Answers Magazine
Answers magazine is the Bible-affirming, creation-based magazine from Answers in Genesis. In it you will find fascinating content and stunning photographs that present creation and worldview articles along with relevant cultural topics from different authors. Each quarterly issue includes a detachable chart, a pullout children’s magazine, a unique animal highlight, excellent layman and semi-technical articles plus bonus content from the AnswersMagazine.com website. Our purpose is to equip you, our reader, with practical answers so you can confidently communicate the gospel and biblical authority with accuracy. Why wait? Subscribe today!
Darwin thought natives were advanced animals
First published:
Creation 16(1):37
December 1993
Charles Darwin visited the rugged land of Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America. The natives there, then numbering about 7,000, have since died out, but because of their very simple way of life, Darwin and others believed they were far less evolved than European man. He is quoted as writing: ‘the difference between a Tierra del Fuegian and a European is greater than between a Tierra del Fuegian and a beast.’1
Darwin actually spent some time trying to talk with three such natives, and concluded that their language was so ‘primitive’ that it had only about a hundred sounds.
However, after the 1920s, missionaries began to live among them. They found them to have a high standard of morality, believed in (and prayed to) a Supreme Creator Being and were generally kind and sociable, with respect for family life. Eventually a partial list of words in their language was compiled which ran to more than 32,000 words. They had a rich and complex grammar and vocabulary.
Concerning all this, the author of a 1984 book, from which this item has been taken, concluded:
‘They were true men as much as he [Darwin] was, with full intellectual faculties and spiritual qualities that they did not show to casual passers-by. If Darwin could misjudge a living ‘specimen’ with whom he could communicate, what trammels are there to restrain the speculation of an ardent evolutionist (and his artist associate) over a few broken bones?’2
References
- Quoted in: V. Barclay, Darwin is not for Children, Herbert Jenkins, 1950.
- Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution, Hutchinson, 1984, p. 241.
Help keep these daily articles coming. Find out how to support AiG.
