The human fossils still speak!
by Marvin Lubenow
The human fossil record is completely compatible with special creation. In contrast,
the human fossil evidence is so contrary to evolution that it effectively falsifies
the idea that humans evolved. Future fossil discoveries will not substantially change
the picture because future discoveries cannot nullify the objective evidence already
unearthed. This message is not what we hear from a hundred different voices coming
at us from a dozen different directions. But the human fossils themselves tell the
real story. I can best illustrate the situation by describing a project I have conducted
a number of times in my college apologetics classes. Each student is to do research
on several assigned fossils. Only fossils that are fully accepted as legitimate
by the scientific community are included.
The rules are as follows:
- The student is to spend a minimum of eight hours of research on each fossil.
- He must use only evolutionist sources.
- He is to determine the date the evolutionist has assigned to the fossil.
- He is to determine the category (australopithecine, Homo erectus, Neandertal,
etc.) assigned to the fossil by evolutionists.
- He is to write a one-page paper outlining his findings and make copies for distribution
to the class.
- The paper must contain at least five documented sources.
The results have become quite predictable. After the first week, a number of students
come to me complaining that they cannot find any agreement among evolutionists regarding
the date or the category of their fossil. I could easily have told them about this
situation in a class lecture, but it wouldn't have had the impact upon them that
their own research provided. Many important hominid fossils are the subject of intense
controversy among evolutionists involving the date, or the category, or both. The
two matters are sometimes related. For evolutionists, the category to which they
assign a fossil is sometimes used to arbitrarily determine its date, or the date
of a fossil is sometimes used to arbitrarily determine the category to which it
is assigned. This is not an unbiased approach in interpreting human fossils. I suggest
to the students that they go with the two or three evolutionists out of the five
they have consulted who may agree on the fossil in question.
When I made the fossil assignments, I did not make them randomly. I purposely gave
the more obscure fossils to students who I knew were good at research. However,
after about two weeks, members of this group began coming to me. They complained
that they were not able to find anything on a particular fossil. Besides using our
own college library, they often checked several of the large state university libraries
in our area. More than one student suggested that there was no such fossil as the
one I had assigned. Laughingly, I was accused of sending them on a wild-goose chase.
Their experience was what I had anticipated. I wanted them to discover first-hand
that there are many legitimate fossil discoveries about which it is very difficult
to obtain information. When I was satisfied that the student had spent at least
eight hours in searching for information on a particular fossil, I would give him
copies of the materials in my own file on that fossil so that he could write his
report. He could not possibly duplicate my 25 years of research on the human fossils
in the time allotted. I do not wish to imply that the difficulty in finding material
on many of the human fossils represents some kind of evolutionist plot. What happens
is that only the most sensational fossil discoveries receive much publicity. Most
discoveries are reported in some scientific journal and then forgotten by all but
a very few experts. The fossils mentioned in most popular presentations of human
evolution represent just a small portion of the total fossil material that has been
uncovered. As the students prepared to write their reports, a third group comes
to me. Because of the conflict they see between the shape (morphology) of their
fossil and the assignment given it by evolutionists, they have questions.
Question: ‘Why do evolutionists call the very robust Australian
fossils Homo sapiens when they themselves state that they are almost identical
to the Java Homo erectus material?’
Answer: ‘Those robust Australian fossils (the Kow Swamp material,
the Cossack skull, the Willandra Lakes WHL 50 skull, etc.), by their dating methods,
are just thousands of years old. Homo erectus wasn’t supposed to
be living so recently. Hence, the evolutionist must call them Homo sapiens
to preserve his theory.’
Question: ‘Why are the skull KNM-ER 1470, the leg bones KNM-ER
148 I, and the skull KNM-ER 1590, found by Richard Leakey in East Africa, assigned
to Homo habilis when the skull sizes, skull shapes, and the very modern
leg bones would allow assignment to some form of Homo sapiens?’
Answer: ‘Those fossils are dated at almost two million years.
The evolutionist cannot allow modern humans to be living in that evolutionary time
frame—no matter what the fossils look like.’
Question: ‘Why is the elbow bone from Kanapoi, KP 271, found
in East Africa in 1964, called Australopithecus africanus when the computer
analysis conducted by evolutionists declares it to be virtually identical to modern
humans?’
Answer: ‘Because the fossil is dated at 4.4 million years!
It would suggest that true humans are older than their evolu-tionary ancestors.
No evolutionist worth his salt can follow the facts when they lead in that direction.’
The Fossils Falsify Evolution
Because there is an obvious conflict between the shape of some fossils and their
category assignment by evolutionists, I encourage the students to go by the shape
of their fossils, as documented by evolutionists themselves, in making their assessments.
That is the way paleoanthropologists are supposed to do it. Then comes ‘F’
Day—Fossil Day! The students bring their reports to class and place their
fossils on the master chart according to the evolutionist dating. As the process
takes shape, it becomes very apparent that the human fossils do not show evolution
over time. In fact, it is obvious that the fossils themselves falsify the concept
of human evolution. Regarding this exercise, some people ask me, ‘Aren’t
you taking quite a chance? What if the exercise doesn’t always work out that
way?’ In spite of the ambiguities in many of the fossils, because of the very
large number of fossils involved, the over-all testimony of the human fossils is
very clear. It always works out that way! In this exercise, the stark reality of
the human fossil record hits the student with greater force than anything I could
have said. The key in this exercise is to study all of the relevant fossil material
and to place it all on a ‘time chart’. Besides more than 300 Neandertal
fossil individuals, this material includes more than 49 fossil individuals in the
archaic Homo sapiens category, more than 220 fossil individuals that can
properly be classified as Homo erectus, and more than 63 fossil individuals
that are indistinguishable from modern Homo sapiens and are dated by evolutionists
from 30,000 years all the way back to 4.4 million years in the past. It is no accident
that evolutionist books seldom include charts listing all of this material. For
example, one of the more recent texts (1989) on the human fossils is by University
of Chicago professor Richard G. Klein.2 In his 524-page work, Klein has
20 different charts dealing with various aspects of the human (hominid) fossil record.
Yet, there is no way a student could get the over-all picture. The student would
simply have to accept by faith Klein’s thesis that the fossils demonstrate
human evolution. The one chart that would most interest students—a chart showing
all of the relevant fossil material mentioned above—is not to be found anywhere.
By this type of omission, the true nature of the human fossil record continues to
be the best-kept secret in modern paleoanthropology.
References
- William W. Howells, ‘Homo erectus in human descent: ideas and problems’,
Homo erectus: Papers in Honour of Davidson
Black, Becky A. Sigmon and Jerome S. Cybulski, eds., University of Toronto Press,
Toronto. 1981, pp.79-80.
- Richard G. Klein. The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins, University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989.
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