Earlier, I commented on two posts by the biology professor Joel Duff on how the density of stone tool artifacts posed a major problem for the YEC belief that humans have been on the Earth for only 6000 years. Duff's article in turn was based in part on a 2015 PLoS ONE article by Foley and Lahr, which as some commenters noted had some problems. Duff acknowledged this, and revised the post. However, as Duff pointed out to one commenter, the stone artifact problem remains a massive problem for special creationists.
I did take the post down until I could revise it some. I have removed the specific numbers that are a problem. While the estimates could but are not necessarily wrong there isn’t enough support for their pyramid comparison in terms of real numbers. But I have examined plenty of papers on this topic and there is no doubt that that stone artifacts are astoundingly commonplace in many places in Africa. This is a serous problem to the young earth timeline. Thanks for pointing out the potential errors in that original research. Science isn’t always perfect but there are many independent people working on artificts in many locations of Africa. Many of these include thousands of hours of observations that leave no doubt about the amazing density and diversity of stone artifacts.
This is a classic example of the scientific method in action - errors are acknowledged, and positions refined in light of better evidence. It stands in clear contrast to the YEC position where a literal reading of the Bible is privileged above all evidence, all evidence to the contrary is ignored, lying is rife and even when corrected, long-refuted positions are still advanced.
Duff's comment deserves to be highlighted again:
But I have examined plenty of papers on this topic and there is no doubt that that stone artifacts are astoundingly commonplace in many places in Africa. This is a serious problem to the young earth timeline.
One trusts that YECs would not have the intellectual and moral dishonesty to try to spin this into a refutation of mainstream science and evidence for a young earth.
