Putting a Face on Evolution

Some newly discovered fossils of flat-faced hominids (humans and their supposed upright-walking apelike ancestors) “confirm” that three different species of hominids, on parallel evolutionary paths, once lived in the same area of Kenya during the so-called dawn of humanity nearly two million years ago.1

The evidence, gathered on the east side of Lake Turkana in Kenya, confirms that an incomplete skull, discovered in 1972 and classified as Homo rudolfensis, does indeed represent another variety of human beings and not just a deformed individual. After forty years of patient waiting to confirm their suspicions, paleoanthropologists finally unearthed parts of a similar skull, in this case a juvenile, that help complete their picture of Homo rudolfensis.

A question that this discovery cannot answer, however, is where these people belong in the family line of humans. The answer depends upon a person’s presuppositions. The Bible reveals that God created the first humans, Adam and Eve, on Day Six of Creation Week, and all others descended from that first pair (Acts 17:26). Thus, all humans, despite attempts to classify them separately as Neanderthal, Homo rudolfensis, or Homo sapiens, are equally created in God’s image. The bones found at Lake Turkana, then, must represent descendants of people who lived after the tower of Babel, and whose roots go all the way back to Adam and Eve about six thousand years ago.