New ‘Ape-Man’ Preliminary Response
by Dr Carl Wieland
12 July 2002
Newspapers are again abuzz with excitement at one more specimen which is claimed
to have significance for ‘human evolution’.
Briefly, this skull, nicknamed the ‘Toumai’ skull, found in Chad’s
Sahel region, was given the species name Sahelanthropus tchadensis. The
excitement appears to be NOT because it affords any actual additional evidence that
man evolved from apes, but because it is revolutionary for theories of human evolution.
In other words, if we START with the belief that man evolved from apes, it turns
some of the previous notions on their head. In one sense, it seems to make a mockery
of the ‘certainty’ with which schoolchildren are taught of the neat
‘schemes’ of our alleged ‘ancestry’. No doubt it will spawn
a new orthodoxy, which will be taught with just as straight a face, until the next
‘revolutionary’ discovery (this one is said to have the ‘impact
of a small nuclear bomb’. A brief summary of the facts would appear to be
as follows:
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The ‘date’ assigned to the creature, on the basis not of radiometric
methods, but other fossils found with it, is about 6’7 million years. This
is far, far older than the australopithecines, such as the famous ‘Lucy’,
which were previously credited with ancestry.
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No bones were found from ‘below the neck’. The skull itself is very
fragmented and incomplete.
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From the back, this skull looks like a chimpanzee's. From the front, it looks like
an australopithecine. It is regarded as a ‘mosaic’ of chimp and australopith
features.
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Australopithecines are extremely chimplike to begin with. They have flatter faces,
and some of their teeth are smaller.
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Detailed studies over the years on australopithecines show that these have been
markedly overhyped as potential ‘ancestors’. Even the dogmatic belief
that they walked upright (which would not necessarily make them human ancestors
anyway) has taken a severe blow from CAT scans of the bones housing the organ of
balance, from the discovery of knuckle-walking wrist anatomy, and other anatomical
features of tree-dwelling primates.
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The detailed morphometric studies of distinguished anatomist Charles Oxnard, an
evolutionist, supported by other independent researchers, show that the overall
anatomical ‘sum’ of known australopiths is not ‘intermediate’
between people and the great apes at all. He is convinced that they were a distinct
group of primates, now extinct, and that they were not in the human line.
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The ‘revolutionary’ aspects of this skull for schemes of human evolution
seem to have a lot to do with the dates given to the various specimens. On the basis
of the extremely subjective nature of dating schemes, linked as they are to pre-existing
paradigms of an old Earth, it is not unreasonable to ignore the dates assigned.
Toumai illustrates the circularity involved: the nearby fossils would have been
assigned dates based on the assumption that they were present at a particular stage
in the evolutionary scheme. Even a radiometric date which contradicted that assumption
by enough of a margin would be rejected as ‘unreliable’ (see Question
& Answer sections (Q&A):
Radiometric Dating and Young Age Evidence).
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Since australopiths are not good candidates for our ancestors, why should creationists
utter more than a big ‘yawn’ when something is found which combines
chimp and australopith features? It is already clear from existing fossil finds
that there was a great deal of variation in various primate kinds in the early post-Flood
period. Toumai fits comfortably into this pattern. This variation will continue
to cause confusion and drop ‘nuclear bombs’ into the evolutionist camp,
as one carefully worked out evolutionary scheme collapses with a new discovery and
has to be replaced by another. In one sense, this is normal in science; creationists
also modify things when new evidence appears. What we need to remember, however,
is that the pronouncements in newspapers are not dealing with ‘raw facts’
but with interpretations that are already seen through culturally-determined ‘glasses’
which assume that evolution is a 'fact'. Seen through the ‘glasses’
of the Bible's real history, Toumai reveals nothing which would cause even a mildly
raised scientific eyebrow.
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The excitement over such fragmentary, trivial findings underlines again the flimsy
nature of the evidence for the evolutionary story of human origins. The anthropologists
apparently spent 10 years or so in the Chad desert looking for something to do with
human ancestry. Then there is also the problem of the ongoing funding of a project
that does not turn up something. These would be strong incentives to ‘see’
something in anything that is found.
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The wild enthusiasm the mass media have shown towards this find (front page treatment
in many cases) underlines again the ‘push’ by many in positions of power
to make us into ‘just evolved animals’ rather than ‘made in the
image of God’. And they wonder why social problems abound!
POST-SCRIPT: Not long after the above was written, doubts were already beginning
to be expressed about whether this skull was in the human lineage after all. See
Skeptical evolutionists say latest ‘ape-man’
just a female gorilla and Toumai ‘ape-man’
suffers another blow.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: The video In The Image of God (above), which features
interviews with fossil researchers, gives major insights into the way paleoanthropological
deductions work, and documents many of the comments made above about australopithecines,
for example. See Q&A: Anthropology for articles
on other claimed human ancestors.
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