‘Lost’ mystery of Adam and Eve bone age solved: they drank lots of milk

Last night I finally was clued in to read the Sepinwall interview that Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof gave after the Lost episode “Across the Sea”. Even after digesting the answers for half a day, I can’t help but feel frustrated by their non-committal answers that shrug off any blame.And it’s not that I want to go around blaming them for a ton of things – they write the show, they can do what they want. But I take issue with one thing, very specifically.

There was a continuity error that I believe truly was an ERROR (harmless, and maybe it was good to mislead us) and not purposeful. In “House of the Rising Sun” Jack finds the Adam and Eve bones, and he says they’re about 50 years old. But when we saw “Across the Sea” the bodies were obviously dead for much longer than that.

( Lost ‘Across the Sea’ Review and Predictions for the Lost Series Finale )

Rather than admit that they hadn’t calculated the time right, or say that they had wanted to mislead people, Darlton refuse to own up to anything. Which is what they’re doing about everything, saying that if there isn’t an answer it’s conveniently something that they know but don’t feel like sharing. I can forgive an error, especially in something where maybe they changed their minds over all of these seasons – just admit it! The bodies were found apart in the caves, but together in the episode. We can blame that on wind, or boars, or whatever. That’s not a big deal to me.

They’re saying Jack thought it was only 50 years old because he wasn’t an expert. As a doctor who works with bones, you would think he would have a better idea of how to identify bones in better age ranges than ‘it’s old so I guess maybe it’s 50’. Before we had an answer from Darlton, and I’d mentioned this discrepancy in my “Across the Sea” Review, one of the commenter’s told me it was obviously because of time travel. Darlton should have used THAT answer.

( Ian Somerhalder Has Curious Choice of Words about the ‘Lost’ Finale )

Instead, we’re told that Jack just didn’t know what he was doing, or perhaps the clothing that Jacob and Mother made was so good it didn’t look as old as it was (which wouldn’t explain the bones, unless they’d been drinking tons of milk! Or had SOME weird influx of calcium.).Cop-out, cop-out, COP-OUT!

AS: You’ve said many times that when people find out who Adam and Eve are, we’ll all realize just how long you’ve been planning the mythology. Well, I went back and watched the “House of the Rising Sun” scene, and Jack says that the clothing looks like it’s 50 years old. Is he just not very good at calculating the rate of decay on fabric?
CC: Jack is not really an expert in carbon dating.
DL: He’s not really a forensic anthropologist. We need to bring in Bones.
CC: Or Charlotte. She’s an anthropolgist.
DL: The other theory that I would like to throw out there is that Jacob and his mother were just expert craftsmen. They made those clothes on that loom so well, it would appear that they were only 50 years old in decomposition, when in fact it’s several thousand.
CC: Or perhaps the fabric is magic. A lot of theories there, Alan.

It was a missed opportunity to not make the skeletons Jack and Kate. That would have been almost creepier, no?