By Harun Yahya
The story of "human evolution" has been based on the existence of plenty of fossils on which evolutionists are able to build up imaginary interpretations. Although only 120 ape species live on earth today, yet throughout history more than 6,000 ape species had existed before becoming extinct. These species have constituted a rich resource for a story that had never taken place.
Evolutionists wrote the scenario of human evolution by arranging some of the skulls that suited their purpose in an order from the smallest to the biggest, while scattering the skulls of some extinct human races among them. According to this scenario, humans and today's apes are said to have common ancestory.
However, the fossil record indicates to us that throughout history, humans have been humans and apes have been apes. Some of the fossils the evolutionists claim to be those of human ancestory, actually belong to human races that lived until as recently as 10,000 years ago before they disappeared. Moreover, many human communities still living today have the same physical appearance and characteristics as these extinct human races, which further proves that humans have never gone through an evolutionary process at any period in history.
The Imaginary Family Tree of Humans
The Darwinist claim that during the alleged evolutionary process, which is supposed to have started from 4 to 5 million years ago, there existed some "transitional forms" between today's humans and their ape-like ancestors. Four basic categories have come to be used to describe these stages:
1. Australopithecines
2. Homo habilis
3. Homo erectus
4. Homo sapiens
Evolutionists call the genus to which the first of these ape-like ancestors of humans belonged Australopithecus, which means "southern ape." Evolutionists then classify the other three stages of human evolution as belonging to the genus Homo, or "Man." According to the evolutionist claim, the living things in the Homo series are more developed than Australopithecus, and not very much different from today's humans. The humans of our day, that is, the species Homo sapiens, is said to have formed at the latest stage of the evolution of this genus Homo.
Australopithecus: An Ape Species
All of the Australopithecus species are extinct apes that resemble the apes of today. Their cranial capacities are the same or smaller than the chimpanzees of our day. There are projecting parts in their hands and feet that they used to climb trees, just like today's chimpanzees, and their feet are built for grasping to hold onto branches. They are short (maximum 130 cm; 51 in.) and just like today's chimpanzees, male Australopithecus is larger than the female.
Many other characteristics — such as the details in their skulls, the closeness of their eyes, their sharp molar teeth, their mandibular structure, their long arms, and their short legs — constitute evidence that these creatures were no different from today's ape.
Evolutionists claim that, although australopithecines have the anatomy of apes, yet unlike apes, they walked upright like humans. Many scientists who have carried out a great deal of research on the skeletal structures of australopithecines, however, have proved the invalidity of that argument.
Extensive research done on various Australopithecus specimens by two world-renowned anatomists from England and the US, Lord Solly Zuckerman and Prof. Charles Oxnard respectively, showed that these creatures did not walk upright in human manner. Having studied the bones of these fossils for a period of 15 years thanks to grants from the British government, evolutionist Zuckerman and his team of five specialists reached the conclusion that australopithecines were only an ordinary ape genus and were definitely not bipedal (Zuckerman).
Similarly, Charles E. Oxnard, an evolutionist famous for his research on the subject, also likened the skeletal structure of australopithecines to that of today's orangutans (Zuckerman). So in short, australopithecines have no link with humans and they are merely an extinct ape species.
Homo habilis: The Ape Presented as Human
The great similarity between the skeletal and cranial structures of australopithecines and chimpanzees, and the refutation of the claim that these creatures walked upright, had caused great difficulty for evolutionist paleoanthropologists. The reason was that, according to an earlier presentation by evolutionists, Homo erectus descended directly from Australopithecus.
As the genus name Homo (meaning "Man") implies, Homo erectus is a human species and its skeleton is straight. Its cranial capacity is also twice as large as that of Australopithecus. A direct transition from Australopithecus, which is a chimpanzee-like ape, to Homo erectus, which has a skeleton no different from today's humans, was out of the question even according to evolutionist theory. Therefore, "links" or "transitional forms" were needed. The concept of Homo habilis arose from that necessity.
The classification of Homo habilis was put forward in the 1960s by the Leakeys, a family of "fossil hunters" living in Kenya. According to the Leakeys, this new species had a relatively large cranial capacity, and the ability to walk upright and to use stone and wooden tools. Therefore, it could have been the ancestor of humans.
New fossils of the same species unearthed in the late 1980s, however, were to completely change this view. Some researchers, such as Bernard Wood and C. Loring Brace, who relied on those newly found fossils, stated that Homo habilis (which means "skillful man," that is, man capable of using tools) should be rather classified as Australopithecus habilis, or "skillful southern ape."
Apparently, Homo habilis had a lot of characteristics in common with the australopithecine apes: It had long arms, short legs, and an ape-like skeletal structure just like Australopithecus. Its fingers and toes were also suitable for climbing, and its jaw was very similar to that of today's apes. Its 600 cc average cranial capacity is also an indication of the fact that it was an ape. In short, Homo habilis, which was presented as a different species by some evolutionists, was in reality an ape species just like all the other australopithecines.
Studying a specimen labeled as Homo habilis named Stw 53, anatomy specialists Fred Spoor, Bernard Wood, and Frans Zonneveld found that "Stw 53 relied less on bipedal behavior than the australopithecines." This meant that this Homo habilis specimen was even more ape-like than the Australopithecus species. This lead them to the conclusion that "Stw 53 represents an unlikely intermediate between the morphologies seen in the australopithecines and H. erectus."
Homo erectus and Thereafter: Human Beings
According to the scheme suggested by evolutionists, the internal evolution of the Homo genus is as follows: First Homo erectus, then the so-called "archaic" Homo sapiens and Neanderthal man (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis), and finally, Cro-Magnon man (Homo sapiens sapiens). However, all these classifications are really only variations and unique races in the human family. The difference between them is no greater than the difference between an Inuit and an African, or a Pygmy and a European.
Let us first examine Homo erectus, which is referred to as the most primitive human species. As the name implies, Homo erectus means "man who walks upright." Evolutionists have had to separate these fossils from earlier ones by adding the qualification of "erectness," because all the available Homo erectus fossils are straight to an extent not observed in any of the australopithecines or so-called Homo habilis specimens.
The primary reason for evolutionists' defining Homo erectus as "primitive" is the cranial capacity of its skull (900-1,100 cc), which is smaller than the average of today's human, as well as its thick eyebrow projections. However, there are many people living today who have the same cranial capacity as Homo erectus (Pygmies, for instance) and other races have protruding eyebrows (Native Australians, for instance).
The fossils that have made Homo erectus known to the entire world are those of Peking Man and Java Man discovered in Asia. However, in time it was realized that these two fossils are not reliable. Peking Man consists of some elements made of plaster whose originals have been lost, and Java Man is "composed" of a skull fragment plus a pelvic bone that was found meters away from it with no indication that these belonged to the same creature. This made evolutionists give higher importance to those Homo erectus fossils found in Africa.
The most famous African Homo erectus specimens is that of "Narikotome Homo erectus" or the "Turkana Boy" which was found near Lake Turkana in Kenya. It is confirmed that the fossil is that of a 12-year-old boy, who would have been 1.83 meters tall in adolescence.
But the upright skeletal structure of the fossil is no different from that of a contemporary human. The American paleoanthropologist Alan Walker said that he doubted that "the average pathologist could tell the difference between the fossil skeleton and that of a modern human" (Rensberger). Even the evolutionist Richard Leakey stated that the differences between Homo erectus and contemporary humans are no more than racial variance (Leakey).
Professor William Laughlin from the University of Connecticut made extensive anatomical examinations of Inuits and the people living on the Aleut Islands, and he noticed that these people were extraordinarily similar to Homo erectus. The conclusion Laughlin arrived at was that all these distinct races were in fact different races of Homo sapiens (today's human).
By outlining the links in the chain Australopithecines > Homo habilis > Homo erectus > Homo sapiens as such, the evolutionists imply that each of these types is the ancestor of the next. However, recent findings by paleoanthropologists have revealed that australopithecines, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus had existed in different parts of the world at the same time. Moreover, some of those humans classified as Homo erectus probably lived up until very recent times (Swisher and Kluger). Furthermore, Homo sapiens neandarthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens (today's man) also clearly coexisted. This situation apparently indicates the invalidity of the claim that one is the ancestor of the other.
Intrinsically, all findings and scientific research have revealed that the fossil record does not suggest an evolutionary process as evolutionists propose. The fossils, which evolutionists claim to be the ancestors of humans, in fact belong either to different human races or else to species of ape.
For detailed information about these fossils, please see The Atlas of Creation, by Harun Yahya. To purchase the works of Harun Yahya, please visit
www.bookglobal.net.
Sources:
Leakey, Richard. The Making of Mankind. London: Sphere Books, 1981, p. 62.
Rensberger, Boyce. The Washington Post. 19 Nov. 1984.
Swisher III, C. C. et al. "Latest Homo erectus of Java: Potential Contemporaneity With Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia." Science, Vol. 274, Number 5294, Issue of 13 Dec. 1996, pp. 1870-1874. Also see: Kluger, Jeffrey. "Not So Extinct After All: The Primitive Homo erectus May Have Survived Long Enough to Coexist With Modern Humans." Time. 23 Dec. 1996.
Zuckerman, Solly. Beyond The Ivory Tower. New York: Toplinger Publications, 1970, pp. 75-94.
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Harun Yahya is the author, who writes under the pen name Harun Yahya, was born in Ankara in 1956. He studied arts at Istanbul's Mimar Sinan University and philosophy at Istanbul University. Since the 1980s, the author has published many books on political, faith-related and scientific issues. Harun Yahya is well known as an author who has written very important works disclosing the imposture of evolutionists, the invalidity of their claims and the dark liaisons between Darwinism and bloody ideologies. Some of the books of the author have been translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Albanian, Arabic, Polish, Russian, Bosnian, Indonesian, Turkish, Tatar, Urdu and Malay and published in the countries concerned. Harun Yahya's books appeal to all people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, regardless of their age, race and nationality, as they center around one goal: to open the readers' mind by presenting the sign's of God's eternal existence to them.
Please visit : www.harunyahya.com
e-mail : info@harunyahya.com
But why make up such nonesense? Why are humans not still evolving?
