Tens of Thousands of Years Wrong!

● From a June 30, 1952, Associated Press report: “The National Capital Parks reported proudly today that there was a blossom on an Indian lotus plant at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens here. It is no ordinary blossom. It bloomed yesterday on a plant grown from seeds that are tens of thousands of years old. The seeds from which the Indian lotus grew were found in geologic deposits in southern Manchuria two years ago by Dr. Seido Endo, paleontologist at Sendai University in Japan. Dr. Endo said the seeds were found under a layer of rocks and were at least tens of thousands of years old.” Presumably the readers believed this fantastic age claim. How were they to know that this claim, which would contradict the Bible, had already been disproved by the radiocarbon clock, which had set the age of these lotus seeds at merely 1,000 years? (See “The Radiocarbon Clock”, Awake! February 22, 1952.) That in itself is quite an age for seeds, and would have made an interesting news item, but the earlier, though false, age estimate was more spectacular. Apparently a few “tens of thousands of years” matters little to a “scientist” talking for publicity, or to the news service that reports his words.