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Who Were Adam and
Eve?
Apes, Humans, or Myths?
Outline
 Human Evolution
 Special Creation of Humans
 Which view best accounts for the data?
Darwin’s Views of Humans
 “At some future period, not
very distant as measured by
centuries, the civilized races of
man will almost certainly
exterminate, and replace, the
savage races throughout the
world.”—Charles Darwin, The
Descent of Man, 521.
Darwin’s Views of Humans
 “With respect to the absence of
fossil remains, serving to
connect man with his ape-like
progenitors, no one will lay
much stress on this fact who
reads Sir C. C Lyell’s
discussion, where he shows
that in all the vertebrae classes
the discovery of fossil remains
has been a very slow and
fortuitous process...
Darwin’s Views of Humans
 …Nor should it be forgotten
that those regions which are the
most likely to afford remains
connecting man with some
extinct ape-like creature, have
not as yet been searched by
geologists.”
—Charles Darwin, The Descent
of Man, 521.
Human Evolution: The
Evidence
 Humans have “Junk DNA”
in their genome
 Transitional Hominid
Fossils
 Humans share 98% of their
DNA with chimpanzees
 “Ardi” fills in another
“missing link”
Transitional Hominid Fossils
 “Homo/ergaster/erectus, of which we have many
fossil specimens, is a very persuasive halfway link,
no longer missing, between Homo sapiens today
and Homo habilis two million years ago, which is in
turn a beautiful link back to Australopithecus…
Transitional Hominid Fossils
 …three million years ago, which, as we saw, could
pretty well be described as an upright-walking
chimpanzee. How many links do you need, before
you concede that they are no longer ‘missing’?”
—Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, 196.
Transitional Hominid Fossils
 Homo habilis The earliest known species of the
genus was Homo habilis, a fully erect hominid.
 Homo erectus About 1.8 million years ago Homo
erectus appeared, a large hominid standing 150 to
170 cm (5 to 5.5 feet) tall, with a low but distinct
forehead and strong browridges.
 Neanderthals Arose about 150,000 years ago.
 Cro-Magnons Discovered by workmen in 1868 at
Cro-Magnon, in the village of Les Eyzies in France.
The estimated age of the site is 30,000 years
Hominid Fossil Skulls
“Junk” DNA
 Most of the genetic code in humans is useless.
 It is simply a mess left over from evolutionary
changes.
 Why would an Intelligent Designer produce such a
code full of so many errors?
Humans Are 98% Chimps
 The 98% sequence overlap for proteins and DNA
proves that humans and chimps arose from a
common ancestor some time in the relatively recent
past.
 This split occurred due to mutations in each of the
species’ genetic material
“Ardi”—Another “Missing
Link” Found
 “Ardi” is short for Ardipithecus.
 It dates even earlier than “Lucy,”
which is a popular name for a
creature called Australopithecus
afarensis.
Is Human Evolution a Fact?
Transitional Hominid
Fossils?
 Again, evolutionists call the alleged “missing links”
hominids.
 However, from the Creation perspective, these were
not “missing links” but were merely creatures that
God created that later went extinct.
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Transitional Hominid Fossils?
 The transitional forms linking modern humans to
the hominids are still missing, just like they were in
Darwin’s time.
 Many of the “transitional forms” lived at the same
time and sometimes in the same areas.
Homo habilis and Homo erectus CoExisted
 “Here we describe two new cranial fossils from the
Koobi Fora Formation, east of Lake Turkana in
Kenya, that have bearing on the relationship
between species of early Homo. A partial maxilla
assigned to H. habilis reliably demonstrates that
this species survived until later than previously
recognized, making an anagenetic relationship with
H. erectus unlikely.”
—”Implications of New Early Homo Fossils from
Ileret, East of Lake Turkana, Kenya,” Nature 448,
688-691 (9 August 2007)
Homo erectus and Modern Humans
Co-Existed
 There's no way modern humans could be direct
descendants of Homo erectus,’ said Kenneth
Mowbray, a paleoanthropologist at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City . ‘The
dating is tricky, but the Java material suggests that
H. sapiens and H. erectus overlapped in time. H.
erectus can't stay the same and be an ancestor at the
same time,’ he said.”
– Java Skull Raises Questions On Human Family
Tree,” National Geographic News (2003)
Neanderthals and Modern Humans
Co-Existed
 David Caramelli explains: “During the late
Pleistocene, early anatomically modern humans
coexisted in Europe with the anatomically archaic
Neanderthals for some thousand years…
Neanderthals and Modern Humans
Co-Existed
 …This discontinuity is difficult to reconcile with the
hypothesis that both Neanderthals and early
anatomically modern humans contributed to the
current European gene pool.”
[1] “Evidence for a genetic discontinuity between
Neandertals and 24,000-year-old anatomically
modern Europeans,” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences USA (2003)
Did Neanderthals Bury Their
Dead?
 Pollen was found underneath one Neanderthal and
this led some scientists to conclude that
Neanderthals put flowers on their graves.
 This is only one specimen and pollen could have
made its way into the grave through other means
(i.e., wind blowing it).
Burial Does Not Necessarily
Imply Spiritual Beliefs
 Elephants pay homage to the bones of their dead,
gently touching the skulls and tusks with their
trunks and feet, according to the first systematic
study of elephant empathy for the dead.
The finding provides the first hard evidence to
support stories of elephant mourning, in which the
pachyderms are said to congregate at elephant
cemeteries, drawn by the bones of their kin.”
Rosella Lorenzi, “Elephants Mourn Their Dead,”
Discovery News (2005)
Elephants Bury Their Dead
 Evolutionists do not think
humans are closely related to
elephants, so this
demonstrates that burial does
not necessarily imply a
relationship between humans
and Neanderthals.
Cro-Magnons
 Cro-Magnons was simply a
term for describing
anatomically modern
humans.
Bone Shapes and “Transitions”
 “In closing our discussion of human evolution, it is
important to note that recognition of species in
Homo is based entirely on morphology…It is
possible that we are observing phyletic change
within a single species through time, and using the
species names only to denote different grades of
evolution.”—Integrated Principles of Zoology. 12th ed.
(2004), 604.
Evolution??
“The Human Fossil Record Is
Still Poor”
 “We have to admit that the fossil
record connecting the uprightwalking ape Australopithecus to
the (presumably) quadrapedal
ancestor that we share with
chimpanzees is still poor. We
don’t know how our ancestors
rose on to their hind legs. We
need more fossils.”
Richard Dawkins, The Greatest
Show on Earth, 204-205.
Human Evolution?
 Homo sapiens, or sometimes Homo sapiens sapiens,
refer to humans who were physically identical to
humans today.
 Evolutionists do not know how humans evolved.
 The standard theory of human evolution that is
presented in textbooks is outdated.
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“Junk” DNA Is Not Junk
 In the October 20, 2005 issue of Nature, Peter Andolfatto,
an assistant professor of biology at UCSD, conducted
research that demonstrates that “Junk” DNA is not really
junk after all:
“Genetic material derisively called “junk” DNA because
it does not contain the instructions for protein-coding
genes and appears to have little or no function is actually
critically important to an organism’s evolutionary
survival, according to a study conducted by a biologist
at UCSD…
“Junk” DNA Is Not Junk
 …In fact, 40 to 70 percent of new mutations that
arise in non-coding DNA fail to be incorporated by
this species, which suggests that these non-proteincoding regions are not ‘junk,’ but are somehow
functionally important to the organism.”
—Kim McDonald, “UCSD Study Shows ‘Junk’ DNA
Has Evolutionary Importance” (2005)
98% Drops To 86.7%
 Tatsuya Anzai conducted a comparative study and concluded:
“However, and importantly, this 98.6% sequence identity
drops to only 86.7% taking into account the multiple
insertions/deletions (indels) dispersed throughout the
region.”
 The abstract of this journal article is available online at:
http://www.pnas.org/content/100/13/7708.abstract
.
Of Mice and Men
 Gene-to-Gene DNA comparisons for humans and
mice reveal roughly an 80% sequence similarity.
—Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium, “Initial
Sequencing and Comparative Analysis of the
Mouse Genome,” Nature 420 (2002): 520-562.
Are We Closer to Chimps or
Orangutans?
 “There is no theory holding that molecular
similarity necessarily implies an evolutionary
relationship; molecular studies often exclude
orangutans and focus on a limited selection of
primates without an adequate "outgroup" for
comparison; and molecular data that contradict the
idea that genetic similarity denotes relation are
often dismissed.”
—”Humans More Closely Related to Orangutans Than
Chimps, Study Suggests,” Journal of Biogeography
(June 18, 2009)
Are Humans 98% Chimps?
 The genetic similarities between chimpanzees and
humans would just as easily be explained by a
Creator using the same building blocks and designs
to make different creatures.
 More recent research from the year 2003 indicates
that humans are only 86.7 percent genetically
similar to chimpanzees.
 Are we 80% mouse?
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What About “Ardi”?
 “Though Ardipithecus is not
itself this last common
ancestor, it likely shared
many of this ancestor's
characteristics.”
What About “Ardi”?
 “Until now, researchers have generally assumed
that chimpanzees, gorillas and other modern
African apes have retained many of the traits of the
last ancestor they shared with humans – in other
words, this presumed ancestor was thought to be
much more chimpanzee-like than human-like.”
What About “Ardi”?
 Ardipithecus challenges these assumptions,
however. …Overall, the findings suggest that
hominids and African apes have each followed
different evolutionary pathways, and we can no
longer consider chimps as "proxies" for our last
common ancestor.”
 In sum, “Ardi” exposes just how tenuous human
evolutionary theory really is.
Creation Predictions
 Humans are “overly endowed” (reflect God’s
image).
 Humanity traces back to one woman and one man.
 Humans originated in a single location in or near
the Middle East.
 God created humanity at the “just-right” time.
 Longer life spans prior to the Flood
Humans Are “Overly
Endowed”
 God created humans in His image (Genesis 1:27) .
 “Implement crafting developed rapidly, and human
culture became enriched with aesthetics, artistry,
and sophisticated language.”—Integrated Principles
of Zoology. 12th ed., 604.
 Humans have discovered mathematics and used
math to explain the universe’s properties.
 Humans study philosophy.
 None of these are necessary for survival!
One Woman and One Man?
 Mitochondrial-DNA studies suggest that humanity
emerged in a single location from a single female, or
group of females, in a small population.
 Y-Chromosomal Adam
Single Point of Origin in the
Middle East
 Humans most likely originated somewhere in East
Africa.
 The Bible explicitly states that God intervened early
in human history to move some people groups great
distances from their point of origin, while others
remained relatively close to their starting place
(Genesis 5-11).
Humans Came on the Scene
at the “Just-Right” Time
 Humans exist at the perfect time to observe most of
the universe’s history.
 The universe is expanding as time passes, and the
early stages of the universe’s history will be out of
view later in time.
 Good climate time due to Earth’s slower rotation
rate.
 Winds would have been stronger on Earth in the
distant past.
Long Life Spans Before the
Flood

“In Badtibira, Enmenluana reigned for 43,200
years; Enmengalana reigned for 28,800 years,
Dumuzi, the shepherd, reigned for 36,000
years… Then the flood swept over (the land).”
—An excerpt from the Cuneiform prism with
the Sumerian King List, ca. 1740 B.C.; Old
Babylonian period. Mesopotamia. Cuneiform
inscription in Sumerian.
Long Life Spans Before the
Flood
Conclusion
 The Special Creation perspective more adequately
accounts for the known data.
Helpful Resource
 Who Was Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the
Origin of Man, by Drs. Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross
(NavPress, 2005)