Genesis?

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References
1. Diagram modified from A. Roth. 1988. Those Gaps in the Sedimentary Layers. Origins. 15 (2): 75-92.
2. Morris, J. 2012. Flat Gaps Between Strata. Acts & Facts. 41 (5): 15.

Sunday, June 03, 2012

Millions of Uzbek Muslims live in Russia. Who will introduce them to Jesus?

My attention was captive as pastor Yusuf* talked. "It's illegal to possess a Bible now in Uzbekistan," he said. "If one is caught, he can be arrested and fined up to $2,000, which is almost two year's salary for an Uzbek." He continued, "House churches are illegal, and the government will no longer legally register new churches." I later learned that the very man I was talking with had been arrested and beaten for leading a service in a house church.

How often is God at work right in front of our noses and we don't even see it? When I look back at how God led our family to St. Petersburg, Russia and introduced us to some key people I'm almost left speechless and I wonder how I didn't see it when it was happening.

Millions of Uzbek Muslims live in Russia.
Who will introduce them to Jesus?
Walking down the streets of St. Petersburg or Moscow, you quickly notice that the people are not ethnically homogenous. A Westerner, unfamiliar with Russia, would just see an ethnically diverse culture. They would see people of different skin colors or different dress as quite "normal" and expected. But live in the country for a while and you quickly learn that chorniye (dark-skinned people), are not welcomed guests.

Exact figures are hard to find, but estimates for St. Petersburg alone put Central Asian migrant workers at around 1.5 to 2 million, most from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, both countries closed to the gospel. One of the difficulties in finding exact figures is that many are in the country illegally. They have come for work on temporary visas, and often end up staying longer, getting paid under the table. Most end up doing unskilled and manual labor for very low wages. Living conditions are difficult and there is always a risk of being stopped by the police for a document check. Almost all of these migrant workers are Muslim-of a more secular and "liberal" stripe to be sure, but nonetheless, they are Muslim.

As time passed and we engaged in other ministries in Russia, I could not help but ask the question "Who is taking the gospel to these people?" After almost three years of asking that question I finally met pastor Yusuf.

A short conversation with pastor Yusuf and I quickly saw that he is passionate about reaching Central Asian immigrants in Russia. He sees God's hand of providence clearly at work in this spiritual battle. Satan has tried to close the doors in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. But God has brought people out of those countries into Russia where they can hear the gospel. And when you hear the figures, it is hard not to see God's hand at work. At any given time an estimated 5 to 7 million Uzbeks are living in Russia. Statistically this is up to one-fourth of Uzbek1stan's population! Inside the borders of their home country they are virtually isolated from the gospel, but within the borders of Russia the doors, and their ears, are wide open.

A burden to reach overlooked people groups, including immigrant populations, runs deep within the DNA of InterAct. We are prayerfully exploring new ministry opportunities such as partnering with indigenous ministries like pastor Yusuf and his church to reach Central Asian Muslims. It may be that God is calling us to work in this field that is white unto harvest. Will you please pray with us?

(Tom Slawson, Interact Ministries prayer letter, May 2012)

Friday, June 01, 2012

How did Animals Cross the Ocean? Humans did it, after the Flood!

The Bible records for us the world wide flood of Noah's day, and how two of every animal found refuge in the Ark so that they could re-populate the earth. Soon afterward, mankind spread across the whole earth, travelling across the seas, and brought animals and plants with them. How do we know? Ancient coins, stone heads with negroid features, platypus, elephants, pineapples, peanuts, in wrong places everywhere! Creationists require miracles at the beginning to explain this, evolutionists require miracles at every turn...

Selections from Biogeography: A Creationist Perspective, by Bill Johnson.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 48, Number 3, Winter 2012)

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Why is it that animals and plants are not equally distributed over the face of the earth? In Part 1 of this article, Evolution says, uhhh..., we saw how Evolutionists have three totally different methods they they mix and match to explain the distribution of animals and plants across the face of the earth: Land Bridges, Oceanic Dispersal, and the Pangaea supercontinent. If one doesn't sound right, try the other! Now we will find out whether the worldwide flood of the Bible offers a better explanation...

Transportation by Human Agency

The creationist view has always maintained that from his inception man was endowed with great intelligence, ingenuity, and technological abilities. Humans made numerous voyages across our great oceans long before Columbus. Most of the biogeographical enigmas that haunt evolutionists can be easily explained by this view.

The most convincing evidence for these transoceanic voyages comes from archaeology. The American continents, especially North America, have turned up numerous ancient coins from such places as China, Rome, Greece, and Egypt (Mahan and Braithwaite, 1975; Epstein et al., 1980). These coins cannot be easily dismissed as “recently lost” for several reasons: (1) Some coins have been found in undisturbed soil twenty-five feet deep (Deans, 1884) or in ancient Indian gravesites with stone tools found in the same locality (Butler, 1886); and (2) Chinese coins are confined to the west coast (i.e., Oregon and British Columbia), whereas Roman coins are east of the Mississippi, a pattern you would not expect to see if the coins were randomly dropped in modern times.

Archaeologists in Central America also have unearthed evidence for pre-Columbian contact from Africa, Asia, and Europe. Many large stone heads (some 9 feet high and 22 feet in circumference circumference) from southeastern Mexico display clear negroid characteristics (Stirling, 1940; Von Wuthenau, 1975). The same Olmec culture also produced a two-foot-high basalt statuette of an oriental man, which is presently housed in a Mexico City museum (Coe and Miller, 2004). And recently, a rediscovered black terracotta head from the 1930s identified as European was dated to be 1800 years old (Knight, 2000).

The traditions of the Polynesian people also support long sea journeys. Anthropologist Roland Dixon documented the types of canoes used and their varying lengths (some were 90 feet long and could accommodate as many as 100 people). He also documented the distances of many of their excursions (Dixon, 1934). Tangiia, a man from Fiji, traveled as far as 4,000 miles to Rapanui—the native name for Easter Island (Dixon, 1934). Many others made these long excursions, including Paao priest of Upolu in the Samoan Islands, who traveled a distance of 2,300 miles to Hawaii (Emerson, 1893). Had the early explorers reached as far as Easter Island and Hawaii, the journey eastward to America would not have been difficult.

Early humans traveled often and far for exploration, trade, and colonization. Couple this with G. G. Simpson’s (1940) observation that people have always had a fascination with animals from distant places, and creationists can explain not only island distributions but even continental ones. It is far more reasonable to believe that some of Hawaii’s fauna and flora arrived from southeastern Polynesia carried by humans, or that an early Polynesian explorer took back to Fiji the banded iguana than it is to believe that they transported themselves. Even some evolutionists accept this approach and have recently argued that the arrival of the coconut (Ward and Brookfield, 1992) and the Polynesian chicken in America are best explained by human transportation (Storey et al., 2007).

Postdiluvian Dispersal of Land Animals

How did kangaroos and giant earthworms make their way across the oceans to their present home in Australia?” (Coyne, 2009, p. 89). Contrary to the evolutionist claims, creation is not only consistent with the facts, but also provides a much simpler and non-miraculous explanation for continental distributions.

How exactly did marsupials get to Australia, and why are they mostly confined to this continent? Creationists have utilized two slightly different ways to explain these distributions, depending on when they believe continental drift took place. Some creationists have suggested that the continents were separated during the Flood and that marsupials got to Australia either by a land connection (i.e., since this area is still tectonically active) or by island hopping/rafting. This was followed by an extinction of marsupials in Asia. This view should not be ridiculed, especially since this was the dominant explanation given by evolutionists up until the acceptance of plate tectonics.

Other creationists believe the continents were still united after the Flood and every animal was more or less widely distributed, some even reaching as far as North America. Almost 400 years after the Flood, the continents separated (cf. Gen. 10:25 "Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided"), and some animals (e.g., marsupials) were spared the competition that their close cousins were suffering in other parts of the world (e.g., Asia). Due to competition, as well as other environmental factors, some members of a species died out while others flourished. What are seen are not evolutionary centers of origin followed by miraculous dispersals, but relicts, or survivors, of a once wide continuous range.

Evolutionists have flirted with what is essentially a creationist explanation. This simple way of explaining animal distributions (i.e., moving continents rather than animals) is explicable only by a theory of contemporaneous creation; that is, where all animals were present and widely distributed before the fragmentation of the world’s landmasses. Furthermore, the empirical evidence for a more or less widespread distribution becomes more impressive with each passing year. Prior to 1985, there was no evidence for marsupials anywhere but Australia and the New World, and evolutionists took this absence of evidence as evidence of absence, but now marsupial fossils have turned up in many unexpected places, including Africa Bown and Simons, 1984), Madagascar (Krause, 2001), and even Asia (Benton, 1985; Ducrocq et al., 1992).

We are discovering that more animals are proving to have a wider distribution than previously thought. The monotremes (e.g., platypus, spiny anteaters) were for the longest time believed to have been confined to Australia, yet to the amazement of many, a monotreme fossil was discovered in the early 1990s in South America (Pascual et al., 1992). Even elephants were far more widespread  than evolutionists were willing to admit. Elephant remains (i.e., bones, teeth) and man-made objects of elephants also place this creature in southern Mexico (Anonymous, 1903; Nomland, 1932), South America (White, 1884; Carter, 1989), and even possibly Australia (Vickers-Rich and Archbold, 1991).

Another factor that increases the chances of extinction is human introductions. As more exotic animals escape or are released in the wild, some will colonize these locations and force others into extinction.

Survival and Dispersal of Plants

Up until the time of the Flood, the world was lush with vegetation. All kinds of fruits, vegetables, flowering plants, and numerous other plant species were widely distributed on Pangaea. This tropical paradise was completely destroyed by the Flood, and only some species of plants, through the survival of their seed, succeeded in leaving representation in the postdiluvian world.


Wind-dispersed seeds & fruits in different plant families.
After the Floodwaters abated, seeds were scattered over the face of the earth, further dispersal occurred by other means: dispersal of seeds attached to animals’ bodies, seeds inside animals’ bodies, by physical expulsion and wind. Add this to human interest in many plants (e.g., fruits, vegetables, angiosperms) and our ability to facilitate dispersal.


Stone carving of a pineapple
in a cave temple
in Udaiguri, India.
The evidence from archaeology provides overwhelming support for a wide distribution of plants, especially fruits and vegetables. The pineapple, for example, was widespread in South and Central America when Columbus and other explorers came to the New World (Collins, 1948). As a result, it was long assumed that this fruit originated in Brazil until a wealth of archaeological evidence confirmed that the pineapple also existed in the Old World from very early times. The pineapple is clearly depicted in old Indian temple art (Gupta, 1996), found on pottery in Egyptian tombs (Wilkinson, 1837), represented on murals in Pompeii(Carter, 1953), and, to the amazement of nineteenth-century archaeologists, the pineapple was carved on walls in ancient Nineveh (Layard, 1853; Rawlinson, 1885).


Remains of peanuts found
in Peruvian mummies.
The peanut was once believed to have originated in the Old World because of how widespread it is there. When archaeologists recovered peanuts from ancient Peruvian tombs, it was then believed that the peanut originated in South America and was carried over to Asia in recent times. Archaeologists have recently discovered several-thousandyear-old peanuts in China (Chang, 1973) and in caves on the island of Timor, Indonesia (Glover, 1977).

Many other plants thought “native” to one hemisphere also existed early in the other hemisphere. Ancient Indian temple art clearly depicts plants that supposedly originated in America, such as the cashew nut, custard apple, and chili pepper (Gupta, 1996). The custard apple also was discovered in caves on the island of Timor (Glover, 1977), and the chili pepper had a history in Tahiti before European contact (Langdon, 1988).

Evolution depends more on miracles

The evolutionary claims for this wide transoceanic distribution of plants is unconvincing because plants have limited mobility and are poor dispersers.
 
Evolutionists, however, have an a priori commitment to naturalism; thus they are forced to explain away the evidence. They also distort and misrepresent the creationist position to give the impression that their theory is the only viable explanation.

The creationist explanation is the better argument. The idea of a contemporaneous creation dispersed widely on the earth followed by partial extinctions is a simple approach, especially when dispersal is facilitated by humans. This view also fits with the archaeological evidence. The problem of biogeography from an evolutionary perspective is that all of life is stretched out over half a billion years, with the fragmentation of the world occurring late in the history, leaving a large percentage of plants and animals to disperse in a miraculous way.

Creationists are often chided for reliance on miracles. They require them, though only in the beginning. Evolution, however, requires them at almost every turn, especially when dealing with the geography of life.
 
References (selected)

Anonymous. 1903. Elephant remains in Mexico. American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal 25:395–397.
 
Benton, M. 1985. First marsupial fossil from Asia. Nature 318:313.
 
Bown, T.M., and E.L. Simons. 1984. First record of marsupials (Metatheria: Polyprotodonta) from the Oligocene in Africa. Nature 308:447–449.
 
Butler, J.D. 1886. Roman coins found in Oshkosh. American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal 8:372.
 
Carter, G. 1989. A note on the elephant in America. Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications 18:90.

Chang, K.C. 1973. Radiocarbon dates from China: some initial interpretations. Current Anthropology 14:525–528.

Coe, M., and M. Miller. 2004. Olmec wrestler: a masterpiece of the ancient Gulf Coast. Minerva 16:18–19.

Collins, J.L. 1948. Pineapples in ancient America. Scientific Monthly 67:372–377.
 
Coyne, J. 2009. Why Evolution Is True. Viking, New York, NY.
 
Deans, J. 1884. Chinese coins in British Columbia. American Naturalist 18:98, 99.
 
Dixon, R. 1934. The long voyages of the Polynesians. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 74:167–175.
 
Ducrocq, S., E. Buffetaut, H. Buffetaut-Tong, J. Jaeger, Y. Jongkanjanasoontorn, and V.Suteethorn. 1992. First fossil marsupial from South Asia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 12:395–399.
 
Emerson, N.B. 1893. The Long Voyages of the Ancient Hawaiians. Hawaiian Gazette Co., Honolulu, HI.
 
Epstein, J., D.B. Buchanan, T.V. Buttrey, G.F. Carter, W.L. Cook, C. Covey, S.C. Jett, T.A. Lee Jr., B. Mundkur, A.C. Paulsen, H.J. Prem, J.E. Reyman, M.R. Dorado, and N. Totten. 1980. Pre-Columbian Old World coins in America: an examination of the evidence. Current Anthropology 21:1–20.

Glover, I. 1977. The Late Stone Age in Eastern Indonesia. World Archaeology 9:42–61

Gupta, S. 1996. Plants in Indian Temple Art. B.R. Publishing Co., Delhi, India.

Knight, J. 2000. Did Roman sailors shake hands with ancient Mexicans? New Scientist 2225:7.
 
Krause, D. 2001. Fossil molar from a Madagascan marsupial. Nature 412:497–498.

Langdon, R. 1988. Manioc, a long concealed key to the enigma of Easter Island. The Geographical Journal 154:324–336.
 
Layard, A. 1853. Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. John Murray, New York, NY.

Mahan, J., and D. Braithwaite. 1975. Discovery of ancient coins in the United Sates. Anthropological Journal of Canada 13:15–18.

Nomland, G.A. 1932. Proboscis statue from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. American Anthropologist 34:591–593.
 
Pascual, R., M. Archer, E. Jaureguizar, J.L.Prado, H. Godthelp, and S.J. Hand. 1992. First discovery of monotremes in South America. Nature 356:704–705.

Rawlinson, G. 1885. The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World. John Alden, New York, NY.

Simpson, G.G. 1940. Mammals and land bridges. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 30:137–163.

Stirling, M. 1940. Great stone faces of the Mexican jungle. National Geographic 78:309–334.

Storey, A., J.M. Ramırez, D. Quiroz, D.V.Burley, D.J. Addison, R. Walter, A.J.Anderson, T.L. Hunt, J.S. Athens, L.Huynen, and E.A. Matisoo-Smith. 2007. Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of  Polynesian chickens to Chile. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 104:10335–10339.
 
Vickers-Rich, P., and N. Archbold. 1991. Squatters, priests and professors: a brief history of vertebrate paleontology in Monaghan, R.F. Baird, and T.H. Rich (editors), Vertebrate Paleontology of Australasia, pp. 1–39. Monash University Publications, Melbourne, Australia.

Terra Australis. In Vicers-Rich, P., J.M.

Von Wuthenau, A. 1975. Unexpected Faces in Ancient America. Crown, New York, NY.

Ward, R.G., and M. Brookield. 1992. The dispersal of the coconut: did it float or was it carried to Panama? Journal of Biogeography 19:467–480.

White, R.B. 1884. Notes on the aboriginal races of the north-western provinces of South America. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 13:240–258.

Wilkinson, J.G. 1837. Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians. J. Murray, London, England.