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

Some researchers have expanded their search for a first nucleotide molecule capable of reproducing itself without the help of enzymes beyond RNA. But thus far all such attempts have been unsuccessful. For example, Stanley Miller and others have proposed peptide nucleic acid (PNA) as an alternative to RNA as the first self-replicating molecule. According to Miller, PNA is a more stable molecule than RNA. But in his experiments Miller has only been able to produce some components of PNA and not the molecule itself (Travis 2000b). In a study published in Science, Eschenmoser (1999, p. 2118) says: “. . . it has not been demonstrated that any oligonucleotide system possesses the capacity for efficient and reliable nonenyzmatic replication under potentially natural conditions.” Eschenmoser, speaking of RNA or any other oligonucleotide molecule, said that “its chances for formation in an abiotic natural environment remain open to question.” He admitted that although most scientists think that the formation of some kind of RNA-like oligonucleotide is a key step in the formation of life, “convincing experimental evidence that such a process can in fact occur under potentially natural conditions is still lacking.”

Developmental Biology

Even if we grant the evolutionists the existence of some first simple living thing, then we have to consider how that first living thing gradually differentiated into other living things, including human beings. One source of evidence about the history of such gradual development is the fossil record. When we looked carefully into the human fossil record, we found evidence that humans have existed since the very beginnings of life. Another type of evidence can be found in developmental biology. Most animals begin life as fertilized eggs, which then become embryos, which then become infant organisms, which then become adult organisms. How this happens is the subject matter of developmental biology. Darwinists say they can find evidence for evolution in developmental biology.

Darwinists often point out that at a certain stage of its development the human embryo resembles that of a fish, and they take this as a proof of evolution. Actually, at a certain stage all vertebrate embryos resemble a fish, and thus resemble each other. Darwin himself said “the embryos of mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles” are “closely similar.” He thought the best explanation was that the adults of these species are all “the modified descendants of some ancient progenitor.” He also proposed that “the embryonic or larval stages show us, more or less completely, the condition of the progenitor of the whole group in its adult state” (Darwin 1859, pp. 338, 345). In other words, the early fishlike state of the embryo in vertebrates resembles the original adult vertebrate from which all today’s vertebrates supposedly came—we were all once fish. But the logic is flawed by a false estimation of the similarity of the embryos.

The process by which an embryo develops into an adult is called ontogeny, and the process of evolution by which a common ancestor supposedly develops into various descendants is called phylogeny. Many Darwinists, to greater and lesser degrees, have believed that the embryonic development of any vertebrate mirrors the evolutionary process that gave rise to it. As the German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel put it: “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” To illustrate his point, Haeckel published a series of images of the embryonic development of several vertebrates, each one looking at first like a fish and then developing into its characteristic form. It was later discovered that Haeckel had doctored the images to make the early fishlike stages look more similar in his illustration than they actually were in nature. Haeckel was formally found guilty of this offense by an academic court at the University of Jena. Nevertheless, his illustration of the vertebrate embryos is still widely printed in textbooks of evolution even today.

Apart from the doctoring of the images in the classic illustration of the vertebrate embryos, there is another deception. The first images of the embryo in the illustration, the ones sharing an impressive similarity, are actually from a middle stage of embryonic development. If the illustration included the earlier stages of embryonic development, including the eggs, an entirely different impression would emerge.

The eggs, the single celled starting points of the embryos of all animals, are vastly different. The bird and reptile eggs are of very great size. Fish eggs are usually smaller, but still easily visible to human eyes. The human egg, on the other hand, is of microscopic size.

The first stage of embryonic development is cleavage, the division of the egg into cells. Each group of vertebrate animals has its own cleavage pattern, very different from the others. During the cleavage stage, the basic anterior to posterior (front to rear) direction of the body is established. Next comes the gastrula phase, during which the basic body plan of the animal is elaborated. During gastrulation, the cells begin to differentiate into the various tissues. As in the case of cleavage patterns, gastrulation patterns display a great deal of variation among the different kinds of animals. At this stage in development, the embryos therefore look quite different from each other (Nelson 1998, p. 154; Wells 1998, p. 59; Elinson 1987).

It is only in the next stage of embryonic development, the pharyngula stage, that the embryos of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals come to temporarily resemble each other, looking somewhat like little fishes. In the pharyngula stage, all the embryos have little folds of tissue in the throat region that look like gills. In fish, they do become gills, but in other animals they form the inner ear and thyroid glands. So the embryos of humans and other mammals never have gills, nor do the embryos of birds and reptiles (Wells 1998, p. 59). After pharnygula stage, the embryos again diverge in appearance.

Considered in its entirety, the embryonic development of the vertebrates, rather than supporting evolution, tends to pose a strong challenge to it. According to evolutionists’ theory, all metazoans (multicelled creatures) must have come from a common ancestor. This creature would have had a certain body plan. To change that basic body plan would require changes in the genes that control the early embryonic stages of that body plan’s development. But according to evolutionary theory, the genes controlling the early stages of development should not be subject to very much change. Any such changes could cause massive disruptions in the development of the organism, causing its death or serious malformation.

That is what we see today. As Nelson (1998, p. 159) says, “All experimental evidence suggests that development, when perturbed, either shuts down, or returns via alternate and redundant pathways to its primary trajectory.” Therefore, according to most evolutionary biologists, positive mutations should occur only in genes responsible for details of later phases of development of an organism.

According to evolutionary theory, we should expect the earliest phases of development in living things to be quite similar. But, as we have seen, the early developmental stages of living things are vastly different from each other (Nelson 1998, p. 154). For example, after the egg begins to divide, there are several pathways by which the embryos of different animals reach the gastrula stage. Eric Davidson (1991, p. 1), a developmental biologist, has called this variety of cleavage patterns “intellectually disturbing.” It is somewhat of a mystery how all these very different patterns of early development came from some common ancestor. Richard Elinson (1987, p. 3) asked: “If early embryogenesis is conservative, how did such major changes in the earliest events of embryogenesis occur?” He calls it “a conundrum.”