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The Case Against Human Evolution David White Contents Chapter 1 Human Evolution: An Ever-Changing Story Chapter 2 A Matter Of Interpretation Chapter 3 Inconvenient Fossils Chapter 4 Decaying Genomes Chapter 5 Fossil Classification: An Inexact Science Chapter 6 What About Dna? Appendix Did Religion Evolve? Did Humans Evolve From Ape-Like Ancestors? Many people would say that this question was settled long ago. After all, aren’t museums ‘full’ of fossils that prove this beyond reasonable doubt? Well, even though many people think the evidence is convincing, perhaps that’s partly because they have never been exposed to a critical appraisal of the evidence? The purpose of this booklet is to demonstrate that objections to human evolution aren’t just religious or philosophical in nature. The ‘evidence’ itself has serious shortcomings. Human Evolution A Skeptical View briefly summarizes multiple lines of evidence that undermine our alleged descent from ape-like ancestors. Since knowing where you come from is one of the most important questions anyone can contemplate, I encourage you to take the time to ponder these lines of evidence for yourself. 3 Chapter 1 Human Evolution: An Ever-Changing Story According to recent books on evolution, humans are closely related to chimpanzees and we shared a common ancestor 6 million years ago. Since this time, the human lineage has allegedly undergone a profound transformation. 4 Oxford Geneticist, Bryan Sykes, puts this ‘transformation’ in perspective when he writes: “We certainly do have a lot in common with chimpanzees and other apes, but there are also a hell of a lot of differences: our upright posture, a very large brain, language, reasoning, art, superb manual dexterity — all features that are almost invisible in our primate cousins. All these features developed extremely rapidly in our ancestors, but failed to materialize in our close genetic relatives.”1 The fossil evidence for human evolution is meant to document—where possible—how modern humans, with our “hell of a lot of differences” progressively arose from ape-like ancestors. Many fossils have been touted as evidence, but this ‘evidence’ is constantly revised and debated. Previous Candidates For many years school students were told that celebrated ape-like fossils, such as Zinjanthropus boisei from Tanzania, Ramapithecus from India and Australopithecus africanus from South Africa were definite human ancestors. With the passage of time, however, all these creatures have either been kicked out of the human lineage altogether or relegated to extinct side branches that didn’t lead to humans (i.e. no longer considered human ancestors). Fig 1. Zinjanthropus boisei (aka Australopithecus boisei) was described in National Geographic (1960) as “the world’s earliest known human.” Today it is no longer considered a human ancestor. Sykes, B., Adam’s Curse: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Destiny, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 2003, p. 125. 1 5 The story of Australopithecus africanus is a particularly intriguing example. First identified in the 1920s with a juvenile specimen from South Africa, this discovery was initially met with intense skepticism from the scientific community. At that time, many paleoanthropologists thought our ancestors came from England, pointing to Piltdown man (later shown to be a hoax) as primary evidence. According to Anthropology Professor, Dean Falk, “reputations of celebrated British paleoanthropologists were built on Piltdown, and they did not take kindly to one of their former junior colleagues upstaging their missing link with something very different from South Africa.”2 However, with the dethroning of Piltdown man in the 1950s, Australopithecus africanus gained prominence as a human ancestor. School children were enthusiastically taught—for many years—this creature was their distant, ape-like ancestor. But this dogma would eventually be overturned. In the 1970s a different type of ape-like creature found in Ethiopia took centre stage. This fossil was nicknamed “Lucy”. And Lucy caused a major rethink in the way scientists viewed human evolution. According to the fossil’s discoverer, “it was now time to relegate A. africanus to an extinct side branch of human evolution, and to position A. afarensis [Lucy’s species] as the trunk of the tree.”3 Fig 2. Australopithecus africanus, represented above by the Taung Child specimen, was long considered a human ancestor until it was ‘displaced’ by Lucy’s species. Falk, D., The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2011, p.3. 3 Johanson, D., Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 21. 2 6 Australopithecus – What’s In A Name? Before progressing any further, let’s pause for a moment to clarify how scientists classify fossils. To the uninitiated, the elaborate scientific names given to fossils can be bewildering—but the naming conventions are systematic. In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus established a classification system whereby every species has a two-word Latin name. Creatures are classified according to their genus (the larger grouping) and then to a species within that genus. Humans, for instance, are classified as Homo sapiens—because we belong to the genus ‘Homo’ and the species ‘sapien’. When we consider the alleged evidence for human evolution, the genus Australopithecus comes into sharp focus. Australopithecus literally means ‘southern ape’. This genus name was coined in 1925 when Raymond Dart discovered an ape-like creature from South Africa that he thought was ancestral to man. Dart also assigned the specimen to the species africanus. Hence its full title Australopithecus africanus. Since 1925 many other australopithecines have been discovered in Africa. Some have been assigned to africanus, but others have been assigned different species names. Lucy, for instance, is also an australopithecine but she is considered sufficiently different to africanus to warrant her own species name, afarensis. Recent books on human evolution, therefore, present readers with a growing collection of australopithecines: A. africanus, A. afarensis, A. anamensis, A. sediba, A. garhi etc. Since Lucy’s species is the most famous, afarensis will be given the most attention in this booklet. But it’s helpful to look at them as a whole: what were australopithecines? (I say ‘were’ because they are extinct.) A good place to start is the name. As mentioned, Australopithecus literally means ‘southern ape’. No anatomist would confuse them with a human. They possessed ape-like skulls, an ape-like stature and had many anatomical features consistent with life in the trees. However, most paleoanthropologists regard them as far more than just ‘apes’. Their apparent ability to walk upright has enamoured many scientists, hailing them as progenitors of man. But their level of bipedalism varies, depending on who is telling the story. Some have claimed that certain australopithecines were “super-bipeds”4, whereas other researchers offer a less flattering perspective, saying they walked with bent hips and knees. Still others claim they ‘walked’ on their knuckles!5 Studies of the boney labyrinth (which houses the organ of balance) has revealed that “australopithecines show great-ape-like proportions” instead of modern-human-like proportions.6 This suggests they didn’t walk habitually upright in the human manner. Tattersall, I., Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012, p. 29. Zimmer, C., Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins, Smithsonian Books, New York, 2005, p. 57. 6 Spoor, F., Wood, B., Zonneveld, F., Implications of early hominid labyrinthine morphology for evolution of human bipedal locomotion, Nature 369:645–648, 23 June 1994. 4 5 7 Your perception, therefore, of australopithecine bipedalism will depend on which research papers you read. For the sake of the argument, even if we accept the australopithecines were accomplished walkers, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they are ancestral to humans. Bonobos and chimpanzees can walk. 7 Orangutans have been described as “pretty good bipeds on the ground.” 8 Other extinct apes, which lived outside Africa (and therefore aren’t part of the human evolution discussion) seemed to be bipedal. 9 Perhaps australopithecines are just another type of extinct ape that had a limited ability to walk upright? Fig 3. Two species of australopithecines: Australopithecus africanus (child specimen-left) and Australopithecus boisei (right). Johanson, D., Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 120. Tattersall, I., Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012, p. 19. 9 Köhler, M., Moyá-Solá, S., Ape-like or hominid-like? The positional behavior of Oreopithecus bambolii reconsidered, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 94:11747–11750, October 1997. 7 8 8 Lucy’s Legacy Lucy has been described by her discoverer as “the most beautiful, the most nearly complete, the most extraordinary hominid fossil in the world.”10 For many years ‘she’ has featured prominently in museum displays worldwide as key evidence for human evolution. But as was the case with Australopithecus africanus, Lucy’s reign might be coming to an end. In recent years, there have been a growing number of calls to evict Lucy from the human lineage. Meave Leakey is a leading fossil hunter questioning Lucy’s significance. She believes her discovery of a fossil creature in Kenya, dubbed Kenyanthropus platyops, lived at the same time as Lucy and could replace Lucy as a genuine human ancestor.11 According to Lucy’s discoverer: “if Kenyanthropus gave rise to Homo, then that would relegate Lucy’s species to a deadend branch on the family tree, effectively ousting A. afarensis from our ancestry.”12 Fig 4. Lucy has been described as “the Rosetta stone through which anthropologists look for the truth about our origins.” Johanson, D., Lucy: The Beginning of Humankind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981, p. 374. Leakey, M., Spoor, F., Brown, F., Gathogo, P., Kiarie, C., Leakey, L., McDougall, I., New hominin genus from eastern africa shows diverse middle pliocene lineages, Nature 410:433-440, 22 March 2001. 12 Johanson, D. and Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 175. 10 11 9 Other researchers who have performed fieldwork in the Tugen Hills of Kenya have also questioned Lucy’s status.13 They argue that their discovery of a creature allegedly much older than Lucy—named Orrorin tugenesis—is more ‘humanlike’ than Lucy and therefore that Lucy’s species “is a dead-end branch on the human family tree.”14 Still other researchers herald their discovery of Australopithecus sediba in South Africa as the ape-like species that gave rise to humankind. According to Scientific American writer Kate Wong, “such an arrangement would root Homo in South Africa instead of East Africa and could banish Lucy’s species—traditionally thought to be in our direct line of ancestry— to the evolutionary sidelines.”15 Moreover, further discoveries of Lucy’s species (Australopithecus afarensis) have undermined her status as our ancestor. As more cranial remains have been found, scientists have discovered that the shape of Lucy’s jaw is unlike humans and chimpanzees (the creatures we are supposedly most closely related to) but much more like that of a gorilla. Scientists have acknowledged that this discovery was “unexpected” and point out that it is significant enough to “cast doubt on the role of Au. afarensis as a modern human ancestor.”16 So if history is any guide, Lucy may face the same fate many other defunct fossils have experienced: being held up as concrete evidence for human evolution—for many years—only to be pushed to the side later on. Balter, M., Scientists spar over claims of earliest human ancestor, Science 291:1460-1461, 23 February 2001. Johanson, D., Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 156. 15 http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/04/24/is-australopithecus-sediba-the-most-important-human-ancestor-discovery-ever, accessed 15 February 2014. 16 Rak, Y., Ginzburg, A., Geffen, E., Gorrila-like anatomy on Australopithecus afarensis mandibles suggests Au. afarensis link to robust australopiths, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 104(16):6568-6572, 17 April 2007. 13 14 10 However, the idea that Lucy will be ‘evicted’ from our ancestry is unlikely, despite the evidence growing against ‘her’. According to Time magazine, Lucy and her close kin are “about as firmly entrenched in the human lineage as you can get.”17 Lucy belongs to the genus Australopithecus, which means ‘southern ape’. And according to Richard Dawkins “it is virtually certain that our ancestors were members of that genus.”18 Dawkins goes on to say, “almost every anthropologist today accepts, that all members of the genus Homo are descended from ancestors belonging to the genus we call Australopithecus.”19 This is despite the fact that many years ago evolutionary anatomist, Charles Oxnard, conducted detailed multivariate analysis of australopithecine fossils and came to the startling conclusion: “Although initial studies suggest that the fossils are similar to humans, or at the worst intermediate between humans and African apes, study of the complete evidence readily shows that the reality is otherwise. These fossils clearly differ more from both humans and African apes, than do these two living groups from each other. The australopithecines are unique.”20 So even though “almost every anthropologist today accepts” that we descended from the ape-like australopithecines, there are good reasons to be skeptical of this. Lemonick, M., Dorfman, A., Robinson, S., One giant step for mankind, Time 158(3): 54-61, 23 July 2001. Dawkins, R., The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Transworld Publishers, London, 2009, p. 189. 19 Ibid., p. 192. 20 Oxnard, C., Fossils, Teeth and Sex: New Perspectives on Human Evolution, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1987, p. 227. 17 18 11 Bipedalism History has shown us therefore, that some fossils are like ‘rock stars’. They are given status and attention in one generation, only to be largely forgotten by the next generation. But it isn’t just the status of specific groups of fossils that is subject to change. Sometimes cherished ideas about how we evolved are abandoned. For instance, the origin of bipedalism (upright walking) is a major focus amongst paleoanthropologists. Lucy’s discoverer calls bipedalism “the ultimate hallmark of humanity, the game-changing innovation that separated our ancestors from the apes.”21 He also tells us, “a growing consensus postulates that the acquisition of bipedalism may have occurred somewhere between 5 and 8 million years ago.” 22 This is around the time the human and chimp lineages allegedly split. However, despite this “growing consensus”, leading American Spinal Surgeon (and Harvard trained evolutionary biologist) Dr Aaron Filler argues that most scientists have a fundamentally flawed understanding of when and how bipedalism evolved. Filler accepts human evolution, but he contends that bipedalism arose suddenly about 15 million years before apes and humans supposedly shared a common ancestor. Filler argues that current theories overlook key fossil discoveries and a radical shift in thinking is required but “the power of adherence to old theories prevents scientists from seeing conflicting evidence.”23 Filler confesses this paradigm shift won’t happen easily when he writes: “Taking an entire generation of specialists in human evolution and proving them all to be wrong about what they learned from their own professors, as well as what they have taught and believed for their entire careers, will not take place without a great deal of controversy, protest, and denial. Nonetheless, the facts speak for themselves, and the truth on this point will prevail.” 24 Paleoanthropology has been defined as “the study of the evidence for human evolution.”25 But as we have seen, the ‘evidence’ is constantly debated and revised. The fact that our family tree is constantly redrawn—and characterised by dotted lines marked ‘tentative’—suggests that the story of human evolution may indeed be a fairy tale. Johanson, D., Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 290. Johanson, D., Edgar, B., From Lucy to Language, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2006, p.88. 23 Filler, A., The Upright Ape: A New Origin of the Species, New Page Books, 2007, p. 195. 24 Ibid., p. 18. 25 Stringer, C., Andrews, P., The Complete World of Human Evolution, Thames and Hudson, London, 2005, p.14. 21 22 12 Chapter 2 A Matter of Interpretation In 2001 Time magazine ran an article titled “One Giant Step for Mankind” which announced the discovery of a creature from Ethiopia named Ardipithecus kadabba. Readers were told, “meet your newfound ancestor, a chimplike forest creature that stood up and walked 5.8 million years ago.”26 However, the claim that this creature walked upright—and hence was our ancestor—was largely based on the shape of a single toe bone found 16 kilometres from the rest of the fossil remains. 26 Lemonick, M., Dorfman, A., Robinson, S., One giant step for mankind, Time 158(3): 54-61, 23 July 2001. 13 To make matters worse, some paleoanthropologists aren’t convinced the toe bone testifies to an upright gait, after all!27 This is a rather dramatic example, but it reinforces how researchers are often limited by working with fragmentary remains. By their very nature, fragmentary remains are open to various interpretations, and this is another reason we need to be cautious when we hear about the latest discovery that allegedly ‘proves’ we evolved from ape-like creatures. LUCY SKIRMISHES And even when the fossil remains discovered are more complete, scientists still often disagree about how to interpret them. For instance, Lucy is considered ‘remarkably complete’, and according to ‘her’ discoverer, ‘she’ is “an undoubted female.”28 However, other scientists writing in the Journal of Human Evolution argue Lucy’s pelvis indicates the creature was male!29 If scientists can’t agree on the gender of this famous fossil—even though it’s regarded as a ‘remarkably complete’ specimen— how confident can we be when they tell us that Lucy’s kind is our distant ancestor? Fig 5. Even though ‘Lucy’ is the name given to a specific skeleton, many fossils belonging to Lucy’s species (Australopithecus afarensis) have been found. Begun, D., The earliest hominins – is less more? Science 303:1478-1480, 5 March 2004. Johanson, D., Lucy: The Beginning of Humankind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981, p. 269. 29 Häusler, M., Schmid, P., Comparison of the pelves of Sts 14 and AL 288-1: implications for birth and sexual dimorphism in australopithecines, Journal of Human Evolution 29(4):363-383, 1995. 27 28 14 Moreover, Lucy’s species isn’t just known from one skeleton. Many Australopithecus afarensis fossils have been found. At one site in Hadar, Ethiopia, the remains of 13 partially complete individuals were found together. These and other discoveries have enabled scientists to establish a more comprehensive picture of this creature’s anatomy. That’s why this species has been described as “the single best understood early fossil hominid species.”30 But even though they have all this data available, there’s still much disagreement about how to interpret it. Some researchers have suggested that Lucy’s species may have bent down on all fours because ‘her’ wrists have a distinctive knuckle-walking anatomy.31 Other researchers argue Lucy was primarily a terrestrial bipedal creature; still others say its arms, fingers and toes suggest it spent a lot of time in the trees.32 So after all these years since Lucy’s discovery—along with many other discoveries of ‘her’ species—what is the consensus about Lucy? Leading anthropologist Craig Stanford gives a rather sobering assessment of the situation: “Everybody loves Lucy; of all the females who have ever lived, none has had so many men – and women – fighting over her so long after her death. She is the Rosetta stone through which anthropologists look for the truth about our origins and the chronological benchmark that we use to gauge all fossil humans’ degree of modernity. Nevertheless, after decades and all the scientific studies of her frame, no solid consensus exists about her exact place in human origins. The scientific teams that have warred over Lucy since her discovery are starkly different in their perspectives of her.”33 Stanford goes on to explain this odd situation: “In the case of afarensis [Lucy’s species], the same evolutionary facts are regarded differently by witnesses viewing the bones from irreconcilably different intellectual angles.”34 It would seem, therefore, that in the case of fossils, the evidence doesn’t necessarily speak for itself. All evidence needs to be interpreted. And the bias of individual researchers can greatly colour their interpretation. As Lucy’s discoverer candidly admitted, “there is no such thing as a total lack of bias. I have it; everybody has it. The fossil hunter in the field has it.”35 Johanson, D., Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 110. Richmond, B., Strait, D., Evidence that humans evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestor, Nature 404:382-385, 23 March 2000. 32 Zimmer, C., Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins, Smithsonian Books, New York, 2005, p. 55. 33 Stanford, C., Upright: The Evolutionary Key to Becoming Human, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 2003, p.80. 34 Ibid., p. 93. 35 Johanson, D., Lucy: The Beginning of Humankind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981, p. 257. 30 31 15 Homo habilis Interpretative issues also plague the problematic taxon Homo habilis. Many regard this as a link between the ape-like australopithecines and ‘human-like’ Homo erectus specimens (see later). However, various authorities have acknowledged that Homo habilis is a taxonomic ‘wastebasket’, where fossils that are difficult to classify are conveniently lumped together.36 For instance, according to the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, the only Homo habilis specimen for which we have a confirmed postcranial skeleton (i.e. skeleton below the neck) is Olduvai Hominid 62 (OH 62).37 Yet this specimen has been described as more ape-like than Lucy!38 And considering that OH62 supposedly lived about 1.5 million years after Lucy, that sounds like our alleged ancestors were devolving, not evolving! Fig 6. Reconstructed from more than 150 fragments, KNM-ER 1470 is an intriguing specimen that has been assigned various names, including Homo habilis. Tattersall, I., Schwartz, J., Extinct Humans, Westview Press, New York, 2001, p. 111. Bernard Wood (Ed), Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, Vol II, Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, UK, 2011, p. 568. 38 Stanley, S., Children of the Ice Age, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, 1998, p. 196. 36 37 16 Preconceived Ideas Another important point to keep in mind is the ‘worldview’ or ‘framework’ through which the researchers interpret the fossils. Most scientists are committed to a naturalistic worldview. Within this framework, researchers are allowed to debate how we evolved, but to question whether we evolved is unthinkable. So when it comes to investigating the fossil evidence for human evolution, everyone brings a whole suite of biases to the table. Anthropology Professor, Dean Falk, makes the important point, “scientists (especially paleoanthropologists) can be as emotionally invested in their explanations of human origins as religious fundamentalists are in theirs. After all, the topic literally entails matters of life and death.”39 One of the clearest examples of this ‘emotional investment’ was demonstrated when French paleoanthropologist Michael Brunet described his feelings about a media-hyped fossil discovery from Chad: “It’s a lot of emotion to have in my hand the beginning of the human lineage. I have been looking for this for so long, I knew I would one day find it, so it is a large part of my life too. I’ve been looking for twenty-five years.”40 Fig 7. Sahelanthropus tchadensis. According to some, this fossil represents “the beginning of the human lineage”. Other researchers, however, dismiss it as an extinct ape. Falk, D., The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2011, p.197. 40 Gibbons, A., The First Human: The Race to Discover our Earliest Ancestors, Anchor Books, New York, 2006, p. 213. 39 17 But even though Michael Brunet thinks the fossil represents “the beginning of the human lineage”, other researchers have dismissed the skull as an extinct ape that has nothing to do with human ancestry.41 Perhaps his desire to find a human ancestor has coloured his interpretation of the facts? Wolpoff, M., Pickford, M., Senut, B., Hawks, J., Sahelanthropus or ‘Sahelpithecus’? Nature 419:581-582, 10 October 2002. 41 18 Chapter 3 Inconvenient Fossils Sometimes fossils turn up in such a way that defies evolutionary expectations. A classic example of this involves the discovery of a partial arm bone (distal humerus) found in Kenya in the 1960s. 19 From the outset, the fossil (KNM KP 271) looked distinctly human. Diagnostic measurements confirmed it was “strikingly close to the means of the human sample”.42 Other researchers echoed this sentiment describing it as “indistinguishable from modern Homo sapiens”.43 However, this created an evolutionary dilemma, because it was found in sediments allegedly over 3.5 million years old.44 And according to evolutionary reckoning, “modern Homo sapiens” didn’t exist back then, so it can’t be human! What would happen if scientists conceded the fossil belonged to a human? What would this mean for the big picture of human evolution? Well, to put it bluntly, that would bring down the entire edifice of human evolution! After all, you can’t say that humans existed before many of their alleged ape-like ancestors! Today, this ‘problem’ has been ‘solved’ by re-classifying the humerus as belonging to the ape-like creature Australopithecus anamensis.45 A creature that is regarded as ‘more primitive’ than Lucy’s species! But it appears this re-assignment has more to do with making the fossil ‘fit’ ideas about human evolution. Leading paleoanthropologists now describe this odd situation as follows: “If KNM-KP 271 does belong to Au. anamensis then this taxon has a remarkably modern human-like distal humeral morphology.”46 So it appears this ‘inconvenient fossil’ has been ‘swept under the carpet’. However, other fossil mysteries have been harder to put to rest. Patterson, B., Howells, W., Hominid humeral fragment from early pleistocene of Northwestern Kenya, Science 156:6466, 7April 1967. 43 McHenry, H., Fossils and the mosaic nature of human evolution, Science 190:425-431, 31 October 1975. 44 Johanson, D., Edgar, B., From Lucy to Language, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2006, p.129. 45 Ibid. 46 Bernard Wood (Ed), Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution , Vol II, Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, UK, 2011, p. 408. 42 20 Laetoli Footprints Probably the most dramatic example here is not a fossil per se, but a series of footprints. These footprints, known as the Laetoli Footprints, were found by Mary Leakey’s team in Tanzania in the 1970s. And according to a noted anthropologist, they are more ‘famous’ than the footprints Neil Armstrong made on the moon!47 So who made the footprints? Tim White (University of California, Berkeley) admits they look distinctly human: “Make no mistake about it, they are like modern human footprints. If one were left in the sand of a California beach today, and a four-year-old were asked what it was, he would instantly say that somebody had walked there. He wouldn’t be able to tell it from a hundred other prints on the beach, nor would you. The external morphology is the same.”48 A recent study also concluded that the makers of the footprints walked with a modern human-like extended limb gait, as opposed to the bent-hip, bent-knee gait some apes possess.49 Fig 8. The Laetoli footprints have been described as more famous than the footprints Neil Armstrong made on the moon. Stanford, C., Upright: The Evolutionary Key to Becoming Human, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 2003, p.86. Johanson, D., Lucy: The Beginning of Humankind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981, p. 250. 49 Raichlen, D., Gordon, A., Harcourt-Smith, W., Foster, A., Randall Haas, W., Laetoli footprints preserve earliest direct evidence of human-like bipedal biomechanics, PLoS ONE 5(3):e9769, March 2010. 47 48 21 But even though the evidence seems so clear that a four-year-old can understand it, paleoanthropologists almost universally agree a ‘modern human’ did not make these footprints! That’s because these footprints lie in strata which are allegedly 3.6 million years old (they are listed in The Guinness Book of Records as the ‘oldest hominid footprints’). According to the evolutionary dating scheme, this would make them older than many of our alleged ape-like ancestors (including Lucy). So if scientists acknowledged a modern human made the footprints, then that too would bring down the entire edifice of human evolution! As stated previously, you can’t say that humans existed before many of their alleged ape-like ancestors! Many scientists have tried to gloss over the problem by assuming that Lucy’s species made the footprints. However, fossil experts like Ian Tattersall confess this connection is “actively debated” because skeptical scientists think Lucy’s foot was “far too long and primitive to have produced the strikingly modern Tanzanian footprints.”50 Twenty-seven years after the footprints were discovered, Scientific American writer Kate Wong admitted, “consider the world’s oldest whodunit an unsolved mystery.”51 The only reason it remains an ‘unsolved mystery’ is because acknowledging a ‘modern human’ made the footprints doesn’t support human evolution. Perhaps that’s why Richard Dawkins can confidently reassure us that “not a single fossil contradicts evolution.”52 When ‘inconvenient fossils’ do arise, they are consistently re-interpreted to fit the evolutionary paradigm. Tattersall, I., Masters of the Planet: The Search for our Human Origins, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012, p. 35. Wong, K., Footprints to fill, Scientific American, 293(2):18-19, 1 August 2005. 52 Dawkins, R., The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Transworld Publishers, London, 2009, p. 283. 50 51 22 Chapter 4 Decaying Genomes Let’s revisit the clear statement by an Oxford University Professor regarding the vast gulf between apes and humans: “We certainly do have a lot in common with chimpanzees and other apes, but there are also a hell of a lot of differences: our upright posture, a very large brain, language, reasoning, art, superb manual dexterity — all features that are almost invisible in our primate cousins. All these features developed extremely rapidly in our ancestors, but failed to materialize in our close genetic relatives.”53 These profound differences essentially boil down to differences in DNA. In other words, if humans evolved from ape-like ancestors, then new DNA programming must have arisen to account for all these features. The human genome must have undergone a tremendous DNA software upgrade! 53 Sykes, B., Adam’s Curse: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Destiny, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 2003, p. 125. 23 We are commonly told that humans and chimps have 98% similar DNA (see chapter 6). Even if we take this figure at face value, this would mean that our genomes differ by 60 million DNA ‘letters’ (2% of our 3 billion ‘letter’ genome). Therefore, humans and apes clearly have significant differences in their ‘genetic software’. So how did the human genome undergo a software upgrade? The standard reason given for how this allegedly occurred is via a slow process of mutation (DNA copying errors) and selection (either natural selection or sexual selection). Mutations usually corrupt genetic information. Richard Dawkins reminds us of this when he writes: “If you start with something pretty good and change it at random, the chances are that you’ll make it worse. And, as a matter of fact, the great majority of mutations do make things worse.”54 Fossil expert Ian Tattersall echoes this sentiment when he writes: “fiddling around with anything as intricate as a genome is asking for trouble: most random changes to a functioning system this complicated simply won’t succeed.”55 Fig 9. Even though “the great majority of mutations do make things worse”, many believe our genomes have been ‘upgraded’ by the mutation/selection mechanism. 54 55 Dawkins, R., Climbing Mount Improbable, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996, p. 83. Tattersall, I., Masters of the Planet: The Search for our Human Origins, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012, p. XVIII. 24 Natural Selection To The Rescue? If this process were continued indefinitely, it’s easy to see that genomes would degenerate. However, this is where natural selection supposedly comes to the rescue. Richard Dawkins informs us: “Natural selection promptly penalizes the bad mutations. Individuals possessing them are more likely to die and less likely to reproduce, and this automatically removes the mutations from the gene pool. Every animal and plant genome is subject to a constant bombardment of deleterious mutations: a hailstorm of attrition.”56 Unfortunately, however, natural selection can’t ‘withstand’ the “constant bombardment of deleterious mutations.” Since bad mutations severely outnumber ‘good’ mutations, natural selection can’t get rid of them all.57 Conservative estimates suggest we have 50-100 new mutations compared with our parents’ DNA.58, 59 To keep these new mutations out of the population, natural selection would have to ‘remove’ all children born! Furthermore, in the context of a vast 3 billion ‘letter’ genome, many individual mutations will have such a minor effect that they’ll effectively be ‘undetectable’ to natural selection. These mutations have been likened to rust spots on a car. Each spot has a tiny effect, but accumulate enough spots and the car falls to pieces! So even though many individual mutations have a minor effect, the net effect is the inexorable decay of our genomes. Moreover, even rare ‘beneficial’ mutations in the human genome often involve losses of information, despite providing a limited benefit (e.g. a mutation causing sickle-celled blood cells helps protect against malarial infection, but that’s because the red blood cell is warped and corrupted by the mutation). This is not the type of change that can explain the ‘new information’ that allegedly arose in the human genome. Dawkins, R., The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Transworld Publishers, London, 2009, p. 352. In fairness to Dawkins, he’s not saying that natural selection ‘cleanses’ the genome of all non-advantageous mutations. Dawkins also tells us, “the genome is subjected to a rain of attrition in the form of mutations. In that small portion of the genome where the mutations really matter for survival, natural selection soon gets rid of the bad ones and favours the good ones. The neutral mutations, on the other hand, simply pile up, unpunished and unnoticed.” Ibid., p.334 However, classifying most mutations as ‘neutral’ and most of the genome as ‘junk’ is an increasingly untenable position. Readers who want to study this issue further are advised to read ref. 59 58 Stringer, C., Lone Survivors: How we came to be the only Humans on Earth, Times Books, New York, 2012, p.268. 59 Sanford, J., Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, Elim publishing, New York, 2005, p. 34. 56 57 25 In his landmark book, Genetic Entropy and The Mystery of the Genome, former Cornell University Genetics Professor, John Sanford, explains the serious problem of mutational decay for the human genome. Sanford surmises: “If the genome is actually degenerating, it is bad news for the long-term future of the human race. It is also bad news for evolutionary theory. If mutation/selection cannot preserve the information already within the genome, it is difficult to imagine how it could have created all that information in the first place! We cannot rationally speak of genome-building when there is a net loss of information every generation! Halting degeneration is just a small, prerequisite step, before the much more difficult question of information-building can reasonably be opened for discussion.”60 Since the human genome is degenerating, it doesn’t make sense to say that this same process (of mutation/selection) was responsible for ‘upgrading’ the genome of an ape-like creature to that of a human being. 60 Sanford, J., Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, Elim publishing, New York, 2005, pp. 105-106. 26 Chapter 5 Fossil Classification: An Inexact Science So far we’ve encountered some of our alleged ancestors like australopithecines, which are most likely extinct ape-like creatures that are not related to humans. We’ve also encountered the ‘more primitive’ Ardipithecus, which some researchers dismiss as a chimpanzee ancestor, not a human ancestor.61 And when we came to Homo habilis, we discovered it is a disputed taxon that contains fossil material that undermines human evolution. But what about the other end of the spectrum of human evolution? What about creatures like Neanderthals that look much more like a modern human? Are they sub-human? What about fossils classified as Homo erectus? Do they provide evidence we have descended from less-evolved forms? 27 Turkana Boy Take for example a fossil specimen known as Turkana Boy. This fossil was found in Kenya in 1984 and has been classified as Homo ergaster (or erectus). According to The Complete World of Human Evolution, “estimates of his probable adult height are close to 1.83m (6 ft), and his physique was comparable with that of present-day African populations in the region today.”62 Turkana boy, therefore, possesses the basic human body plan. According to Ian Tattersall, “in all the essentials we see a creature not too dissimilar from ourselves, at least below the neck.”63 He goes on to say, “the newly evolved body form represents a giant step along the road to becoming fully human; and, however exactly it was achieved, it is entirely unanticipated in the fossil record we have to hand. For, as I’ve already intimated, there is nothing in that record that we can regard as a convincing intermediate between any australopith or “early Homo,” and the Turkana Boy.”64 This is a remarkable statement from a leading paleoanthropologist. He clearly concedes that the basic human body plan appeared “entirely unanticipated in the fossil record” and wasn’t preceded by any “convincing intermediate”. This certainly isn’t what we’d expect if the human body plan arose via a slow process of evolution. Fig 10. Turkana Boy (aka Homo ergaster/erectus) was found in Kenya in 1984 and possesses the basic human body plan. Johanson, D., Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 156. Stringer, C., Andrews, P., The Complete World of Human Evolution, Thames and Hudson, London, 2005, p.139. 63 Tattersall, I., Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012, p. 93. 64 Ibid., p.94. 61 62 28 Nevertheless, Turkana Boy does show some marked differences in the skull. In particular, his cranial capacity is smaller than today’s average and his skull bones are thicker and more robust. Are these differences significant enough to warrant classifying this creature as a different species to us? Fig 11. Fossil replica and artist’s rendition of Turkana Boy’s skull. To answer this question, it’s worth digressing for a moment to ponder how scientists classify things. Take, for example, the two skulls shown below. Do you think these two creatures are related? If they were only known from fossils, how do you think scientists would classify them? Surprising as it may seem, both of these creatures are the same species—they are both different types of dogs (bulldog on left, borzoi on right). The reason their skulls are so different is because these dogs develop differently. They also show us how much individuals within one species can vary. BulldogBorzoi Fig 12. Dog skulls are a dramatic example of how much individuals within one species can vary. 29 So how does this relate to human origins? Well, books on human evolution often list lots of human-like species other than modern humans (Homo sapiens). Some of the most well known examples are Homo neanderthalensis, Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus/ergaster (e.g. Turkana Boy). The reason they are classified as different species is because they are considered sufficiently different to us. But is this legitimate? Identifying Different ‘Species’ According to the famous evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, “a species is a group of organisms that can successfully breed with one another and cannot exchange genes with other organisms.”65 This definition is helpful when we’re trying to identify species amongst living organisms, but it’s obviously much more difficult to classify creatures that are only known from fossils. Science writer Ann Gibbons reminds us: “For paleontologists comparing fossils, it is virtually impossible to determine whether specimens would have been capable of interbreeding.”66 Similarly, Ian Tattersall reminds us: “Recognizing species from their bones is often a tough proposition among close relatives: in some cases, much physical diversity may accumulate within a population without speciation occurring, while in others, the bones of members of two species descended from the same ancestor may be virtually indistinguishable.”67 This means we can never be certain, for instance, that classifying Turkana Boy (Homo ergaster) and Java Man (Homo erectus) as different species to us is a legitimate designation. Like the example with dogs, their skeletal differences may be due to changes in development and skeletal maturation, not because they are different species. Indeed, a neuroscientist has recently proposed that ‘robust humans’ (Neanderthals, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo erectus, etc.), which he regards as “fully human”, have attained their distinct morphology through changes in development and hormone secretion patterns, not through evolution.68 If this proposal proves correct, it could provide a powerful non-evolutionary explanation for the unique anatomy of these contentious fossils. Johanson, D., Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 101. Gibbons, A., The First Human: The Race to Discover our Earliest Ancestors, Anchor Books, New York, 2006, p. 68. 67 Tattersall, I., Masters of the Planet: The Search For Our Human Origins, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012, p. 189. 68 Line, P., Explaining robust humans, Journal of Creation, 27(3): 64-71, 2013. 65 66 30 Homo erectus Perhaps we have underestimated the ‘humanity’ of fossils classified as Homo erectus? Lucy’s discoverer, for instance, concedes that he thinks a modern man and a Homo erectus woman could produce fertile offspring.69 Moreover, genetic researchers studying human migration patterns have suggested modern humans mated with the members of Homo erectus they encountered.70 This suggests that Homo erectus may well be people just like you and I. Moreover, scientists have concluded that Homo erectus individuals built boats and travelled across large stretches of water between different Indonesian islands.71 That certainly doesn’t sound like the behaviour of dim-witted, half-evolved humans, does it? Fig 13. Homo erectus specimen from Indonesia known as Sangiran 17 Johanson, D., Lucy: The Beginning of Humankind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981, p. 144. Zimmer, C., Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins, Smithsonian Books, 2005, p. 109. 71 Morwood, P.B. et al., Fission-track ages of stone tools and fossils on the east Indonesian island of Flores, Nature 392:173-176, 12 March 1998. 69 70 31 No discussion of Homo erectus would be complete, however, without mentioning the intriguing discoveries made at Kow Swamp in Victoria, Australia. Over 40 years ago, the world’s leading science journal (Nature) informed us, “human remains from Kow Swamp display archaic cranial features which suggest the survival of Homo erectus in Australia until as recently as 10,000 years ago.”72 From an evolutionary perspective, this doesn’t make sense. Firstly, according to their timescale, Homo erectus supposedly died out long before this. Moreover, according to the dominate theory on how we evolved, Homo erectus individuals never made it to Australia! Today the site of Kow Swamp has been re-dated, doubling its alleged age. But the problem hasn’t abated. Researchers now refer to them as “robust modern humans” who probably attained their erectus-like morphology through genetic isolation and environmental stress.73 This may well be the case. But if it can be argued that the Kow Swamp individuals are “true humans” who developed differently, why can’t the same reasoning be used for other Homo erectus specimens, such as those from Indonesia? Fig 14. Many researchers believe Homo erectus evolved into Homo heidelbergensis (shown above). However, these species names are debatable, and they may represent ‘true humans’ with slight developmental differences from people living today. Thorne, A., Macumber, P., Discoveries of late pleistocene man at Kow Swamp, Australia, Nature 238:316-319, 11 August 1972. 72 Stone, T., Cupper, M., Last glacial maximum ages for robust humans at Kow Swamp, southern Australia, Journal of Human Evolution 45:99-111, 2003. 73 32 The Hobbit Speaking of Indonesia, a group of fossils found on the island of Flores in 2003, have, according to one expert, “shaken the very foundations of paleoanthropology.”74 Nicknamed ‘the hobbit’, these creatures had a braincase about the size of a chimp and adults were just over a metre tall. Moreover, they fabricated sophisticated stone tools, hunted animals and possessed the controlled use of fire. Fig 15. The hobbit has stunned researchers with its evident intelligence, despite its diminuitive brain size. But the hobbit clearly shows that there were smart people with little brains in Indonesia not that long ago. Since their discovery, debate has raged about how to classify the fossils and how to account for their unique anatomy. As is the case with Homo erectus, some scientists think they are sufficiently different to us to warrant being classified as another species, Homo floresiensis. However, others passionately dispute this, arguing that they are modern humans that suffered from a condition such as microcephaly, cretinism or a genetic disorder.75,76 Intriguingly, scientists who have studied the hobbit’s braincase have concluded that it looks quite similar to that of Homo erectus brains.77 Now if small Homo erectus-shaped brains can be ‘smart’, why can’t much bigger Homo erectus brains? Falk, D., The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2011, p.179. 75 Henneberg, M., Eckhardt, R., Schofield, J., The Hobbit Trap – How New Species are Invented, Left Coast Press, 2010. 76 Oxnard, D., Obendorf, P., Kefford, B. Post-cranial skeletons of hypothyroid cretins show a similar anatomical mosaic as Homo floresiensis, PLoS ONE 5(9):e13018, September 2010. 77 Falk, D., The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2011, p. 114. 74 33 Neanderthals And don’t just think having a big brain gets you off the hook, either. Fossils classified as Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) usually have brains bigger than most people living today, but Neanderthals are often maligned as a sub-human species. Part of the reason for this confusion is that early reconstructions of Neanderthals incorrectly presented them as individuals possessing divergent big toes like apes, who walked stooped-over and bent-kneed, with their heads sticking forward.78 Today, however, over 500 (partially complete) individual Neanderthals have been discovered and this picture has completely changed. Neanderthal experts now describe their physique as “combining that of a powerful wrestler with the endurance of a marathon runner!”79 Moreover, Neanderthals possessed an impressive cultural inventory. They buried their dead, cared for the infirm, built dwellings, made clothes and tools and some suggest they also made musical instruments. 80, 81, 82, 83 Furthermore, studies of the Neanderthal genome have revealed that ‘modern humans’ and Neanderthals interbred in the past.84 This further reinforces how classifying them as a different species to us is unnecessary. Fig 16. Who’s smarter? If cranial capacity could be taken as a ‘rigid guide’ to intelligence, surely Neanderthals (right) should be much smarter than the hobbit’s species (left). However, Neanderthals are usually classified as a sub-human species, while some researchers contend ‘the hobbit’ is fully human. Johanson, D., Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 235. Stringer, C., Andrews, P., The Complete World of Human Evolution, Thames and Hudson, London, 2005, p157. 80 Ibid., p.154. 81 Johanson, D.,Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, pp. 240-243. 82 Zimmer, C., Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins, Smithsonian Books, 2005, p. 126. 83 Stringer, C., Lone Survivors: How we came to be the only Humans on Earth, Times Books, New York, 2012, p.124. 84 Gibbons, A., Close encounters of the prehistoric kind, Science 328:680-684, 7 May 2010. 78 79 34 After sequencing the genomes of Neanderthals and Denisovans, the world’s leading authority on ‘ancient’ DNA, Svante Pääbo, concluded: “This was an amazing finding. We had studied two genomes from extinct human forms. In both cases we had found some gene flow into modern humans. Thus, low levels of mixing with earlier humans seemed to have been the rule rather than the exception when modern humans spread across the world. This meant that neither Neanderthals nor Denisovans were totally extinct. A little bit of them lived on in people today.”85 So how does this affect the way we view Neanderthals? According to Svante Pääbo: “Many would say that a species is a group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring with each other and cannot do so with members of other groups. From that perspective we had shown that Neanderthals and modern humans were the same species.”86 Thus, the idea that Neanderthals are a sub-human species appears to be slowly unravelling. Fig 17. Homo heidelbergensis from Zambia (top left), Homo erectus from Indonesia (top right), Homo sapien (Asian Female) (bottom left), Homo Neanderthalensis from France (bottom right). It is the author’s contention that all these fossils can be classified as ‘true humans’. Pääbo, S., Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes, Basic Books, New York, 2014, p. 246. Ibid., p. 237. (Even though Svante Pääbo acknowledges Neanderthals and modern humans were the same species according to the biological species concept, he still thinks this concept has “limitations”) 85 86 35 Unfortunately, many people get the mistaken impression that when scientists assign a scientific name to a fossil or group of fossils, this classification is a well-established fact. But these names are the subject of intense debate. As Lucy’s discoverer points out: “Every meeting of paleoanthropologists that I have attended has at some point erupted into intense and sometimes unfriendly debate about how many hominid species preceded us.”87 Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London identifies the key problem: “this is undoubtedly one of the main areas of confusion in studies of modern human origins: how to recognize species in the fossil record, and what this signifies.”88 By classifying creatures similar to modern humans as different species, scientists give us the strong impression that we evolved from sub-human forms. But the need for these names is questionable. As was shown with the Kow Swamp specimens and ‘the hobbit’ from Indonesia, other explanations can be given to account for the differences—explanations that have nothing to do with human evolution. 87 88 Johanson, D., Wong, K., Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2009, p. 101. Stringer, C., Lone Survivors: How we came to be the only Humans on Earth, Times Books, New York, 2012, p.33. 36 Chapter 6 What About DNA? At this point some people might suggest that arguing about fossils is no longer necessary. After all, don’t we share about 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees? Doesn’t this ‘prove’ we are closely related to apes? Well, the simple answer is no. As we’ve already seen, a 2% difference roughly equates to a whopping 60 million DNA ‘letters’ difference! So our genetic code certainly has some profound differences. Moreover, quoting the ‘2% figure’ without comparing our genome to that of other organisms is misleading. We need to understand this figure in context. 37 Evolutionary Geneticist, Professor Steve Jones, helps us put this figure in perspective: “As most people know, chimpanzees share about 98% of our DNA, but bananas share about 50%, and we are not 98% chimp or 50% banana, we are entirely human and unique in that respect.”89 Fig 18. Human DNA and banana DNA is about 50% similar. Even though some people are mesmerized by the ‘98% figure’, the reality is that most mammals have similar genomes. Evolutionary Developmental Biologist, Sean Carroll, reminds us “our genome and that of a rodent contain essentially the same genes in mostly the same organization.”90 Indeed, the similarity is so pronounced that “greater than 99 percent of all genes in the human have a mouse counterpart, and vice versa.”91 Moreover, the ‘98% figure’, even though it’s widely touted, isn’t a confirmed ‘fact’, either. In a recent paper on human-chimp DNA similarity, two Ph.D. biologists point out that “nearly all research reports on human–chimp DNA similarity omit significant amounts of data that do not align or represent gaps in the sequence.”92 They conclude a more realistic figure for human-chimp DNA similarity “is not more than 81 to 87% and quite possibly lower.” 93 Taylor, J., Not a Chimp: the hunt to find the genes that make us human, Oxford University Press, New York, 2009, p. 19. Carroll, S., Endless Forms Most Beautiful: the New Science of Evo Devo, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2005, p. 270. 91 Ibid., p. 269. 92 Tomkins, J., Bergman,J., Genomic monkey business—estimates of nearly identical human–chimp DNA similarity re-evaluated using omitted data, Journal of Creation, 26(1):94-100, 2012. 89 90 93 Ibid. 38 As we’ve already seen with fossils, evidence doesn’t necessarily speak for itself. All evidence needs to be interpreted. This is also true for DNA evidence. The DNA code is distinct from a rigid blueprint for a house. It is a dynamic code where slight differences in the timing and expression of genes can amount to big differences when we consider the entire creature. That’s why Chihuahuas and Great Danes have nearly identical genomes, yet look so different.94 Perhaps an even more dramatic example is humans. Even though we might look very distinct from our neighbour, on the DNA level we differ by only one ‘letter’ out of every thousand.95 Y Chromosome Woes Furthermore, when comparing human/chimp genomes, it depends which parts of the genome you focus on. Recent studies have revealed that human and chimpanzee Y chromosomes are “horrendously different from each other.” 96 Leading genomics researcher, David Page, acknowledges “it looks like there’s been a dramatic renovation or reinvention of the Y chromosome in the chimpanzee and human lineages.” 97 So even though much of our genomes are similar, other parts are so different that they defy an evolutionary explanation. Junk Dna? Another point to consider is so-called junk DNA. Many have alleged that humans and chimps share ‘genetic garbage’ such as broken genes which supposedly ‘proves’ we are related. However, the whole concept of junk DNA is continually under attack. As more evidence accumulates, the amount of the genome recognised as ‘junk’ steadily declines. For instance, most of our genomes are transcribed at some stage from DNA to RNA. Why would cells expend so much energy transcribing most of the genome when only a tiny part of it is useful? Moreover, even from an evolutionary perspective, many examples of junk DNA don’t stack up. For instance, why do we find similar ‘junk DNA sequences’ in creatures that are supposedly distantly related? If the sequences were truly junk, they should’ve been scrambled beyond recognition by mutations instead of being ‘conserved’ by natural selection. Many sequences labelled junk, therefore, may well be functional sequences that fit a design perspective better. Quackenbush, J., The Human Genome: The Book of Essential Knowledge, Charlesbridge Publishing, Watertown, 2011, p. 67. 95 Ibid., p. 85. 96 Buchen, L., The fickle Y chromosome, Nature 463:149, 14 January 2010. 97 Ibid. 94 39 In his recent book, The Myth of Junk DNA, Cell Biologist Jonathan Wells comes to the startling conclusion: “Scientists make progress by testing hypotheses against the evidence. But when scientists ignore the evidence and cling to a hypothesis for philosophical or theological reasons, the hypothesis becomes a myth. Junk DNA is such a myth, and it’s time to leave it behind—along with other discarded myths from the past.”98 Counting Chromosomes Before we finish our discussion of ape and human genomes, we need to address the chromosome question. Apes and humans ‘package’ their DNA in different ways. Apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes and humans have 23 pairs. This is obviously a significant difference. However, many biologists argue that human chromosome 2 has been formed by the fusion of two small ape-like chromosomes. Part of the evidence for this alleged event is that human chromosome 2 has repeat sequences (that usually ‘cap’ the end of chromosomes) embedded ‘within’ the chromosome. However, this ‘chromosome 2 fusion model’ was first developed with indirect methods of DNA analysis. More recent DNA sequencing data has demonstrated that the evidence is less ‘clear cut’, prompting some biologists to conclude the evidence is “too ambiguous to accurately infer a fusion event.”99 In any case, even if human chromosome 2 did undergo a ‘fusion event’, this doesn’t necessarily support the idea we’re related to apes. Such an event could have taken place in the human family—thus reducing our chromosome number—without any need to invoke an evolutionary connection. A Different Explanation A common designer is a better explanation for the similarity between ape and human genomes. This explanation not only accounts for the similarities but also the profound differences. Even though an architect may design totally different structures, on closer inspection, many of the concepts and materials used to build them would be similar. So why couldn’t an ‘architect of life’ do the same with genomes? Wells, J.,The Myth of Junk DNA, Discovery Institute Press, Seattle, 2011, p. 107. Tomkins, J., Bergman, J., The chromosome 2 fusion model of human evolution – part 2: re-analysis of the genomic data, Journal of Creation, 25(2): 111-117, 2011. 98 99 40 Appendix: Did Religion Evolve? Books on human evolution routinely contain discussion about how religion might have evolved. This is understandable, because Homo sapiens aren’t just characterized by their unique anatomy, but also culture. Humans are the “only primate that prays”. And, according to Chris Stringer, one of the defining characteristics of modern humans is our “obsession with religion.”100 From an evolutionary perspective, religion is essentially a ‘human invention’ that came about when the minds of our ancestors developed sufficiently to entertain symbolic thoughts, thus enabling us to ‘invent’ God. However, even ardent evolutionists admit ‘pinning-down’ this cognitive transformation is an incredibly difficult task. Ian Tattersall candidly informs us: “The changeover of Homo sapiens from a nonsymbolic, nonlinguistic species to a symbolic, linguistic one is the most mind-boggling cognitive transformation that has ever happened to any organism. The details of this transition will probably forever evade us, and almost any scenario we might dream up risks trivializing it.”101 Seeing that our alleged transition from a nonsymbolic to symbolic species will “probably forever evade” the brightest scientific minds, perhaps we need to look elsewhere to explain human uniqueness? Moreover, if we can’t even explain how we became a symbolic species, surely any attempt to explain how humans ‘invented’ the concept of ‘God’ will be an even more futile exercise? The Bible presents a very different account of human origins. It teaches that humanity has descended from the first people who themselves were specially created by God. From this perspective, people have not descended from ape-like ancestors. Any similarity we have to other primates (such as chimpanzees) is due to us sharing a common designer. The God of the Bible is not some obscure ‘force’, but personal. He came to this earth in the person of Jesus, who voluntarily sacrificed His life to pay for our sin. Many people dismiss this as fictitious, however the New Testament authors were adamant that they didn’t ‘invent’ or ‘concoct’ what they wrote about Jesus. Many of them died for their testimony. Perhaps reading this booklet has prompted you to rethink human origins? This, of course, is an important issue. However, instead of just prompting you to reconsider the past, the author hopes this booklet will also prompt you to reconsider your future. And, in particular, prompt you to reconsider your future in relation to history’s most famous member of Homo sapiens…Jesus of Nazareth. 100 Stringer, C., Lone Survivors: How we came to be the only Humans on Earth, Times Books, New York, 2012, p.243. 101 Tattersall, I., Masters of the Planet: The Search For Our Human Origins, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012, p. 220. 41 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to everyone who helped me put this book together, however there are a few people that deserve special mention. Dr Peter Line and Dr Don Batten reviewed the manuscript at various stages and offered many helpful changes. Any mistakes that remain, however, are completely my responsibility. Esther Grace spent hours on the cover design, illustrations and book layout. Ethan helped photograph my skull collection and Andrew created a great website. © David J White 2014 42