Michael Behe versus the history of material culture (specifically, the history of mouse traps)

[Boojatta]

Mouse trap history is not (yet) an established subject of research in the history of material culture. This ignorance allowed Michael Behe (1996) to claim the ubiquitous flat snap trap as an example ...

of a system having irreducible complexity.

The ancient Egyptian culture was highly pictorial, and trapping fowl was a royal sport. Catching rodents was no royal sport. Nevertheless, rat cage traps made of pottery are also known from ancient Egypt (e.g., Drummond et al. 1990) and elsewhere. Therefore, the fact that the oldest historical records are bird traps from Egypt cannot be taken to mean that these traps were confined to Egypt or to catching birds.

Some ancient bird traps were strikingly similar to flat snap mouse traps (Fig. 2a, b).

From:
Exploring Mouse Trap History
by Joachim L. Dagg
Published online: 8 February 2011
Keywords Irreducible complexity – Lateral transfer – Hannah principle

[drm604]

1. The reducibly complex mousetrap.

http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html