The 10 Things You Should Know About the Creation vs. Evolution Debate (11 page)

All things considered, the fossil evidence is truly discouraging for Darwinists. An objective look at the fossils shows not
only a lack of evidence for evolution, but provides extensive
evidence against evolution. Understandably, Dr. Michael
Denton concludes:

Not only has paleontology failed spectacularly to
come up with the fossil "missing links" which Darwin
anticipated, but hypothetical reconstructions of
major evolutionary developments-such as that linking birds to reptiles-are beginning to look more like
fantasies than serious conjectures.46

When I was a young boy, I remember seeing an evolution
program on television that portrayed our alleged ancestorsthe so-called "ape-men." They walked upright, were hairy all
over (though not quite as hairy as an ape), had large, flat foreheads with pronounced brows, and seemed savage. Not knowing any better at the time, I remember asking my older brother
Paul if all this was true. He assured me it was. (Of course, he
was also very young at the time and had no idea what he was
talking about.)

The images I saw on television that day stuck with me. I
think the sudden and disturbing realization that I had descended
from these ape-men caused the images to be permanently
imprinted on my brain. In any event, only years later-after I
became a Christian at age 17-did I revisit the issue and determine that I had believed a fiction.

I discovered that every once in a while, skulls and bones
had been discovered in different parts of the world that caused
unbridled excitement among paleontologists. The reason so
much excitement accompanied these discoveries was that they
were believed to represent ancient ancestors of modern humans and therefore constitute ironclad proof for evolutionary theory. These discoveries were assigned names, the most
famous being Neanderthal man, Java man, Piltdown man,
Peking man, Nebraska man, and East Africa ape.

Evolutionists believe that humans and apes evolved from a
common ancestor.' The split or divergence from this common
ancestor (a species "fork in the road," as it were) is said to have
occurred between five and eight million years ago (scholars
debate this issue).' According to this theory, after the "split"
occurred, one evolutionary line eventually (after many stages
of development) culminated in true man between one and three
million years ago. In proof of this, evolutionists offer evidence
of fossil hominoids (which includes apes and humans) and
homonids (primates in the line allegedly leading to modern
humans but still subhuman in nature).3

Ernst Mayr is representative of many evolutionists when he
asserts that "no well-informed person any longer questions the
descent of man from primates and more specifically from apes.
The evidence for this conclusion is simply too overwhelming."4
In support of this statement, Mayr cites the similar anatomy
of humans and apes as well as the similarity of the DNA between
the two.5

In what follows, I take a brief look at some of the more important "ape-men" discoveries of recent times and also briefly address
the anatomy and DNA similarities between humans and apes.

Johann C. Fuhlrott found Neanderthal man in 1856 in
Neander Valley, near Dusseldorf, Germany. He discovered a skull
and several bones. The skull, we are told, is characterized by a
flat, retreating forehead, allegedly denoting limited intellect. At
the time, Neanderthal man was thought to be an early "ape-
man"-a savage, brutish, semierect subhuman. Researchers
claimed that his spine lacked the curves to allow him to walk fully .6 He walked on the edge of his feet, unlike modern
humans. He seemed a natural transition between apes and
humans, being viewed as part ape and part human.7

Beginning in the 1950s however, scholars began to change
their minds, especially in view of the fact that similar remains
have been discovered in Europe, Africa, and Asia.' The evidence
now suggests that these were the bones of a hunched-over man
who suffered severely from rickets, a disease caused by a severe
vitamin D deficiency.9 This condition causes a softening of the
bones as well as defective bone growth. Those who have this
disease are characterized by a bulky head, a crooked spine and
limbs, and depressed ribs, among other things.

Today Neanderthal man has been recategorized as truly
human and, creationists believe, is a descendant of Noah." He
was very muscular, powerful, and thickset," but such features
are certainly within the gene pool for humanity. Such robusticity can be found on an individual basis in modern living populations today.12 Some scholars suggest that the reason for his
muscular, stocky body relates to the tough environment in which
he lived. His robusticity was due to the hard labor he had to
engage in just to survive.13

The evidence shows that Neanderthal man, when in good
health, stood fully erect and walked in a normal fashion with a
normal posture like modern humans.14 He certainly had a fully
human brain capacity.'' The evidence shows that he sewed clothes
from animal skins, built shelters, had a form of writing, practiced religious ceremonies, played musical instruments, made
and used various tools (including axes, borers, scrapers, points,
and knives"), fashioned stone arrowheads, used fire for cooking, painted pictures, used language to communicate, buried the
dead, and even placed flowers upon graves. Sometimes he buried
the dead with various objects, suggesting the possibility that he
had some kind of belief in the afterlife." He also displayed social
care. "Some skeletons show the marks of obvious injuries or illnesses suffered sometime before death, evidence that there must
have been social care to support certain ailing or disabled individuals."" These are not things one would expect of a savage
apelike creature.'9 Clearly, Neanderthal man was a Homo sapi-
ens.20

Java man, also known as Pithecanthropus erectus (Greek:
pithecos = ape, anthropos = man, erectus = erect, and thus "erect
ape-man""), was discovered by a Dutch physician named
Eugene Dubois in Trinil, Java in 1891. Dubois had no formal
geological or paleontological training, and his search team
consisted of prison convicts under the surveillance of a couple
of army corporals.22

Dubois discovered a single skull cap and a tooth about a
month apart. At first, he thought these items belonged to a chimpanzee (the cranial capacity was certainly much smaller than that
of a human23). Later, however, a thigh bone (femur) that obviously belonged to a human appeared, and Dubois revised his
thinking about the skull cap and tooth, concluding that all these
items belonged to one animal named Pithecanthropus erectus.24
He dated this find at about 500,000 years old.

Dubois's discovery was met with mixed reaction. Some
experts, such as Rudolph Virchow (who founded the science
of pathology), doubted that these items belonged to a single
individual. He said, "In my opinion, this creature was an animal,
a giant gibbon, in fact. The thigh bone has not the slightest
connection with the skull. `15 Other experts felt that all the items
were essentially apelike. Still others considered them to be
human. Today, most experts in the field consider the Pithecanthropus erectus to be an extinct, giant gibbon-like creature
(an arboreal ape) that bears no relation to humans.2G This creature is not the transitional link evolutionists were hoping for.

Charles Dawson discovered Piltdown man, also known as
Eanthropus dawsoni ("dawn man"), in 1912 in Piltdown,
England. The discovery included a dark brown skull, a jawbone,
and a few teeth, and was said to be the remains of an ape-man
who lived at least 500,000 years ago (perhaps even 750,000 years
ago). Such esteemed scholars as Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward,
paleontologist at the British Museum, and Dr. Henry Fairfield
Osborn, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural
History, were fully convinced of the validity and significance
of this ape-man discovery.27 Osborn believed the discovery
proved man had descended from apes in view of its apelike and
humanlike anatomical characteristics.28

Unfortunately for evolutionists, and to the great embarrassment of scholars like Woodward and Osborn, Piltdown man
turned out to be a hoax!29 Close examination in 1953 revealed
that the skull looked relatively normal for a human, but the jaw
looked primitive and apelike.30 This led some scholars to doubt
the association between the two. Tests then revealed that the
jawbone was that of a female orangutan, and it had been intentionally stained in order to make it appear to match the dark
brown human skull .3' Further, the teeth on the lower (orangutan) jaw had quite obviously been filed down to match the
teeth on the upper jaw (the file marks were visible)." Still further,
researcher Rod Caird notes that the skull and lower jaw had
been "placed at the appropriate level in the gravel pit alongside
imported mammal fossils from the correct period in order to
substantiate the dating." Hence, Caird concludes, this was "an
absolutely deliberate and careful fraud. "33

What is highly disturbing is that Piltdown man was first
discovered in 1912, but was not exposed as a fraud until 1953over four decades later. Some observers are understandably baffled
at the apparent ineptness of the scientists involved. The issue of concern: What took you so long? The perpetrator of this fraud
has not been firmly established.34

The Piltdown man fraud is not the only such fraud to deceive
scientists (and the public). Researcher James Perloff warns:

Those who think such mistakes no longer occur
need only consider the archaeoraptor, promoted in a
10-page color spread in the November 1999 National
Geographic as the "true missing link" between dinosaurs
and birds. The fossil was displayed at National
Geographic's Explorers Hall and viewed by over
100,000 people. However, it too turned out to be a
fake-someone had simply glued together fragments
of bird and dinosaur fossils 35

Davidson Bolack discovered Peking man in 1912 near
Peking, China. The discovery consisted of over a hundred teeth,
thirty skulls, and some tools. Again, many people hoped that
this would be a significant ape-man discovery. Mysteriously,
however, by the end of World War II all the skulls disappeared.
Meanwhile, Bolack died of a heart attack.

Many scholars who have studied the discovery have now
concluded that the skulls and teeth represent the remains of
monkeys or baboons that had been killed and eaten by lime
quarry workers.36 The tools discovered alongside the skulls and
teeth were apparently used by the workers to extract the brains
of these monkeys so they could be eaten. (Monkey brains were
considered a delicacy. )37 In any event, Peking man is certainly
not a transitional ape-man.

Geologist Harold Cook discovered Nebraska man in western Nebraska in 1922. Actually, Cook only discovered a single
solitary tooth. just a tooth! Yet paleontologists claimed this discovery was a link in man's evolution. A London newspaper
hired an artist to draw a picture of the one-million-year-old apeman that belonged to the tooth. The artist also drew "Nebraska mom."" The male ape-man was portrayed holding a club,
while the ape-woman was portrayed gathering roots. This toothto-drawing extrapolation truly smacks of desperation.

Unfortunately for evolutionists, this discovery did not turn
out to be the evidence they were hoping for. Harold Cook
discovered another identical tooth-this time attached to a skull
and skeleton. But it wasn't the skull and skeleton of an ape-man
but rather an extinct wild pig.39 So much for Nebraska man.

Related to this, I must confess that a spark of indignation
rises in my heart when I read about the Scopes Evolution Trial
in Dayton, Tennessee in July 1925. In this trial, a defender of
the Bible named William Jennings Bryan was ridiculed and
berated for his lack of knowledge regarding this amazing discovery of Nebraska man. And all the while-though yet unknown
to all present-it was just a pig's tooth!

Louis S.B. Leakey discovered East African ape, also known
as Zinjanthropus, in 1959 in Olduvia, Tanzania. The discovery
consisted of a skull cap and some fragments of bone. This apeman link, dated at two to four million years old, was featured
in National Geographic Magazine as a support for evolution.

Again, however, the supposed significance of the discovery
turned out to be nothing. In 1965, professor Phillip Tobias of
the University of the Witwatersrand thoroughly examined and
measured the skull and found that it belonged to a variety of
Southern ape (Australopithecus)."

Donald Johanson discovered Lucy in Ethiopia in 1974.
The discovery consisted of the skeletal remains-about 40
percent intact41-of a female hominid and was categorized as Australopithecus afarensis and dated at three million years old.
Lucy could supposedly walk upright like a human.