Supposed Human Ancestor Found in African Cave?

The media is buzzing with news that another supposed human ancestor has been found in an African cave. It was discovered by evolutionist Lee Berger, whose controversial claims about Australopithecus sediba have been in the news off and on since 2011. (You can read them in “Sediba with a Little Sleight of Hand,” “Sediba Fossils Fail to Connect the Evolutionary Dots,” “Karabo: The Smiling Missing Link,” and “Can Karabo Catch Up with Lucy's Legacy?”)

Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, who frequently writes articles for Answers in Genesis, is working on a full-length article on this discovery, so keep checking the website to read that. But we can say with confidence that this discovery changes nothing about our understanding of human history. You see, the only eyewitness account of human origins is the one provided by God our Creator in the Bible’s book of Genesis. No scientist witnessed the origin of man, and evolutionary scientists only believe there were intermediate evolutionary links between an ape-like ancestor and man because they have disregarded God’s Word and substituted their own fallible opinions in its place.

Dr. Mitchell gave me a brief synopsis of the discovery:

Berger reports the discovery of 15 partial skeletons in a hard-to-reach South African cave, claiming they could be up to 3 million years old. Naming them Homo naledi, Berger believes they are not human but are a “bridge” between bipedal apes and humans. London’s Natural History Museum’s Chris Stringer, another evolutionist, claims Homo naledi and discoveries like it suggest “that nature was experimenting with how to evolve humans, thus giving rise to several different types of human-like creatures originating in parallel in different parts of Africa.”

We know from God’s Word that “nature” did not experiment “with how to evolve humans.” God told us He created two humans as well as all the kinds of land animals—and that includes apes—on the same day. That means that there could be no evolution involved. Whatever species these bones represent—and we will be publishing a more complete report on the discovery and the claims being made about it soon—we know that they cannot be any sort of intermediate between apes and humans. The only way to find an ape-man—or a “bridge” between apes and humans—is to misinterpret fossils of either an ape or a human as something in between. But all humans—even varieties of humans that we no longer have with us—were all descended from the first two people God made. So are we. And all apes, even extinct varieties, are all descendants of the kinds of apes God made in the beginning. Scientific observation reveals that all living things, including apes and humans, only vary and reproduce within their created kinds, never evolving into new kinds. This scientific observation affirms what God decreed in the beginning, as recorded in Genesis 1, that all would reproduce after their kinds.

Check back soon to learn more about the discovery—our own Bible-believing scientists are even now reviewing the two studies published in eLife journal—and take a look at a clip from Dr. David Menton’s very engaging video Three Ways to Make an Ape Man and read his New Answers Book chapter “Did Humans Really Evolve from Apelike Creatures?” to be sure you are able to see the truth clearly through biblical glasses.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.