The Search for Scientific Evidence

From Monkey-Men to Ape-man Skulls

From its inception, the scientific proofs offered to support human evolution have been riddled with holes. In fact, just like the dubious side-show examples touted by circus shysters, many of the earliest proofs were fraudulent, and modern research shows that many proofs were driven by scientific ignorance and evolutionary interpretations rather than solid evidence.

However, the Bible is clear that many people attempt to deny the God of Scripture because of their unrighteousness as a way to avoid personal judgement for their sin (Romans 1:18). In essence, many are willing to believe a lie rather than the truth if it suits their purpose. They become compliant with error and are willing to be deceived. Perhaps it is as the saying often attributed to P. T. Barnum says: “There’s a sucker born every minute!”

Neanderthals

In 1856, workmen digging in a cave in the Neander Valley (near Dusseldorf, Germany) discovered a fossilized skull cap, two femurs, and bone fragments. Professor Schaafhausen (a professional anatomist) concluded that they were fully human.

However, four years later, after the release of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the search for fossils of imagined “apelike ancestors” of man increased with much vigor. And lo and behold, Irish geologist William King decided to reexamine the fossil skull of “Neanderthal man.”

His conclusion? Like other Darwinians of the day, he argued (against the professional opinion of an expert anatomist) that Neanderthal man was an apelike creature. So positive was he that he actually declared,

(The) thoughts and desires which once dwelt within it never soared beyond those of the brute.1

Such clairvoyance demonstrates the obvious evolutionary bias. It flew in the face of no other than the great anatomist Rudolph Virchow (one of the most prominent physicians of the 19th century), who also argued that Neanderthals were fully human in every respect, with any abnormalities being the result of their suffering from rickets or arthritis.

Depictions of Neanderthals as stooped over “ape-men” began to proliferate evolutionary literature, however, and such representations were mimicked in the circuses and carnival freak-shows of the day.

The evolutionary mindset took hold of all sectors of society, becoming the evolutionary “memes” of their day.

In 1929, life-sized statues of bestial Neanderthals greeted visitors viewing Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and were only replaced relatively recently. After an overwhelming amount of evidence collected over the years proved that Neanderthals were simply powerfully built people (well within the range of modern range of human anatomy), they have been replaced with more modern depictions, which today look like normal humans.

A current Chicago Field Museum article states,

The first of two Neanderthal family dioramas was installed in 1929. . . . In the early 1970s, the Neanderthal figures were replaced with new ones. . . . By 1994, the Hall of the Stone Age of the Old World exhibit had been dismantled because most were considered to be scientifically inaccurate. The Hall had included the Neanderthal Family.2

Despite their still being used as examples of our supposed primitive ancestors in popular movies and catchy commercials, Neanderthals were never sub-human.

And perhaps the definitive confirmation comes from no less than Dr. Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist specializing in Neanderthals, early modern human biology, and human evolution. He is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on Neanderthal man, and he has concluded,

Detailed comparisons of Neanderthal skeletal remains with those of modern humans have shown that there is nothing in Neanderthal anatomy that conclusively indicates locomotor, manipulative, intellectual or linguistic abilities inferior to those of modern humans.3

So, evolutionists used Neanderthals for approximately 175 years to lace the minds of millions with evolutionary ideas of proto-human derivatives, only to later affirm their full humanity.

What about other examples?

Piltdown Man and More

The most famous hoax, and one that is much bemoaned among the evolutionary community, is the famous Piltdown Man.

The supposed ape-man’s skull and jawbone was found in 1912 by a laborer digging in a gravel pit near the town of Piltdown, England. It was announced that both pieces came from the same ancient ape-man and dubbed Piltdown Man.

For 40 years, this supposed proof of human evolution was displayed in Museum exhibits and textbooks as proof positive that human beings had descended from ape-like ancestors, with hand drawn, scientific images of what the creature must have looked like, all with amazing similarity to the freak show missing links.

Only after four decades was the evidence re-examined and revealed as a fraud. It wasn’t even a good fraud, as one could easily see how the teeth from the jawbone had been filed down to make them look more human, and the bones had been chemically treated to make them look very old. It was simply a combination of an old human skull and a modern ape jawbone stuck together.

We raise this example today not simply to rub it in that one evidence for evolution has been disproven, but to point out that the acceptance and promotion of such evidence by professionals for over 40 years can only be attributed to 1) pathetic scientific acumen displayed by the evolutionary scientists of the day or 2) an agenda that made people willing to overlook the obvious fraud to accomplish its ideologic goals.

For hundreds of people involved in producing museum-grade copies of the exhibit, distributing them to various museums around the world, and producing numerous textbook diagrams and descriptions based on the evidence all not to detect the fraud seems highly suspicious or perhaps negligent at best.

Nebraska Man

Just five years later, a Nebraskan rancher found what he thought was a special kind of tooth on his farm. An evolutionist paleontologist friend was excited at the prospect it might be from an ape-man!

Once again, an artist with a healthy helping of evolutionary imagination produced a portrait of Nebraska Man, a hairy ape-man, along with his ape-woman wife (complete with an ape-woman bobby cut, apparently to make her appear feminine but not too feminine).

Several years later, scientists confirmed that the tooth had come from a type of pig! The whole fiasco had nothing to do with apes or people; it had everything to do with evolutionary presuppositions that drove false conclusions, all based on laughably flimsy evidence.

Caveman Carousel

Much as how carnivals cycled through the unfortunate ape-men performers of the past, a whole slew of proposed human ancestors have come and gone over the years as a carousel of caveman candidates have been proposed, debunked, reassigned, or removed from the forefront of human evolutionary thought.

Cro Magnon, Peking Man, Java Man, Ramapithecus—all of these were once shouted from proverbial rooftops in both popular news articles and serious science publications as proof of evolution only to later lose favor among the more progressive evolutionary community.

Currently, popular candidates such as Homo erectus are not fairing much better under scrutiny. Although smaller than the average human is today, the brain size is within the range of modern people, and studies of the middle ear have shown that Homo erectus walked just as we do.

There is nothing about their skeletons that fall outside of the normal human range, and their remains have been found in the same strata near ordinary Homo sapiens, clear evidence that they lived together. Given the range of heights, sizes, and features we see among the fully human race today, they’re not exactly anything to write your evolutionary thesis about.

Lucy

Australopithecus afarensis, popularly known as Lucy, is still the most well-known modern example of supposed human evolution today. She was once much touted as our supposed ancestor (and uniquely named because the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was playing when she was assembled by the team that found her in Ethiopia). However, her star has faded.

For example, one of the main reasons evolutionists suggest that Lucy walked on two feet (instead of on all four like the ape she resembles) is that she was found near a set of fossilized, human-looking footprints in a rock layer that they believe had formed at the time Lucy lived but dated as older than human existance.

They then concluded that these footprints must have come from Lucy’s kind, and museum reconstruction gave her human-looking feet.

However, they later found such tracks a full 932 miles (1,500 kilometers) away from Lucy’s bones in Tanzania. A better explanation is that their evolutionary assumptions are wrong and that they are simply a set of human footprints that have nothing to do with the cobbled together group of bones called Lucy, that aren’t necessarily even collected from the same creature.

You see, many laypersons likely imagine that specimens like Lucy were found in a heap and carefully retrieved as a somewhat articulated skeleton that clearly shows these ape-like hominids in similar form.

A 2015 New Scientist article reported,

A careful look at the ancient hominin’s skeleton suggests one bone may actually belong to a baboon.4

Now, statues portraying Lucy in museums to this day display her walking upright with human-like hands and feet. However, when Lucy was found, she didn’t have hands (just 3 left hand bones that were incomplete and not human-like) or feet whatsoever. Those depictions were assumed based off the footprints found 1500 kms away, with no other physical evidence whatsoever!”

And scientists have since found other, more complete skeletons of such Australopithecines, which do include hand and feet bones. From them, we can make a safe guess that Lucy’s hands had long, curved fingers suited for climbing in trees and that Lucy’s feet had opposable toes seen in the hand-like feet of apes that could easily grab and climb. She didn’t have human-like feet.

Detailed studies of the inner ear, skulls, and bones suggest that Lucy and her like were not in fact transitioning to human anytime soon. They may have walked more upright than most apes, but not like humans.

Once all the evolutionary ideologies and interpretations are stripped away, Australopithecus afarensis is very similar to a pygmy chimpanzee.

Making Men into Monkeys, and Monkeys into Men

A key to understanding all of this can be found in one of the more famous attractions of the Pickard’s Museum, Trongate, circa 1908, in the character that was known as Solomon the Man Monkey.

In a reversal of the typical missing-link sideshow attraction, Solomon was an actual Chimpanzee dressed up in men’s Victorian finery and allowed to wander around. People were amused at the absurdity of seeing an ape aping a man, and he too was touted as Darwin’s missing link.

In essence, these examples demonstrate both ends of the spectrum of man’s attempt to demonstrate evidence for human evolution. Naturalists have looked for the most human-looking ape fossils they can find, or conversely, the most ape-like human fossils possible.

However, as Rudyard Kipling said, “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”5

The fact is that Darwin’s missing links are still missing because they’ve never existed. Men were specially created in the image of God. However, belief in deceptive evolutionary ideas have led many people to conclude that the God of the Bible doesn’t exist—to the great detriment of mankind.

Next week, Part 6: Removing God from the Equation