Dinosaurs, Noah's Ark and Medieval England

Dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark. Yep that’s right, according to AiG Noah had to collect all the animals including dinosaurs and find places for them on his boat. And feed them, water them, clean up after them, stop fights with other species and so on.

When promoting the simultaneous existence of dinosaurs and man in ancient times AiG hint that there is a wealth of information out there to support their case. For many years creationists believed that the Paluxy river bed tracks in Texas contained both human and dinosaur prints together, thereby proving the co-existence of these two species thereby proving creation. But as the years went by and more investigations were carried out, most creationists, including AiG, dropped Paluxy from its galaxy of evidence.

When one investigates other ‘evidence’ for the coexistence of Dinosaurs and Man, it turns out to be a lot of mythological stories about dragons, a few fuzzy paintings on rock walls that could be just about anything, (ancient peoples sometimes depicted fictional animals such as the ‘unicorn’ from Lascaux in France) and not much else. AiG’s old ‘Answers Book’ on page 245 showed an illustration of some bearded fellow with a spear fighting a large and very vicious looking meat eating dinosaur on his own. If he was successful in felling the beast (which I doubt) it makes me wonder why no dinosaur bones have been found that show evidence of being hunted by man? We have the remains of Mammoths, horses, ibex, musk-ox and many other creatures from Ice Age Europe that show signs on their bones of scratch marks from stone tools that people used to cut away the flesh. If a community of people could bring down one of the large docile dinosaurs it could have provided food for a very large number of people. In archaeological excavations of ruined towns and settlements in the Middle East we should then expect to find broken up dinosaur bones in cooking areas, in hearths and in refuse pits. But we don’t. Why would people not hunt such huge meaty animals? Also, if dinosaurs were wandering around the Middle East during Biblical times, why no firm mention of them in the Bible?* Or any other ancient book for that matter? Why no mention of dinosaurs in Sumerian, Babylonian, Minoan and Egyptian texts? Such massive, terrifying creatures you’d think would be the source of many epic stories that would have found their way into the Bible and lots of other ancient literature.  

In the September – November 2003 edition of ‘Creation’ magazine, AiG-UK writer Philip Bell discussed the tomb of Bishop Richard Bell (no relation apparently). Bishop Bell died in 1496 and was buried in Carlisle Cathedral in northern England. The Bishop’s tomb is decorated with a number of etchings of animals like a pig, a dog, and a bird amongst others. There are however a couple of etchings that are harder to discern (due to the tombs age and centuries of feet – the tomb is on the floor of the cathedral) but Philip Bell is quite convinced that these unusual looking creatures are actually meant to represent dinosaurs. The implication here is that Philip Bell believes that dinosaurs were wandering around Northern England in the late fifteenth century. Specifically, Bell describes them as Apatosaurus and Stegosaurus. On page 43 of the magazine, figure 4 shows a photo of two of the creatures. Bell says any school child would identify them as dinosaurs. To my eyes they both look like some type of large cat, perhaps a lion. Bell on the other hand is convinced that what he is seeing are medieval dinosaurs,

‘…Figure 4 shows two dinosaurs engaged in a struggle (or perhaps courtship!)’ (page 42).

If dinosaurs were living in late fifteenth century England it means that they were also present during the Norman invasion, during the Viking raids, during the Anglo-Saxon migration and settlement, during the four centuries of Roman rule in Britain etc. Did any of these people write about dinosaurs? If such impressive creatures were glimpsed trekking across a province of the Roman Empire, wouldn’t the Romans have been keen to capture a few and toss them into the Colosseum like so many other exotic animals for amusement? The Romans loved novelty and the bizarre so dinosaurs would have been highly prized as entertainment. Did William the Conqueror have to do battle with a few T-Rex’s before he could march on London in 1066AD? Did Geoffrey Chaucer write about dinosaurs, did Shakespeare? Where is the evidence of recently deceased dinosaurs in England? Has Philip Bell ever thought to stop for a moment, sit down and really think this through? Dinosaurs in England just over five hundred years ago with no mention of them in any text or manuscript? No physical evidence, no stories, no illustrations? England has always been a densely populated nation with the vast majority of its land well and truly under the plough. Even five hundred years ago much of the forest cover had already been removed, so where exactly did these creatures live? At night did they just lay down in some farmers’ field? Bell’s evidence doesn’t even rate as flimsy, and his conclusion is hilarious to say the least. He goes on to say,

‘Of course, not everyone will be convinced that these beasts are indeed dinosaurs. Many people are so ‘evolutionized’ that they feel compelled to explain away what they see as an anachronism. For example, the Canon Warden of Carlisle Cathedral wrote the following letter to David Jolly (AiG-USA): ‘These motifs include various sorts of vegetation, birds, dogs, fish, a bat, an eel and several mythical beasts. I do not think that the word “dinosaur” is appropriate in this context. The decoration is typical of the period, and is in no way unusual or unremarkable’.’ (emphasis added in AiG’s article). (page 43).

Looks like the Cannon Warden of Carlisle Cathedral is one of those poor people who have been irrevocably ‘evolutionized’. Or maybe he is just an intelligent man who knows how to recognise a crackpot theory. If Philip Bell thinks that people are going to be convinced that dinosaurs lived in Northern England during the Middle Ages by nothing more than a worn old tomb that depicts typical fifteenth century art, then he is in for a great disappointment. One doesn’t need to be ‘evolutionized’ to realise that Philip Bell’s conclusions are utterly absurd; simple common sense will do that. His article is further proof (if any were needed) that AiG will latch onto anything, no matter how feeble, to ‘prove’ that their creationism is right.

*AiG actually do claim that dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible, but I’ll cover that topic at a later date.