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The history of the Ape men
Sounds good doesn't it? In fact it is difficult to find a single 'ape man', or 'missing link' between the apes and man, which has stood the test of thirty years. (The one that did was one of the worst frauds in scientific history.) Almost always the 'find' is looked at critically by other scientists, and, because they do not have any axes to grind, they are not afraid of sifting the evidence. Sooner or later a general opinion emerges that whatever it was wasn't what the finders hoped for, and the wonderful new evidence for human evolution is quietly relegated to the basement of the institution which 'discovered' it. This happens time and time again. Needless to say, this half of the story never, ever, makes the papers.
Neanderthal man, Cro-Magnon man
150 years ago the reconstructions of Neanderthal (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) were bent and very much like an 'ape-man'. It is now admitted that the supposedly stooped posture was actually due to disease, and that Neanderthal is just a variation of the human kind, and actually had a larger skull. Indeed it has been said that if Neanderthal man in a shirt and tie passed you on the New York subway you probably wouldn't give him a second glance.
Java man: Pithecanthropus Erectus -> Homo erectus, 1891
Java man was 'discovered' by Eugene Dubois in 1891 on the Dutch East Indian island of Java. In fact all Java man consisted of then was a skullcap and three teeth. A femur (long leg bone) was found fifty feet from the skullcap - a full year later. Dubois also found two human skulls, the 'Wadjuk' skulls, in close proximity to the original finds - and concealed that discovery for 30 years. Eventually nineteen evolutionists conducted the Selenka expedition to Java. They subsequently produced a 342 page scientific report in which they demonstrated that Java man played no part in our human evolution. Exit Java man.
Piltdown man 1912
Piltdown was a fraud, based on a human skull-cap and an orangutan's jaw bone. However, so entrenched was the idea of ape-men being our ancestors that unbelievably it wasn't until 1953 that the Piltdown hoax was designated as such. It is incredible that the most discredited claim ever made by evolutionists survived for over forty years.
Nebraska Man: Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, 1922
In 1922 a tooth found in Nebraska, which was hyped as 'Nebraska Man' by the time it had hit the London papers. This was reported in the Illustrated London News, on the 24 June 1922. Then a similar tooth was found by Harold Cook in the skull of a wild pig, now only living in Paraguay.
Peking man 1927
Davison Black found a dusty tooth in China just as his funds were about to run out. It would be churlish to say that he displayed immaculate timing for his find, so I won't. The Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a generous grant in order to keep on digging. Later, on the same site, he found fourteen skulls, tools and more teeth. Unfortunately Marcellin Boule later made clear that the remains were those of monkeys, and, the skulls having been bashed in, were more likely to have been food for whoever inhabited the site rather than the skulls of the inhabitants themselves. Peking 'man' wasn't a relative but more likely a tasty snack for a modern man. The tools on the site were used on the skulls, not by them (Taylor 1991). Peking man was an ape.
Ramapithecus
Although this gentleman was once widely regarded as the ancestor of humans it has now been realised that it is merely an extinct type of orangutang (an ape).
Australopithecus africanus: Ardipithecus ramidus, 1994
This fossil, found in late 1994 in Ethiopia by Tim White, was at one time promoted as the missing link - indeed it was subsequently called 'Lucy' just to give it a cosy, hearthside sort of feel. The discoverer and his Ethiopian colleagues have since unearthed a nearly complete skeleton of the same creature. It can now be seen to be too chimp-like to be claimed as a human ancestor, and has been renamed Ardipithecus ramidus and put in a completely new genus. It is no longer considered to be on the line from apes to humans. Australopithecus afarensis is very similar to the pygmy chimpanzee. (White 1996).
All the above 'types' are now universally acknowledged as having nothing to do with the ancestry of man.
Homo habilis
There is a growing consensus amongst most paleoanthropologists that this category actually includes bits and pieces of various other types - such as Australopithecus and Homo erectus. It is therefore an 'invalid taxon' - that is to say it never existed as such.
Homo erectus
Many remains of this type have been found around the world. They are smaller than the average human today, with an appropriately smaller head (and brain size). However, the brain size is within the range of people today and studies of the middle ear have shown that Homo erectus was just like us. Remains have been found in the same strata and in close proximity to ordinary Homo sapiens, suggesting that they lived together. They approximate to the pygmies in stature.
Modern Man
And, just to add a bit of spice to the whole thing, Richard Leakey, in 1973, found a modern skull older than most of the supposed 'ape-men' fossils so far discovered. "Either we toss out this skull or we toss out our theories of early man," asserted the anthropologist of this 2.8-million-year-old fossil, which he has tentatively identified as belonging to our own genus. "It simply fits no previous models of human beginnings." The author, son of famed anthropologist Louis S. B. Leakey, believes that the skull's surprisingly large braincase "leaves in ruins the notion that all early fossils can be arranged in an orderly sequence of evolutionary change." (Leakey 1973) What is curious about that one is that it didn't even make the papers. I have to say that this was intellectual dishonesty, and it illustrates all too well how the media manipulates public opinion.
Summary
It should be remembered that all these are merely fossils, and even if we did find one which looked like a missing link, we do not know anything about it except its bone structure. All the 'soft' internal organs are missing, we don't know anything about the specimen's history (which has fooled paleontologists in the past, particularly in regard to the effects of poor diet and disease), and we know nothing whatsoever about their habits - indeed we can be seriously misled by wrong assumptions. We don't know whether they went on all fours, were stooped or erect, or even whether the specimens found were male or female.
Secondly, and stemming from that, Homo erectus, Neanderthal man, etc., etc., may be claimed to be distinct species on the basis of their bone structure, but, unfortunately, this is not the basis on which species are classified. Species, by definition, are interbreeding groups; that is they are groups of organisms capable of producing viable offspring. We know nothing about that subject with respect to these beings. If we found some modern dog skeletons only - as fossils - we would have a field-day with new species.
The simple fact is that there is no fossil evidence that man is the product of evolution. The missing links are still missing after 150 years of avid collecting. Therefore the reasonable conclusion is that they have never existed. The Bible clearly states, "then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." (Genesis 2:7).
References:
(Press your 'Back' button to return to the text from any of these references.)
Leakey, R., National Geographic, 6/1973, p.819
Taylor, I., 'In the Minds of Men', 3rd ed, Toronto, TFE Publishing, 1991, 240
White, T., (1996) National Geographic, March 1996, p. 117.
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