Did Two “Human Species” Leave Footprints in Kenya?

Well, here is what that scientists found:

• A fossil trackway containing 12 prints, each measuring about 10.25 inches long
• Three footprints, measuring from 8 to 9.25 inches long
• Other footprints from a variety of animals

Those are the facts. Then comes the interpretation of those tracks as the researchers apply their evolutionary worldview:

About 1.5 million years ago, individuals of two different species in the human evolutionary lineage trudged on a muddy lakeshore in northern Kenya, leaving behind intersecting trackways alongside the footprints of antelopes, horses, warthogs, giant storks and other animals.

The first set of tracks (the larger prints) are interpreted, based on “their shape and the manner of locomotion,” as belonging to Paranthropus boisei (aka “Nutcracker Man”).

Now here’s how they describe this creature in the article (presumably based on the fossils—there’s so much interpretation regarding which bits of fossils belong with which). See if you can guess what it was:

• Skull “adapted for large chewing muscles”
• Cranial crest like a gorilla
• Massive molars
• Ape-like feet with the big toe off to the side.

It’s obvious—this creature was a variety of ape! It wasn’t a “human species” or a “hominin” or something on its way to becoming human. It was an ape!

It’s obvious—this creature was a variety of ape! It wasn’t a “human species” or a “hominin” or something on its way to becoming human. It was an ape!

Okay, what about the other footprints? They resemble “those of modern people” and are interpreted as belonging to Homo erectus, a supposed human species. They describe this Homo erectus as an individual with:

• Body proportions like those of modern man (height range of four feet, nine inches to six feet, one inch)
• Large brow ridges
• “Bigger brains than Paranthropus boisei, though smaller than our species”

Now, what does that description sound like? A human being! Yes, Homo erectus was a full human being, made in God’s image, descended from Adam and Eve. Homo erectus wasn’t our evolutionary ancestor or related to Paranthropus. Homo erectus belongs to the human kind; Paranthropus to the great ape kind. There’s variety within both kinds, but each kind only produces more of its kind as Genesis 1 states clearly.

Two human species didn’t leave footprints on a Kenyan lakeshore: that’s simply an evolutionary interpretation of two sets of footprints. When we look at the same footprints through the biblical worldview, we see that a member of the great ape kind (now extinct) and a human being with slight anatomical variation compared to us today both walked along the same lakeshore sometime after the flood.

Get More Answers on Answers News

This item was discussed Monday on Answers News with cohosts Kevin Hadsall, Roger Patterson, and Bryan Osborne. Answers News is our weekly news program filmed live before a studio audience here at the Creation Museum, broadcast on our Answers in Genesis YouTube channel, and posted to Answers TV. We also covered the following topics:

• Bible sales are up 22%.
• Lost “city” found buried in ice in Greenland.
• One single cell is “more complex than an entire city.”
• And more!

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Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

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