Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Up until 1987, Homo habilis was depicted as a marked evolutionary advance from Australopithecus toward the human condition. Both in the scientific literature and popular presentations, Homo habilis was shown as larger than its australopithecine ancestors, and with a more humanlike body, although the head still had some apelike features. In 1987, Tim White and Donald Johanson (Johanson et al. 1987) reported the discovery of a fairly complete Homo habilis skeleton at Olduvai Gorge. Homo habilis turned out to be a very small creature with long apelike arms, not very different from Australopithecus in size and body proportions. As in the case of Australopithecus, some researchers think that Homo habilis has been mistakenly put together from the fragmentary fossil bones of two or more species (Wood 1987).

The new picture of Homo habilis has made the supposed evolutionary transition to Homo erectus more problematic. In 1984, a team of scientists including Richard Leakey found an almost complete Homoerectus skeleton (Brown et al. 1985, p. 788). Up until this time, scientists had never found any limb bones that could be positively connected with a Homo erectus skull. Yet for decades, scientists had been making fullscale models of Homo erectus, as if they really knew the correct relative sizes of the head and limbs. Strikingly, the newly found skeleton was that of an adolescent youth who would have been over 6 feet tall when fully grown. Furthermore, at about 1.6 million years old, this was the oldest Homo erectus individual found up to that time. The OH 62 Homo habilis individual found by Johanson and White was only 200,000 years older, but was quite small and apelike in comparison. An evolutionary transition so great in so little time seems quite improbable, although it is accepted by evolutionists as a matter of faith. Even some evolutionists have doubts about it. The relationship between the early varieties of the genus Homo is further complicated by African fossils designated Homo rudolfensis and Homo ergaster.

At the more recent end of its existence, Homo erectus is thought by most scientists to be the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens. Louis Leakey (1960, pp. 210–211; 1971, pp. 25, 27), however, never accepted this. In his books, he gave many anatomical reasons why neither Homo erectus nor the australopithecines should be considered ancestral to modern humans. His dissenting view is rarely, if ever, mentioned in modern textbooks about human evolution.

Here is another problem. The first Homo erectus specimens were found by Eugene Dubois in Java in the 1890s. First he found an apelike skull. And the next year he found a femur or thighbone, about 45 feet away. Bones of many other kinds of animals were found in the same deposit. Dubois thought the skull and thighbone belonged to the same creature, which he called Pithecanthropus erectus. Right from the start, many scientists refused to accept that both bones belonged to the same creature. But eventually, the scientific community agreed with Dubois. Evolutionists needed a missing link connecting living humans with their extinct ape ancestors, and Dubois had given them a likely candidate.

Interestingly enough, later researchers reinterpreted the original Java Homo erectus fossils. In 1973, M. H. Day and T. I. Molleson determined that the femur found by Dubois is different from other Homo erectus femurs and is in fact indistinguishable from anatomically modern human femurs. This caused Day and Molleson (1973) to propose that the femur was not connected with the Java man skull. It thus appears that Dubois was mistaken in attributing them to the same creature. This finding is well known in professional circles, but in most textbooks and science museum displays, the Java man skull and femur are still shown as belonging together. Why? For decades, the discovery of Java man by Dubois has been practically mythologized. Apparently, scientists are hesitant to destroy the public myth they have created.

After Dubois discovered Java man, G. H. R. von Koenigswald made additional discoveries of Homo erectus fossils, as did other scientists. The finds look impressive in textbooks, but they are in fact of very little value because of their insecure dating. Most were found on the surface, which means they could be of almost any age, including very recent.

In 1856, some German workmen uncovered some bones in a cave high up one of the walls of the Neander valley ( neandertal in German). The bones were turned over to a local naturalist, and from that moment on the Neandertals have been a source of endless controversy in science. The two hottest issues are (1) the physical and cultural characteristics of the Neandertals and (2) their relationship to modern humans. Looking at the Neandertal fossils and their associated stone tools and other cultural artifacts, some scientists have characterized the Neandertals as physically bestial and culturally primitive. Others have given them more human appearance and behavior. The disagreements on this topic have been going on for about 150 years, and they have not stopped. On the relationship of the Neandertals to modern humans, the debate also remains intense. Some scientists are convinced they are our immediate ancestors, and others are convinced they are just a sidebranch that went extinct, leaving no descendants. Physical anthropologists Erik Trinkaus and Pat Shipman (1994) wrote The neandertals: of Skeletons, Scientists, and Scandals, which details in lively prose the twists and turns of the scientific debates on the Neandertals. Trinkaus and Shipman demonstrate that scientists past and present have been victims of bias and prejudice, and that they have sometimes used their positions of authority to influence the outcome of scientific debates.

One might expect that as we get closer to the present, the picture of human evolution might become somewhat clearer. Wrong. Today the heaviest disputes in human evolution studies are those concerning the most recent evolutionary event of all—the emergence of anatomically modern humans. On one side are those who say that anatomically modern humans arose once, in a single, geographically isolated part of the world, usually given as Africa. And on the other side are those who say humans arose several times in different parts of the world. This is known as the multiregional hypothesis. Complicating the picture are the Neandertals. As we have seen, some scientists would have modern humans coming directly from Homo erectus, with the Neandertals as a side branch that went extinct, whereas others would incorporate the Neandertals as the immediate ancestors of at least some modern humans.

In 1987, scientists (Cann et al.) announced that mitochondrial DNA studies had shown that humans had arisen from Africa about 200,000 years ago, thus disproving the multiregional hypothesis. But other scientists showed that these studies were flawed. Scientists have used other kinds of DNA studies to support their claims about human evolution. But these also have serious flaws. We shall consider this genetic evidence in depth in chapter 4.

Although Darwinist scientists present a united front to the public, proclaiming loudly that the evolution of humans from apelike ancestors is an established fact, they have not found the actual evolutionary path. But if the path has not been found, how can they assert, except as a matter of faith, that the evolution of humans from apelike ancestors actually did occur?

The Hidden History of the Human Race

Up to now, we have been looking at the problems that confront Darwinists in dealing with the evidence that is currently known and accepted by them. But in Forbidden Archeology, we learn that large amounts of evidence have disappeared from view by a process of knowledge filtration. Because this evidence contradicted the established evolutionary doctrines at particular times over the past 150 years, it has been eliminated from scientific discussion. This evidence shows that anatomically modern humans existed millions of years ago. If accepted, this evidence would destroy the evolutionary scenario outlined above, which has anatomically modern humans emerging about 100,000 years ago. Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and the Neandertals would no longer be human ancestors. They would all simply be creatures that coexisted with anatomically modern humans.