Did Your Ancestors Swing From Trees?

Jeff Miller, Ph.D.

Misc.

“We have the fossils. We win.” That was the caption on a picture of human-like fossils that was shown on the Internet by evolutionists. The fossil record is one of the most often used pieces of evidence to try to claim evolution is true. If Darwinian evolution occurred, there certainly should be proof in the fossil record of the gradual evolutionary changes (transitions) that had to happen between different kinds of creatures. In fact, just considering the evolution of humans, if we evolved from an ape-like creature two to three million years ago, as evolutionists suggest, there should be millions of transitional fossils that prove it.

But in the words of Harvard evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin, the fossil record is “poor” in providing evidence of human evolution. According to Lewontin, we have merely “a handful” of alleged human-like fossils that he admitted cannot be known with certainty to be human ancestors. Recently the Editor-in-Chief of a popular science magazine said, “Pieces of our ancient forebears generally are hard to come by…. Scientists working to interpret our evolution often have had to make do with studying a fossil toe bone here or a jaw there.” Not much to work with, and further, what she did not highlight is the fact that in time, after other scientists have studied the fossils, those toe bones and jaws that are rashly claimed as evidence for evolution prove not to be what they initially thought. Here are some famous examples from the last several decades:

	Ida Fossilized skeleton discovered and claimed to be “the first link to all humans”—later found to be related to lemurs and lorises, not humans.
	Lucy Discovered in 1974 and quickly rose to fame as an alleged transitional creature between humans and an ape-like creature—further study revealed that Lucy was not proof of human evolution, but was actually more likely a male ape closely related to the modern pygmy chimp.
	Ardi Initially thought to be very close to the ancestor evolutionists think we shared with chimps, but after further study, his position in the human family tree was called into question entirely.
	Neanderthal Man Claimed to be a missing link in the human evolutionary chain, but after sequencing the Neanderthal genome, it was found to be as close to modern man genetically as two modern chimpanzees are to each other.
	Java Man Fossilized teeth, portion of a skull, and a thigh bone were discovered and claimed to be proof of human evolution—later found to be merely the remains of a human and a monkey from the same area. Another alleged Java “Man” fossil discovered in the same area later proved to be the kneecap of an elephant. (Above Image Credit: www.wikipedia.org (Peter Maas) 2015 CC-by-sa-3.0)
	Piltdown Man A fossilized jawbone and the upper portion of a skull discovered in England and claimed as proof of evolution—later found to be a fraud. The skull was found to be from a modern human and the jawbone was found to be from an ape. The teeth had been filed down and treated chemically to make them look old.
	Nebraska Man A single tooth was discovered and broadcasted as proof of human evolution—later found to be a tooth from a wild pig.
	Hobbit Man Several bones discovered in Indonesia and claimed to be from a human ancestor—recently argued by some to be merely modern humans with Down Syndrome. (Image Credit: www.wikipedia.org (FunkMonk) 2015 CC-by-sa-2.0)
	Rhodesian Man Fossils discovered in a zinc mine and displayed in the British Museum of Natural History as a stooping human ancestor due to his hips—later found to be merely a modern human being whose hips had been crushed. (Image Credit: www.wikipedia.org (Gerbil) 2015 Free Art License)
	Calaveras Man Ancient skull discovered in a mineshaft, thought to be over a million years old—later found to be a hoax, planted in the mine by local miners.
	Heidelberg Man Based on a single lower jawbone and thought to be not human because of its size—admitted to look like a modern human jawbone, just large (remind you of anyone in the Bible?). (Image Credit: www.wikipedia.org (Gerbil) 2015 CC-by-sa-3.0)
	Flipper Man Collarbone found in Libya and thought to be from a primitive ape-man—later found to be the fossilized rib of a sea mammal similar to a dolphin.
	Orce Man Skull cap discovered in the Spanish village of Orce and claimed to be from an ancient child ancestor of humans—later found to be the skull cap of a six-month-old donkey.
	Cro-Magnon Man Thought to be a recent missing link species between humans and our alleged ape-like ancestor—now acknowledged to be modern in his skeletal appearance and recently discovered to be genetically modern as well. (Image Credit: www.wikipedia.org 2015 CC-by-sa-3.0)

New human and ape fossils are dug up each year, and as famous evolutionary skeptic Michael Shermer explained, if you want to become famous for your discovery and get published in a popular journal, you had better claim that your fossil is proof of something new—a new transitional species. So paleoanthropologists (scientists who study ancient humans) tend to be rash and irresponsible in making claims about what they have found. There are never any fossils that all scientists agree prove what their discoverers claim. And that fact clarifies why the late evolutionary paleontologist Colin Patterson of the British Museum of Natural History in London said what he did concerning the fossil record. After writing a textbook on evolution and being asked why he did not include any examples of transitional creatures in the book, he admitted that “there are no transitional fossils…for which one could make a watertight argument.”

Bottom line: if evolution is true, there should be solid evidence of it in the fossil record. But it’s not there. In truth, the fossil record supports what the Bible claims about the origin of humans: we did not evolve from an ape-like creature. We have always been human. When famous Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould admitted that transitional species are “absent” in the fossil record and that “transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt,” he was unintentionally admitting that the Bible is right. God created separate kinds (i.e., “major groups”) of creatures from the very beginning (Genesis 1:21,25). Those kinds did not evolve from or into other kinds, and the evidence to prove that they did is missing

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