Intelligent Design Part Two

The biggest problem creationists have with Darwinian evolution is the idea that man is descended from ape-like creatures. They will ask: “if man is descended from apes, why are there still apes around? Why haven’t all of the apes also evolved into human beings?” They could solve this puzzle very easily just by reading a few books on evolution.

Humans did not descend from the same apes as those living today in jungles around the world. Both the apes and humans are descended from a common ancestor.

Creationists used to point to the fossil gap in human evolution. They used to ask: “Where is the missing link?” Human and animal fossils are hard to find because the only things that survive are the bones and teeth, and sometimes, in wet or jungle environments, even the bones and teeth don’t survive. Nevertheless, today paleoanthropoligists have found many missing links.

Proconsul was an ape-like creature in East Africa from about 27 to 17 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. The first specimen, a partial jaw, was discovered in 1909 by a gold prospector in western Kenya. It is believed by many paleoanthropoligists that Proconsul was the ancestor of man and of the large and small African apes. Man branched off from African apes five to eight million years ago.

Between three and two million years ago, East and South Africa turned much drier and grassland replaced woodland. Hominids dropped out of the trees, and the ones who could walk upright survived better than the ones who couldn’t. Being able to walk upright enabled our hominid ancestors to look for game. It also gave them a better chance of seeing dangerous predators.

Scientists digging in the gorges of Africa have found numerous fossils of early pre-human ancestors. One early hominid was the “australopithecine,” a small ape-like creature with certain human characteristics. “Selam,” a three-year-old australopithecus afarensis born 3.2 million years ago, was an australopithecine. It was discovered in Dikika, Ethiopia, in 2000. “Lucy,” born over 100,000 years after Selam, was also an australopithecine. It was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 by Donald Johanson. Lucy and Selam had bones like an ape, but their leg bones were similar in shape to a human’s, and they walked upright.

Australopithecine hominids are a missing link between chimp-like creatures and man. Australopithecines began dying-out, preyed upon by lions, leopards, hyenas, and wild dogs over a period of thousands of years. Some of them, however, survived by using weapons, spears, poles, and fire. They made flaked stone tools. They began cooking food. As they evolved, their teeth grew smaller and their brains grew bigger. The bigger brain gave them an advantage over the wild predators. The difference in size between male and female became smaller. Their arms became shorter.

Homo habilis is believed by many scientists to have been an ancestor of man. It diverged from the Australopithecines and lived in South and East Africa from about 2.4 to 1.5 million years ago. It is the first species of the genus Homo. Homo habilis had smaller molars and larger brains than the Australopithecines, and made tools from stone and perhaps animal bones. It was nicknamed “handy man” by its discoverer, Louis Leakey.

It is thought that as many as five different species of early human inhabited Africa about 1.9 million years ago. Since hybridization rarely succeeds between species with significant skeletal differences, only one of these species could have been the ancestor of modern humans. H. ergaster is widely accepted as an ancestor of man, although it arose from earlier populations of Homo, possibly Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis. The most complete Homo ergaster skeleton ever discovered was found at Lake Turkana, Kenya, in 1984. Paleoanthropologists Richard Leakey, Kamoya Kimeu, and Tim White dubbed the 1.6 million year old specimen "Turkana Boy.”.

The species to which we belong, Homo sapiens, developed in Africa about 200,000 years ago and migrated to other continents.

These are not just suppositions. There are many fossils to prove them. From five million years ago to the present, fossils document the nature of intermediate stages between ape and man. Moreover, the evolution of man can be proven by biology. Scientists learn about the facts of evolution by studying DNA molecules. Human molecules are almost identical to those of a chimpanzee. Certain enzymes and other proteins of man and chimpanzees, e.g. hemoglobin, are the same. Chimpanzees are more closely related to man than they are to gorillas. As human embryos develop, they pass through stages virtually identical to gorillas and chimpanzees.

Scientists can also prove our relationship to modern apes by studying aspects of our anatomy. Various structures in our body that appear to have no real function can be explained by evolution. They are called “vestigial structures.” The bones of our back and the muscles of our bellies show that we once walked on all fours. Bat wings are structurally similar to human hands. Structures such as wisdom teeth, the coccyx, and the appendix had a clear function in our ancestral species.

Sure, we would like to believe that we are something totally separate from gorillas and chimps, but we aren’t.