Creationists Don't Want Turkana Boy Displayed
Posted on February 8, 2007
The Associated Press is reporting that a radical group of creationists is literally trying to keep Turkana Boy confined to a back room in his home at the Kenya National Museum in Nairobi. Turkana Boy is a nearly complete skeleton of a 1.5 million year-old hominid boy. Turkana Boy is believed to be about eleven or twelve years-old according to the Wikipedia entry. He is due to move to a much more prominent display at the museum. He will be the center piece of a $10.5 million renovation of the National Museums of Kenya.
But his first public display later this year is at the heart of a growing storm - one pitting scientists against Kenya's powerful and popular evangelical Christian movement. The debate over evolution vs. creationism - once largely confined to the United States - has arrived in a country known as the cradle of mankind.The last thing we need are creationists trying to destroy the skeletons and fossils they don't believe exist. Pushing science to the back of the room is a great way to head mankind straight towards another middle ages. Many archaeologist including Richard Leaky, whose team discovered the skeleton in 1984, are concerned about the Turkana Boy's safety. Fortunately, there will be high security at the museum."I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it," says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya's 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. "These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."
He's calling on his flock to boycott the exhibition and has demanded the museum relegate the fossil collection to a back room - along with some kind of notice saying evolution is not a fact but merely one of a number of theories.
Leakey fears the ideological spat may provoke an attack on the priceless collection, one largely found during the 1920s by his paleontologist parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, who passed their fossil-hunting traditions on to him.The museum's attendance should soar once the famous skeleton is on display. The website for the National Museums of Kenya can be found here.The museum, which attracts around 100,000 visitors a year, is taking no chances.
Turkana Boy will be displayed in a private room, with limited access and behind a glass screen with 24-hour closed-circuit TV. Security guards will be at the entrance.
"There are issues about the security," said Dr. Emma Mbua, the head of paleontology at the museum. "These fossils are irreplaceable and we wouldn't want anything to happen to them."