Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [373]
9.1.5 The Transformation of the Rockefeller Foundation
Just a few years before, Rockefeller Foundation officials had actively discouraged Black from becoming too involved in paleoanthropological research. Now they were backing him to the hilt, setting up an institute specifically devoted to searching for remains of fossil human ancestors. Why had the Rockefeller Foundation so changed its attitude toward Black and his work? This question bears looking into, because the financial contribution of foundations would turn out to be vital to human evolution research carried out by scientists like Black. Foundation support would also prove important in broadcasting the news of the finds and their significance to the waiting world.
As Warren Weaver, a scientist and Rockefeller Foundation official, said (1967, p. 82): “In a perfect world an idea could be born, nourished, developed and made known to everyone, criticized and perfected, and put to good use without the crude fact of financial support ever entering into the process.
Seldom, if ever, in the practical world in which we live, does this occur. The influence of money on ideas can be powerful; it can be good, or it can be downright vicious. . . . Money can be used to lure the gullible to devote their time to spiritualism, to fanatical religions, to pseudo-science, and so on.”
For Weaver, biological questions were of the highest importance. Writing in
1967, Weaver stated that he regarded the highly publicized particle accelerators and space exploration programs as something akin to scientific fads. He added: “The opportunities not yet rigorously explored lie in the understanding of the nature of living things. It seemed clear in 1932, when the Rockefeller Foundation launched its quarter-century program in that area, that the biological and medical sciences were ready for a friendly invasion by the physical sciences. . . . the tools are now available for discovering, on the most disciplined and precise level of molecular actions, how man’s central nervous system really operates, how he thinks, learns, remembers, and forgets. . . . Apart from the fascination of gaining some knowledge of the nature of the mind-brain-body relationship, the practical values in such studies are potentially enormous. Only thus may we gain information about our behavior of the sort that can lead to wise and beneficial control” (W. Weaver 1967, p. 203).
It thus becomes clear that at the same time the Rockefeller Foundation was channeling funds into human evolution research in China, it was in the process of developing an elaborate plan to fund biological research with a view to developing methods to effectively control human behavior. Black’s research into Peking man must be seen within this context in order to be properly understood.
Over the past few decades, science has developed a comprehensive cosmology that explains the origin of human beings as the culmination of a 4-billion-year process of chemical and biological evolution on this planet, which formed in the aftermath of the Big Bang, the event that marked the beginning of the universe some 16 billion years ago. The Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, founded upon particle physics and astronomical observations suggesting we live in an expanding cosmos, is thus inextricably connected with the theory of the biochemical evolution of all life forms, including human beings. The major foundations, especially the Rockefeller Foundation, provided key funding for the initial research supporting this materialistic cosmology, which has for all practical purposes pushed God and the soul into the realm of mythology—at least in the intellectual centers of modern civilization.
The extent of the Rockefeller Foundation’s support of biological research is remarkable. The Foundation funded the fruit fly genetics work of Thomas Hunt