It is undoubtedly one of the most iconic images of evolution.
In this one artistic representation, we have the summary of the ideology of how apes evolved into humans. We can just SEE how it must have happened… because there it is… right in front of us. And it seems so logical. So easy. So plausible. Paleoanthropologists (those who study fossils of apes and humans) have collected all the fossils, analyzed all the details, and presented us with the irrefutable facts.
And we have the picture to prove it!
There is only one problem. There are such limited facts to support it. The fossil evidence is extremely sparse. The details are sketchy. And the opinions of the experts is “all over the map.” There is simply no consensus as to what the fossils are telling us.
One expert admitted: “Interpretations of the fossil evidence for human evolution are heavily influenced by personal beliefs and prejudices… experts even acknowledge that their field is the most subjective and contentious in all of biology.”
A Science magazine article summarized the complexity of the problem: “The primary scientific evidence is a pitifully small array of bones from which to construct man’s evolutionary history. One anthropologist has compared the task to that of reconstructing the plot of War and Peace with 13 randomly selected pages.”
Henry Gee, the Chief Science Writer for Nature put it this way: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story – amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”
So… if there is such a small amount of evidence – and the experts can’t even agree what that evidence means… how is it that everyone accepts human evolution from apes as a bona fide fact?
Behold the power of a picture! To influence, persuade, and indoctrinate.
I have my own story of the power of an artist’s rendering… for over twenty years our local city zoo had an impressive display (at a cost of nearly $18 million) of one of the supposed missing links between apes and man.
I introduce you to Lucy…
Lucy’s bones were discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, and the wheels of evolution began churning immediately. Lucy was supposedly one of the first apes to begin walking upright. And that is how she was displayed in the city zoo. Gazing upward with a sense of wonder etched on her face. She was displayed with hands and feet that were very human (although much more hairy!)… as she strolled about – leaving her tree-swinging, knuckle-dragging days behind her.
And everything about Lucy is a fabrication. Interpreted for us by folks who have an agenda to promote… and a story to tell (see last week’s Saturday post).
Here are Lucy’s actual bones…
What you notice immediately is that there were no hands and feet discovered. (So, naturally, we should assume that her missing parts were obviously human-like!). She is small in size (about the size of a chimpanzee). Her hip bone is almost identical to current apes (indicating her “walking” would be similar to current apes). And her face (wait… she doesn’t have a face!) so it’s hard to tell what she would have looked like (or if she even could gaze upward with a sense of wonder).
In short, it is difficult to tell (from the evidence) exactly how Lucy was similar to humans (if at all). In fact, the bulk of the research done on her, since her discovery, is very revealing.* Science has spoken… and the facts are that Lucy was, in all likelihood, just another full-blown ape. (By the way, other species of Lucy’s type have been discovered, WITH feet and hands… and those features are just like every other ape). Oh, and here’s another little tidbit… Lucy wasn’t even female! (Oops.)
All this is just to show how difficult it is to take bones from the past and tell an accurate story in our present.
The problem is not so much with the facts as with how those facts are interpreted. In many cases, it is exactly as Biology historian Jane Maienschein has said: “Researchers can be manipulated into believing that they have actually found what it was they had been looking for.”
Lucy is not the only case. For over a century, those who promote evolution have “discovered” many “ape-men” and have heartily promoted them as the true “missing link” between apes and man. Java man, Piltdown man, Nebraska man, Peking man… all heralded as proof of Darwin’s theory.
And all exposed as misinterpretations… or outright frauds.
The truth is that, since Darwin’s time, evolutionists have been looking for actual proof that their ape-to-man picture is right… but until (IF!) that ever happens, they have the next best thing. They have an “actual” picture that proves what they have been claiming all along.
* Fifteen years of research were devoted to the study of Australopithecus (Lucy and her kind), conducted by prominent anatomists Zuckerman and Oxnard (and a team of scientists) in which they poured over every intricate detail of the fossils and compared them to both man and apes. Their conclusions are based on research that is as detailed and thorough as science can get. In the end, Zuckerman stated adamantly: “They are just apes!”